in already game-heavy January
Eight nights in a row beginning next Sunday
By Jeff Bercovici
Think "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" was courting overexposure before?
You ain’t seen nothing yet.
ABC’s megahit will return at 9 p.m. on Jan. 9, ringing in the new year with an eight-day consecutive run. When that finishes, the show will slow down to its normal frequency of three nights a week--Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday.
"Millionaire" was originally scheduled to return to primetime on Jan. 11. However, in response to stepped-up competition from the other major broadcast networks, ABC has elected to move it up two days.
Even so, "Millionaire" will be the last of the new primetime gameshows to take to the air.
Fox’s "Greed" will be first out of the gates, airing a mini-marathon of its own Jan. 5, 6, and 7 at 9 p.m. The third night, a Friday, will become "Greed’s" new home. Last fall the show occupied a Thursday slot.
"Greed’s" head start will leave rivals sitting on their hands, but not for long. CBS joins the fray on Saturday, Jan. 8, with the Dick Clark-hosted quiz show "Winning Lines." Like "Millionaire," "Lines," which will air at 8 p.m., is a copy of a show by the same name in the UK.
"Twenty-One," NBC’s entry, will just barely edge out "Millionaire," premiering an hour earlier, at 8 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 9. A revival of the fifties gamer by the same name, "Twenty-One" will air four episodes in its first two weeks.
Television critics at Media Life and elsewhere have questioned whether such saturation bombing tactics won’t backfire for "Millionaire" and the game show genre in general.
Though this possibility looms larger with every passing week, it doesn’t seem to matter. Faced with mounting threats on all sides, the only logical course of action for a game show fighting for its life is escalation. Better to overexpose the genre than to let your rival carry off a coup, or so the reasoning goes.
But will the result be a tragedy of the commons for all parties involved as viewers burn out on Q&A?
Or will it be survival of the fittest, with some shows thriving and others tanking, allowing for a return to something approximating normal programming?
One thing’s for sure: with three upstart challengers facing off against a defending champion for ever-increasing stakes, January’s television showdown promises to be as harrowing as any lightning round.
-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.