Slashdot Gameshow Experiences? 55
Rev Wally asks: "Next Tuesday, I hope to achieve one of my life long goals, as I've been selected to try out for Jeopardy! in Boston. I am looking for any words of wisdom from any one else who has appeared on/tried out for any game shows. Also, from any one at all, I am looking for you to throw random trivia questions my way, to try to sharpen my skills. Any help will be much appreciated, And I will try to keep any updates in my journal."
I was on "Remote Control" on MTV. (Score:3, Interesting)
And Ken Ober when he was famous...
And Kari Whuler when she was an A-cup...
I won the game but I didn't do so good with naming the videos. What can I say, I'm a trivia geek, not a music geek.
The buzzer is the key to success. There's an off-camera light that appears that signifies when you can buzz-in. Get used to buzzing in after that light appears.
If you know the answer, it's really hard to wait until the right moment. If you can keep calm, relax, and be the first one in, then you will get points for the questions you know.
There's nothing worse than knowing the answer and having the other person beat you on the buzzer.
If you need practice with trivia questions, try to get you hands on "College Bowl" questions. They're uniformly excellent.
Anyhow, being on remote control was one of the high points to life so far (bigger deal than Graduation, smaller deal than my wedding). Hope you get a chance!
Re:I'm on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in a week (Score:3, Interesting)
FWIW, my brother was on the UK Millionaire last year, winning GBP250,000. Don't know how it works in the States, but the cheque he was given by the host (Chris Tarrant) in the studio was the real thing; he just had to wait for the broadcast date to cash it, as that was the date on the cheque.
The only reason he had to wait a couple of weeks was that they were recording a few weeks ahead, as Tarrant was going on holiday for a month. But as I say, YMMV over in the US.
Re:I'm on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in a week (Score:3, Interesting)
Not so, at least in the UK. My brother was on the show here last year, and I was a PAF. He entered the competition on Friday, got his second question by phone on the Saturday, was confirmed as appearing (by phone) on the following Wednesday lunchtime, and the show was recorded Friday evening. I was phoned by him early Friday afternoon to be told the rules (no asking anybody else, no googling, basically what you'd expect); then the studio phoned me at 19:55 to tell me he'd got into the hot seat and confirm that he'd told me the rules. At no point did I ever have to sign anything, and although he was supposed to keep things quiet to avoid advance press coverage, no duty of confidentiality was ever imposed on me. There simply isn't time; he had less than 48 hours from being told he was on the show to phone round all 5 PAFs, confirming we were free, before giving our numbers to the production staff 5 hours before recording started.