Audience - games/ quiz shows

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Daroon Hamdi

Carl Shirley

Tuesday 25th November 03

Audience - games/ quiz shows

Quiz and game shows have a long established tradition in the media and are one of the most enduring and popular genres ever. Their true popularity began in 1950’s America with shows such as the ‘$64, 000 question’ and ‘Twenty One’. Modern successes include ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’, ‘Blind Date’ and ‘The Weakest Link’. In essays I will give an analysis of the letter and discuss issues of convections, audience and format in regard to other shows.

Firstly quiz is a game which included questions and other things that you complete in order to win a prize.

In the 1970’s Game and quiz shows were very different shows to what they are now as in the old days quiz and game shows were mainly watched by all members of the family and mainly attracted the same audiences.  

The early quiz shows rewarded knowledge, and made celebrities out of people who knew a lot of things and could remember them. The post-fix quiz shows rewarded luck. On "The $64,000 Question" and "Twenty-One" you could see people getting rich because they were smart. Today people on TV make money by playing games a clever child can master. The message is that it's not necessary to know anything, because you can be ignorant and still get lucky, and you can still at the end of the day get away with something rather than nothing. The first show, CBS's "The $64,000 Question," was apparently on the level. But across the street at NBC's "Twenty-One" executives and sponsors watched the ratings, and realized that some contestants drew more viewers than others. This was because mostly of the prizes they had to offer to their audiences and what they would offer in the future to attract more and more contestants.

The old quiz shows in 1970’s were introduced in order to entertain people and get more and more people to actually watch their shows and get more viewers. Moreover the producers of the game/quiz shows were specialists as they knew what they were doing. They were very smart because if the show was unsuccessful at that time then the producers, directors etc knew what to include and present in the future to increase the amount of audience watching the different game/quiz shows. There were also game/quiz shows that mainly were specialized as they had special contestants such as celebrities or the very “brainy” ones to test and question their brains and see how smart each individual is. This therefore led to more audiences as the shows became more popular and much more entertain able. The old game/quiz shows were very simple, as they had small stages, audiences and very small prizes that were not as so important or the winners received very small amount of money. However this totally changed as society and technology became more improvable and more technical, therefore most things changed and improved in a good way for the benefits of its consumers. The big change was that as years passed by more and more game/quiz shows were introduced to our televisions and were much improved as they begun to gain wide range of contestants from different cultures, backgrounds, sex, occupation etc. this therefore lead to much wider range of audiences. As audiences increased the prizes then became much better and much more expensive than the ones offered in the past years. But the most important thing was that the presenters were changed totally as they had celebrities or stand up comedies that were popular and were known all around were introduced to present the shows. This therefore made the game/quiz shows much entertain able and much friendlier game. The big purpose of introducing celebrities to present their shows was to attract more and more audiences and this at one point led to competition and still does as different channels introduced different game/quiz shows choosing the top celebrities to present their shows so that they attract more and more viewers and contestants at the same time.

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As technology and society as a whole changed more and more other things changed in different ways. As an audience I am aware of the convections the game/quiz shows has depending on the type of show itself. But the rules which most game/quiz shows follow is that most of them have audiences in the show/stage etc. to show that people are interested and that is a fun show to watch as there are others watching it with you. The more contestants then the more audiences you will attract as they would also want to get in the show themselves. ...

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