Quiz show

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A quiz show or quiz show is a game show on television or radio in the form of a guessing game in which questions have to be answered. As a result, the candidates can usually win high cash or material prizes.

Quiz shows have been one of the most popular formats for decades, especially on television. Accordingly, a large variety of formats has developed that differ greatly in terms of regulations, candidates, questions and prizes. So-called call-in competitions are not only held in typical quiz shows, but are also part of the side programs of many other programs. Board, card or computer games are now also available for many quiz programs.

Promotional postcard for a radio quiz for children (1940)

Candidates

Most of the games are played with candidates who are either present in the studio or who are switched on by telephone. In these cases, the winner or the prize will be determined during the course of the broadcast.

Typical examples are:

Whoever wants to become a candidate usually has to apply for the corresponding program, with the applicants being determined either by drawing lots or in a preliminary decision. In the old version of the TV show Kopfball , the candidates were selected spontaneously from the audience, while in Quiz Taxi the candidates were passers-by who happened to get into a certain taxi. In the case of programs without candidates or viewers, the proposed solutions are often sent by post, telephone or the Internet (for example with DENKmal ).

Game management

The program is typically directed by a quiz master. While the quiz master usually moderates the program alone today, an assistant was initially part of the standard staff of many quiz programs. Some assistants have become as popular as the quiz masters themselves, such as Martin Jente , Walter Spahrbier or Maren Gilzer .

Some programs also had a jury or a "lawyer" who monitored compliance with the rules and had to make a decision in cases of doubt. A well-known example is the now discontinued television show The Grand Prize .

subjects

Many programs include questions from all areas of knowledge, others are limited to certain areas (can you recognize the melody? For example to questions from music). Occasionally, the candidate himself is the subject of advice, for example in What am I? or tell the truth .

Profits

General

The prizes range from small cash prizes and prizes in kind to amounts of money in the millions. Especially since the quiz boom in the 1990s, profits on some programs have risen sharply. Their distribution is mostly financed by license fees or advertising income. Often paid service numbers also help finance the prizes, which potential candidates can use to apply for the show. Call-in competitions are financed almost exclusively by these service numbers (for example the quiz channel 9Live ). Other programs, such as The SKL 5 Million Show , are funded through lotteries where participation is conditional on the purchase of a ticket.

The winnings are not always paid out to the candidates. In some cases they are also donated to a good cause. Many broadcasters organize so-called “celebrity specials” for their quiz programs, in which celebrities appear as candidates. As a rule, they then name specific organizations or projects to which the money should be donated. Well-known examples of this are Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? or The Quiz with Jörg Pilawa . In the case of quiz programs for children, on the other hand, prizes in kind are almost without exception. Some shows, such as I have a big name , forego profits entirely, because the only thing that should be in the foreground is the urge to guess.

Programs with a jackpot are a specialty . Winnings that are not played out are accumulated and remain in the jackpot, increasing the winnings from game to game.

Currency problems

Special problems can arise from the different exchange rates of the individual currencies. In Millionaire? , which is produced and broadcast in the USA, Great Britain, Russia and Turkey as well as in Germany, the candidate can, according to the rules of the game, achieve a maximum profit of one million in the respective national currency. However, one million Russian rubles is only equivalent to a good 24,000 euros , while one million British pounds is equivalent to around 1.2 million euros.

The changeover to the euro also posed considerable problems. The German edition of Wer wird Millionär? increase the main prize from one million German marks to one million euros just because of the name of the show .

Regulations

The regulations are very different from broadcast to broadcast.

Candidates

Often - as in Das Quiz with Jörg Pilawa - two or more candidates play with each other and then share the money earned. At Jeopardy! however, the candidates compete against each other. There are also programs in which each candidate plays individually, for example on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? or in which the candidates first compete together and then against each other, as in The Weakest Flies .

Round

A quiz show usually consists of several rounds. Many programs have (public) selection rounds in which the next candidate is determined from up to ten other participants, for example by answering a question on a temporary basis. Then the amount of the prize is played out. A public selection round is dispensed with for some shows (for example, Das Quiz with Jörg Pilawa ); here the candidates are determined in a non-public preliminary decision.

ask

Most of the shows are based on knowledge questions. There are also picture, music and film puzzles as well as other brain games. In the now discontinued program What am I? for example, the candidate had to guess the occupation of a second participant by asking them related questions. With his answers he was able to narrow down the solution further and further. There are also numerous word games in which you have to guess terms. Examples of this are family duels , wheel of fortune and let 's go .

Choice of questions

Further differences arise in the choice of questions. Quiz shows like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? or The Quiz with Jörg Pilawa rely on a pool of questions from which the questions are randomly selected by a computer and displayed on the screens of the moderator and the candidate. It is also possible, but less common, to use prepared and specially selected questions that are also displayed on monitors and read out by the moderator.

joker

Jokers are a popular tool . Candidates can use it when they don't know the answer to a question.

  • Substitute question: The question is replaced by another question.
  • Slide: The question will be answered later.
  • Telephone joker: The candidate can call someone he knows and ask for help.
  • Free question: The question does not have to be answered.
  • Purchase joker: The candidate receives help in return for points.
  • Audience joker: The candidate can question the audience.
  • Substitute candidate: A substitute person answers the question.
  • Joker: Instead of the question there is a game of skill or something similar.
  • 50/50 Joker: So many answer options are deleted that only half remains for the candidate to choose between.
  • Internet joker: The candidate has a given amount of time in which he can research the answer on the Internet.

Playing

The end of the game differs from show to show. On some shows, the game ends after a certain number of rounds or a certain amount of time. For most programs, however, the game ends when a question is answered incorrectly or the last question is answered correctly.

disqualification

Basically, gross violations of the rules (attempts at fraud, attempts to make a statement on the part of the audience) lead to immediate disqualification in almost all programs .

Well-known quiz shows on television

The following are well-known quiz programs in German-speaking countries that have run nationwide for at least 5 years, sorted by year of start, as well as their quiz master:

Germany

Children's program

Austria

Switzerland

DA-CH (Eurovision broadcast)

criticism

“For me, the clearest barometer of the state of a society is the quiz show itself. In a Sat.1 show with Matthias Opdenhövel , every clumsy person was helped so that he could go home with a lot of money. After asking the moderator several times, a geography teacher insisted that Rostock is in the Ore Mountains. Such people are entitled to give marks to our offspring! I want to run amok there . "

- Heinz Rudolf Kunze , April 2020

See also

Call-in competitions

literature

  • Daniel Boos: The secret winning tricks. Win millions in the TV quiz Heyne, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-453-86178-7 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Quizshow  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Olaf Neumann: Heinz Rudolf Kunze: "Nobody knows anymore what is true". Neue Presse (Coburg) , interview, online portal, April 6, 2020. Accessed April 10, 2020 .