Sale of the Century (Australian game show)
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In Australia, Tony Barber hosted an early version of Sale of the Century under the title of Temptation during the 1970s, and was also the initial host of Sale, replaced by Glenn Ridge in 1991. Hostesses over the years have included Victoria Nicholls, Delvene Delaney, Alyce Platt, Jo Bailey, Nicky Buckley and Karina Brown. Pete Smith was Sale's announcer. See below for the show's most recent reincarnation as Temptation, which is hosted by Ed Phillips. The current hostess is Livinia Nixon.
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[edit] Main Game
All contestants are spotted with $20 to start. The host reads a trivia question to the three contestants (one of which was usually the winner of the previous show). The first to press a buzzer gets an opportunity to answer the question (even if the host is still in the middle of reading the question). Players' scores increase by $5 for each correct answer and decrease by $5 for each incorrect answer. If a player answers incorrectly, the correct answer is revealed and the game goes on to the next question - that is, only one person can try to answer each question.
[edit] Gift Shop
Once per round, the highest-scored player gets to go to a "gift shop" and was offered the chance to sacrifice some part of his/her score to "purchase" a prize. The prizes, and the cost, increased in each round. Contestants were allowed to haggle with the host, who, depending on the game situation, could reduce the cost and offer inducements including actual cash in order to entice the contestant to purchase. If two or more players had the same score at this point, a Dutch auction was conducted for the prize.
Some gift shops also included a bonus prize called a "Sale Surprise", revealed only after the conclusion of the gift shop.
[edit] Cashcard
In 1989, the final prize sale was replaced with a "cashcard," an opportunity for a contestant to either win a cash prize of several thousand Australian dollars (equivalent to perhaps a month's average wages for a middle-class Australian at the time), earn the opportunity to win a car later in the game (see section on major prizes), receive the score he/she sacrificed back, or reduce the score of a competitor slightly. This cost a player $15 to play. From 1989 - 1994, this was played with four actual playing cards, from 1994 - 1999, four poker machines were used (the hostess pulled the handle to reveal the prize), and from 1999 - 2002, a single touch screen was used.
The prizes offered in the cash card changed as well. Among them were:
- A $15 "refund";
- The "joker", worth nothing (later replaced in 93 by a "Take $5" card, where the player could take $5 from one of his/her opponents and add it to his/her score, which in turn was later replaced by the "car space", which gave a player who came up w/it the right to try for the car on the Winner's Board, which normally required a win of $100 or more in order for it to appear);
- A bonus prize, usually worth between $2K-$3K (this was scrapped in favor of a Take $5 reinstatement, w/the switch to $ale of the New Century in '00);
- The $5,000 "cash card" (originally, this was a growing jackpot that began at $5,000 and increased by $1,000 each night it wasn't won, but was later changed to a flat $5,000 in '94)
Also of note is that originally, if the leading player opted not to go for the cashcard, the 2nd-place player was then offered that chance, but the jackpot card was removed from the lineup. This option was scrapped in '93.
[edit] Who am I?
A longer-format question known as the "Who am I?" question , was asked once in each of the three rounds. Here, a succession of increasingly larger clues were given to the identity of a famous person, place, or event. In this round, players could buzz in and answer at any time, without penalty for an incorrect answer. However, each player only had one chance to answer. If one of the players buzzed-in and answered correctly, he/she had an opportunity to play the "famous faces" subgame, where he/she got to choose randomly from a game board with nine squares featuring the faces of celebrities, mostly performers on the network's shows. Once chosen, the face selected would be spun around to reveal either a relatively small prize (typically appliances or furniture valued at around a weekly wage) or a $25 money card, which awarded $25 to the player's score. Later series added additional $10 and $15 money cards to the gameboard, with the $10 available at the outset, the $15 added at the second "Who am I" and the $25 at the third. Also added in the third "Who am I" was a "wildcard," which offered the choice of $1000 in cash or a chance to pick again.
[edit] Fast Money
The main game ended with a "fast money" segment, where the host would ask the questions in a particularly rapid-fire manner, attempting to fit in as many questions as possible in a 60 second time limit. Furthermore, there was a shorter 30-second fast money section in round two. Most of the more successful players proved themselves particularly adept at this section.
The winner of the game was the person with the most money at the end. If there was a final tie, the tied players answered a tiebreaker "Who am I" question, where a correct answer from either contestant won the game, while an incorrect answer defeated the contestant in favor of his or her opponent.
In a bid to combat declining ratings, the show was renamed Sale of the New Century in 2000. The format was also altered slightly to include four contestants per night in an elimination format; the lowest-scoring player would leave after the first fast money round, and another just before the final fast money round.
The "New" was dropped from the title in 2001, and the show returned to a three contestant format, but continued to eliminate the low scorer before the final fast money.
[edit] Major prizes
The winner of the episode was then given the opportunity to win one of a selection of much larger prizes, usually including International first-class holidays, expensive jewelry, and the like, the most valuable of which was one or two luxury automobiles.
In early seasons, the cumulative scores over several nights of the contestant were kept, and they would add prizes to their collection as their cumulative score exceeded the required amount. Later seasons changed this, instead the prize to be won on any particular night was determined by randomly choosing boxes off a game board until a pair of matching prizes was revealed.
In the Australian version, the cars were only placed on the game board if the player had won the opportunity on the "cashcard" game, or had a final score of $100 or more (which only the best players achieved).
Once the player's major prizes had been determined, the player had an opportunity to decide whether they would like to stop playing, and leave with the major prizes they had won, or continue playing on subsequent nights, risking the major prizes they had won thus far but offering the opportunity to win more.
Ultimately, once the player had won all the major prizes on offer, they had the opportunity to play for one more night to win a large cash jackpot. This started at $50,000 AUD and increased by $2,000 per night until somebody won it. The largest jackpot ever won on the Australian version of the show was $508,000 AUD, by contestant Robert Kusmierski, whose total winnings were $676,919 AUD. Another big winner was Simon Fallon, who won $434,065 AUD, and later collected $250,000 AUD more on Seven's QuizMaster.
The highest one-game score achieved on the Australian "Sale" was $200, which won David Poltorak the lot.
[edit] Temptation
- Main Article: Temptation (Game show)
Ed Phillips hosts the new Temptation, assisted by Livinia Nixon. There is no announcer; however, former Sale announcer Pete Smith still does audience warm-ups for the show. The title change reflects a de-emphasis on the shopping aspect of the game, while offering larger prizes and a possible cash jackpot of $800,000 for particularly successful grand champions.
