Second Chance (game show)
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Second Chance was an ABC game show that aired from March 7 to July 15, 1977. It is considered to be the predecessor to the CBS game show Press Your Luck. Jim Peck was the host, and Jay Stewart and Jack Clark each served as announcer.
Gameplay was relatively the same as Press Your Luck, with two question rounds and two game play rounds.
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[edit] Rules
[edit] Question round
In the question round, Peck read a question to the three contestants. Instead of buzzing in, like on Press Your Luck, the players then wrote their answers on a board, and placed them on a shelf at the front of their podium.
Peck then hinted as to how well the contestants did (e.g., "One or more of you may be correct"), then - after giving three possible answers - gave the contestants a "second chance" to supply the correct answer.
If a contestant was correct with his/her original answer, he/she earned three spins to use in the second half of the round, while a correct "second chance" answer earned one spin.
Three questions were played; the most spins any one contestant could earn was 9.
[edit] Board round
Each contestant used his accumulated spins on the big board, an 18-space gameboard consisting of various prize and cash spaces and "devil" spaces; the prize spaces were denoted by wrapped gift boxes. During each spin, a lighted cursor would rapidly move about the board based on a pattern of 64 squares, but the squares themselves would not change. The contestant would stop the light by hitting a plunger. The third pilot only used one such pattern, but the aired episodes initially used nine patterns. However, a player did achieve something similar to Michael Larson's run on a lesser scale, and so ABC then elected to expand the number of patterns. [1]
One of three outcomes were possible:
- Cash: The value was added to the player's bank.
- Prize box: A photograph of a prize was displayed, and its value added to the player's bank.
- Devil: The contestant lost all his/her winnings to that point, just like the Whammy on its successor series. There were no animated devils in this series though.
Just as in Press Your Luck, a contestant could pass any of his/her remaining spins to one of his opponents (usually, it was the contestant in the lead), if he/she feared the next spin would result in landing on the "devil." A contestant who had spins given to him/her were required to use them, unless he/she landed on a "devil" (in which case all remaining spins went into the earned column and could be passed).
As is the case with Press Your Luck, any player that got four devils in the same game was eliminated from the game. His/her remaining spins went unclaimed.
The cash and prize values were more expensive in the second round. Prizes in the first round were generally under $500; second round items included rooms of furniture, furs, trips and cars. One space had a cash prize ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 and a spin (similar to Big Bucks) in the second round.
The player with the most amount of cash and prizes at the end of the second round won the game and kept all of his/her cash and prizes. The two remaining contestants go home with only consolation prizes.
[edit] Episode status
This show only lasted four months before it was cancelled. It is rumored that all episodes from this series have been destroyed. The only known episode to exist is the third pilot program, taken in 1976 (and has been highly valued on the tape-trading circuit). Two of the contestants on that pilot, Maggie Brown and Jack Campion, would later appear in the Press Your Luck pilot (Maggie Brown would also appear on Press Your Luck after it made it on air).
[edit] Trivia
- Despite the fact that the game board was of a lower technological standard than the later board from Press Your Luck, the speed at which the indicator moved around the board would have made a Michael Larson-like incident unlikely. However, according to one fan website, there actually was an incident where a contestant went on a mini-Larson like run.
- The theme song of this show was originally used on the short-lived 1976 version of I've Got A Secret. A remix would later be used on the Australian version of the game show Family Feud.
- Jim Peck is the only host in the game show industry to host two game shows in which the bad guy was the Devil: Second Chance and his subsitute host duties on The Joker's Wild from 1981 to 1984 and again from 1985 to 1986.
In the pilot episode, the devils accumulated by the players would appear on four screens behind each player. When the light was stopped on a devil, a "wank" noise was heard and a screen with the devil on it would light up. When the show began in 1977 the devils were shown on the cards, like in Press Your Luck. The first two devils leaned to the left, on the left side of the player, and the other two leaned to the right, on the right side of the player. The "wank" noise was shorter than in the pilot on the first three devils, but on the last devil, a horn sounded and the "wank" was played in full.
The pilot didn't have the "free spin" space in the space where the highest dollar value was, as in Press Your Luck, in the second round. That was added in the series in 1977.
Along with Maggie Brown on the pilot episode, Jack Campion also appeared on the pilot episode of Press Your Luck.
The Carruthers Company (helmed by the late Bill Caruthers), which released Press Your Luck, also released Second Chance.
[edit] Sources
- Ryan, Steve, David Schwartz and Fred Wostbrock. "The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows," 3rd edition, Checkmark Books, New York, 1999.
