Duel (US game show)
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| Duel | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Quiz show |
| Developed by | BermanBraun, Rocket Science Laboratories, French TV |
| Directed by | Mark Gentille |
| Presented by | Mike Greenberg |
| Composer(s) | David Vanacore |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 2 |
| No. of episodes | 12 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) |
Gail Berman Lloyd Braun |
| Running time | ≈61 minutes (Dec. 17-18) ≈44 minutes (All other episodes) |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | ABC |
| Picture format | NTSC (480i) |
| Original run | December 17, 2007 – present |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows | Duel (UK) |
| External links | |
| Official website | |
| IMDb profile | |
| TV.com summary | |
Duel is an American game show that first aired from Monday, December 17, 2007 to Sunday, December 23, 2007 on the ABC network.[1][2] The show aired as a week-long six-episode tournament at 8:00PM Eastern/7:00PM Central, from Monday through Friday with the finale on Sunday. It is hosted by Mike Greenberg; its first run featured two models, Olivia Fox and Jennifer Aguero, as "chip girls." A second season of the series began in weekly format on Friday April 4, 2008 in the 9:00PM Eastern/8:00PM Central timeslot, with slightly different gameplay.[3][4]
The show's website describes the program as a cross between Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and the World Series of Poker. The game is played in a head-to-head format in which contestants answer general trivia questions, with wrong answers contributing to a growing jackpot. The winner of the Duel jackpot of $1,720,000 was Ashlee Register, bringing her grand total to $1,795,000, and making her the highest female game show money winner in the US.
Duel was created by the Francophone production house FrenchTV. BermanBraun is the U.S. production firm. It is headed by Lloyd Braun and Gail Berman, both former network executives. The primary sponsor of Duel is Diet Pepsi Max.
Contents |
[edit] Gameplay
[edit] Debut run (December 2007)
Each player begins a duel with ten chips, each worth $5,000. Before each question is asked, a screen rises between the contestants to hide their answers from one another. Each question is a multiple choice question with four choices, only one of them the correct answer. The question is read by the host and the contestants use their chips to cover choices, one chip per choice. They may cover any number of choices, provided they have enough chips. After both players have locked in their answers, the screen is lowered so contestants can see each others' choices, and the correct answer is then revealed. Contestants keep chips covering the correct answer, while chips placed on wrong answers are taken by the chip girls (two models who facilitate the distribution of the chips) and the value of those chips is added to the jackpot. While there is normally no time limit for locking choices in, contestants can "press" each other to impose a seven-second time limit, after which their opponent's answers are locked in automatically. Each contestant has two presses per duel.
The duel continues until at least one contestant fails to cover the correct answer to a question. If only one contestant fails to answer correctly, that contestant loses the duel and leaves the game; any chips the contestant has not played are not added to the jackpot, though any played on wrong answers are still added. The winning contestant becomes the champion and wins the value of any chips he or she still possesses, including the one covering the correct answer. That money is theirs to keep, regardless of the outcome of future duels.
If neither player covers the correct answer, however, the duel goes to a sudden death "shootout". For the shootout, each player receives four new chips which have no cash value, and there are no presses. If only one player answers correctly, that player wins the duel and becomes the champion, but wins no money. If both players answer correctly, the player who covered fewer choices wins. It is unknown what would happen in any other situation, as no such situation has aired.
The champion then chooses a new challenger from a randomly-selected group of three from the remaining members of the "Players Gallery" (those in the contestant pool who have not yet participated) based on a small amount of information revealed about each potential contestant. Contestants who had dueled were ranked by number of duels won, and then by cash winnings as a tiebreaker; After five nights, the four top contestants competed for the jackpot on the finale.[2]
During the finale, the top-seeded player was given the choice of which other finalist he wanted to face in the first semifinal duel, leaving the two other finalists to play in the second. The winners of each semifinal advanced to the final duel to play for the entire jackpot. The final round duels played the same as the qualifying duels, with lost chips continuing to add to the jackpot, and any winnings kept. The winner of the final duel claimed the jackpot, as well as all earnings accumulated in previous duels. Pyro went off when the final champion was declared in this season.
[edit] Weekly series (April 2008-Present)
The way questions are played remains the same, but several changes in the game structure were made in switching the format to a continuing weekly format. First, each contestant receives one press per game, rather than two. Second, the chips have no monetary value; instead, the prize value of a Duel is determined by its length. Thus, unlike the first season's tournament, the potential prize increases as a Duel progresses, as follows:
| Questions asked | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winnings | $1,000 | $2,500 | $5,000 | $10,000 | $15,000 | $20,000 | $25,000 | $30,000 | $40,000 | $50,000 |
For the weekly series, a bonus round was added after each Duel. The winner is asked a single "Max question," for which he or she gets one chip and seven seconds. A correct answer doubles the contestant's winnings from the just-played Duel, for a potential maximum of $100,000 per Duel. There is no penalty for a wrong answer.
Winning contestants then have the option to take their winnings and leave, or to risk them to play another Duel against their choice of three contestants. If they lose in their second or third Duels, they forfeit all their winnings, while a loss in their fourth or fifth Duel cuts their winnings in half. A contestant who wins five duels in a row wins a total of $500,000; the win is accompanied by streamers and confetti in the studio. When a contestant chooses to leave or wins the jackpot, the next two contestants to play are the ones not chosen by the champion for the previous Duel.
[edit] Questions
Most questions asked on Duel are of typical trivia nature from typical areas of subject matter including history, science and pop culture. A special type of question format used in the tournament format is "Duel Math," in which the question is given as a simple equation, such as # of hydrogen atoms in a molecule of water + # of pints in a gallon = ?; the answer would be 10 (2 + 8). (Duel Math has not yet been used in the weekly format.)
[edit] Results
[edit] Season 1 Tournament
The winner of each duel is listed in bold. Duels which spanned over two or more nights are listed under the date they ended. The finals consisted of the top four players overall during the first five nights, ranked first by the number of duels won, then by total winnings. In the final round, the contestants played for a jackpot totaling $1,720,000.
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- Note 1: The first contestant was chosen at random.
- Note 2: Both contestants answered the question incorrectly, therefore forcing a shootout.
- Note 3: By winning the final duel of the qualifying round, Jim Boulgardies returned to challenge fourth place Ken Danberry for the final Leader Box seat.
- Note 4: Robert Elswick, as first seed, was allowed choice of opponent.
- Note 5: Ashlee Register's winnings totaled $1,795,000 (she had earned $75,000 in previous duels). Register would become the biggest female game-show winner in the history of American game shows, and would become the third-biggest network winner overall, and the fifth biggest winner in American game shows.
[edit] Season 2 Results
On Friday, May 2, 2008, Gabriel Reilich, an unemployed 24-year-old from Los Angeles, California, won 5 Duels and claimed the $500,000 prize (he had won $75,000 in his four previous Duels). Gabriel won on the question: "What Rolling Stone was a student at the London School of Economics?" The four choices were Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Robert Plant, and Mick Jagger. Gabriel had only one chip remaining and his opponent, Jennifer Smith, a 23-year old executive assistant from Huntington, Washington, had three chips remaining. Gabriel used his one chip to cover Jagger, while Jennifer used her chips to cover the other answers. Jagger was indeed the correct answer, giving Gabriel his fifth Duel win.
[edit] Nielsen ratings
[edit] Season One
Duel's ratings were not as good as its opponent for its first four shows, NBC's Clash of the Choirs.
| # | Air Date | Viewers (millions) |
Households | Adults 18-49 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating | Share | Rating | Share | |||
| 1 | December 17, 2007[5] | 7.68 | 5.0 | 8 | 2.5 | 7 |
| 2 | December 18, 2007[6] | 7.31 | 4.5 | 7 | 2.4 | 7 |
| 3 | December 19, 2007[7] | 7.42 | 4.9 | 8 | 2.2 | 6 |
| 4 | December 20, 2007[8] | 6.45 | 4.2 | 7 | 1.9 | 6 |
| 5 | December 21, 2007[9] | 6.70 | 4.4 | 8 | 1.7 | 6 |
| 6 | December 23, 2007 | 6.15 | 3.8 | 7 | 1.6 | 4 |
[edit] Season Two
Season two airs at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT. The first two airings of this season had to compete with CBS's The Price Is Right $1,000,000 Spectacular, airing at the same time. Also since the season premiere, the show has been standing and lagging at fifth place behind The CW's 2nd hour of WWE Friday Night SmackDown!.
| # | Air Date | Viewers (millions) |
Households | Adults 18-49 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating | Share | Rating | Share | |||
| 7 | April 4, 2008 | 3.93 | 2.5 | 3 | 1.2 | 4 |
| 8 | April 11, 2008 | 3.99 | 2.6 | 5 | 1.2 | 4 |
| 9 | April 18, 2008[10] | 3.29 | 2.1 | 4 | 0.9 | 3 |
| 10 | April 25, 2008 | 3.73 | 2.4 | 4 | 1.0 | 3 |
| 11 | May 2, 2008 | 3.86 | 2.6 | 5 | 1.0 | 3 |
[edit] References
- ^ The Futon Critic - ShowWatch - Duel (ABC). Retrieved on 2007-12-04.
- ^ a b ABC.com - Duel News Release. Retrieved on 2007-12-04.
- ^ Breaking News - ABC Gives 'Duel' Second Cycle | TheFutonCritic.com
- ^ www.Mike-Greenberg.com - Duel Returns!. Retrieved on 2008-03-12.
- ^ Broadcast TV Ratings for Monday, December 17, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-12-27.
- ^ Broadcast TV Ratings for Tuesday, December 18, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-12-27.
- ^ Broadcast TV Ratings for Wednesday, December 19, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-12-27.
- ^ Broadcast TV Ratings for Thursday, December 20, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-12-27.
- ^ Broadcast TV Ratings for Friday, December 21, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-12-27.
- ^ One of the contestants on the April 18 episode was Paris Themmen, introduced as a "former child actor". Themmen played the role of Michael Teevee in the first film version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
[edit] See also
Duel (UK game show) - Began airing in January 2008
[edit] External links
- Official Website
- Duel at the Internet Movie Database
- Duel at TV.com
