Temptation (2007 US game show)

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Temptation
The New Sale of the Century
Genre	Game show
Presented by	Rossi Morreale
Country of origin	United States
Language(s)	American English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	170
Production
Producer(s)	FremantleMedia North America/20th Century Fox Television
Location(s)	Los Angeles, California
Running time	20:17 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	Syndication
Original airing	September 10, 2007
Chronology
Preceded by	Sale of the Century (1983 – 1989)
Related shows	Temptation (1967 US game show)
External links
Official website

Temptation (The New Sale of the Century) is an American television game show. Loosely based on both the original Australian and American Sale of the Century and the current Australian remake, also called Temptation, the show began airing in syndication starting September 10, 2007.

Temptation is hosted by Rossi Morreale, produced by FremantleMedia North America, and syndicated by 20th Television. Former talk show host Rolonda Watts serves as the announcer.

Owned-and-operated stations of MyNetworkTV are among the stations carrying the show, as is the former WTBS Atlanta (now known as Peachtree TV). MyNetworkTV carried a preview of the show, featuring several American Idol alumni, on September 5, 2007 in primetime.

Before the show premiered, the writers went on strike because FremantleMedia refused to recognize the Writers Guild of America, west as the writers' chosen labor representative.^[1]

Some markets (including WWOR in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut area, and KTXH in the Houston area) are airing two episodes per day. The second episode aired is from later in the season. This can be determined by the noticeably shorter intro, and Watts referencing Temptation dollars in the Shopper's Paradise round (she would reference the price of the prizes as dollars in earlier episodes).

1 Front game rules
- 1.1 Round 1
- 1.2 Round 2
2 Shopper's Paradise
3 Temptation Tournament
4 Shop-at-home Temptation offers
5 Differences in the First Episodes
6 Grand Champions
7 Ratings
8 See also
9 References
10 External links

[edit] Front game rules

The game is played in two rounds, each broken down into several parts. Three contestants, including a returning champion, start the game with $20 (called "Temptation dollars"). The host explains the rules:

“

First I'm going to start you off each with 20 Temptation dollars. Now we're going to play a series of games to help you win some more shopping cash. Periodically, I'm going to try to tempt whoever's in the lead into spending that cash on some incredible bargains. Now, do you resist that temptation and keep the lead, or do you give in and take the guaranteed prize? But it all comes down to one thing: Whoever has the most cash at the end of the show wins, and gets to go to Shopper's Paradise for the Shopping Spree of a Lifetime.

”

[edit] Round 1

This round is broken down into three parts — a speed round, an "Instant Bargain" and the "Fame Game," each described below:

30-second "speed round" — Morreale asks a series of rapid-fire pop culture questions; correct answers are worth $5, while incorrect responses lose $5.

Instant Bargain — The leader after the initial speed round is offered a chance to spend some of his/her "Temptation dollars" to purchase a prize at a discount. Played just like the original "Sale of the Century" Instant Bargains, the host often offers extra incentives (e.g., reducing the price, offering cash, on occasion, if the prize is a pair of Cheap Tickets the host adds additional tickets until the player buzzes in) to entice the contestant; however, if two or all three contestants are tied, a Dutch auction is frequently conducted. The only stylistic difference is that instead of the host saying "Going once... going twice..." the player is placed on a five-second "Shop Clock."

Fame Game — The host reads clues leading to a famous person, place, thing, etc. One major difference from the 1980s Sale of the Century round is that, on the monitor behind the host, letters fill in a puzzle, one at a time. For a correct answer the contestant wins $15.

[edit] Round 2

After the first commercial break, the second round consists of rounds named Knock Off, a second Instant Bargain, "Instant Cash" and two toss-up rounds.

Knock Off — Similar to the 1980s game show Wipeout. A category is announced and 12 possible answers are shown; nine answers are correct while three are wrong. Each contestant, in turn, selects one of the answers. A correct answer turns gold, and is worth cash (four $2 answers, three $5 answers, a $10 answer, and a $15 answer, although some boards have also had two $3 answers replacing two worth $2). An incorrect answer is noted in red and eliminates that contestant from the remainder of the round. Play continues until the last correct answer is found or all three players have been eliminated. In general, the less obvious an answer is, the more it is worth.

Instant Bargain — Played as before, usually for a slightly more expensive prize.

Second "speed round" — Two answers are given before the start of the round, both usually with a similar theme (e.g., "Winger or Gunslinger", where contestants must identify the films as films starring Debra Winger; or westerns, which are sometimes called gunslingers). Questions are based around the two possible answers. Once again, the speed round lasts for 30 seconds, and questions are worth $5 up or down.

Instant Cash — Based on the Sale of the Century round, the leader at this point is offered a chance at a cash jackpot, which begins at $500 and rises by that amount until it is claimed or reaches $5,000, at which point it is frozen until claimed. To play, the contestant must give up his/her entire lead over the second-place opponent; also as before, if two or more contestants are tied, a Dutch auction is conducted (usually starting at the difference between the tied players and third place). If he/she opts to play, the host shows the contestant three wallets, one which contains the jackpot and the other two $100. This is a carryover from the 1980's version of Sale of the Century, except the players chose 1 of 3 boxes and the jackpot started at $1,000 and went up that much with no limit.

Final "speed round" — After a second commercial break, a final 30-second round of questions is played. Correct answers are worth $10; incorrect answers lose that amount.

The contestant with the highest score is the champion and advances to the "Shopper's Paradise" round, for the "Shopping Spree of a Lifetime." If two or more contestants are tied, then, instead of a Dutch auction, a tiebreaker question is announced. The contestant who has the right answer will earn $10 and be the champion. If not, the opponent will win $10 and be the champion. The losers keep any cash and prizes won during the main game; unlike the earlier incarnations of Sale of the Century, they do not receive their score in cash.

[edit] Shopper's Paradise

The end game is played in two parts:

Super Knock Off — Nearly identical to the main game round, except six answers are correct and six answers are wrong. Correct choices net the contestant anywhere from $25 to $100 in "Temptation dollars." Four answers are worth $25, one is worth $50, and one is worth $100 (for a cumulative maximum of $250). The contestant may stop at any time, as a wrong answer ends the game and forfeits any cash accumulated during that round.

Shopper's Paradise — Almost the same in concept as the original "shopping" format from the 1970s Sale of the Century. The contestant is shown five prizes, each in ascending value, at greatly reduced prices; the most expensive prize is usually a car, but sometimes an expensive trip is offered instead. After all five prizes are announced, the contestant is given time (one last commercial break, which includes promotional consideration credits) to ponder whether he/she wants to buy a prize (as long as there are enough "Temptation dollars" available), or bank it and return on the next show to try to buy one of the more expensive items. In the event that a contestant does not have enough Temptation dollars to buy the least expensive prize, they are offered the chance to either buy a Croton diamond watch with their winnings or return to the next show.

Unlike the 1980s version of Sale of the Century, there is no special bonus for garnering a high amount of score money -- as such, buying all the prizes is not possible. A contestant may continue as champion until he/she purchases one of the prizes from the "Shopper's Paradise," or is defeated. Unlike previous versions of the show, there is a five-day limit on Temptation: if the contestant is a five-time champion, they must buy a prize from Shopper's Paradise after the Super Knock Off round, as they are retired afterwards.

[edit] Temptation Tournament

From November 19-21, 2007, and then again from November 26-28, Temptation aired two 3-day tournaments where 3 former contestants returned and played for the entire tournament. The contestants were different for each of the two tournaments. Rules remained pretty much the same for each tournament, except that contestants started each game with 30 Temptation dollars. The winner of each game played Super Knock Off. The winner of day 1 and 2 played Super Knock Off, but did not go to Shopper's Paradise. Only the winner of day 3 could go to Shopper's Paradise.

[edit] Shop-at-home Temptation offers

Before commercial breaks, offers for products at discounted prices are advertised. These items may be purchased online at the show's official site. The offers were separate items but later became a generic "60% off retail" plug offer.

[edit] Differences in the First Episodes

In the very first episodes of Temptation, the games worked a little differently. They were: the first "speed round", the first "Instant Bargain", the Fame Game, then the second "speed round", then after the first commercial break, there was "Knock Off", then the second "Instant Bargain", then a second Fame Game worth $25, then "Instant Cash", and then the final "speed round". Also, the price tags at Shopper's Paradise were white instead of orange, and the host actually showed the winning contestant around Shopper's Paradise while the announcer told about the prizes.

[edit] Grand Champions

Currently, 5 players have gone all the way to the top grand prize (a car in all cases) and won it. Despite the show unexplainably having more female contestants, 3 contestants who won the grand prize were male and only 2 were female.

[edit] Ratings

With the exception of the preview episode, which rated 0.8^[2], Temptation hasn't been rated above 0.5 in the Nielsen rating system^{(TVgameshows.net)}, making it the lowest rated game show on broadcast television (the next-lowest, Merv Griffin's Crosswords, has maintained a 0.8-1.0 share). There has been no news on whether the show will return for a second season, but rumors speculate that it might return, since the interactive "shopping" feature has made it lucrative enough for the producers to keep it on the air.