Second Chance (game show)

Second Chance
Created by	Bill Carruthers[1]
Directed by	Chris Darley[1]
Presented by	Jim Peck
Narrated by	Jay Stewart Jack Clark Joe Seiter (pilot/substitute)
Theme music composer	Score Productions[1]
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	95 (2 an unknown # of episodes survive)
Production
Producer(s)	Joel Stein[1]
Location(s)	Warner Brothers Studios Burbank, California
Running time	approx. 22-26 minutes
Production company(s)	The Carruthers Company
Distributor	Warner Bros. Television
Release
Original network	ABC
Picture format	NTSC
Audio format	Mono
Original release	March 7, 1977 – July 15, 1977
Chronology
Followed by	Press Your Luck (1983-1986) Whammy! (2002-2003)

Second Chance is an American game show that ran from March 7, 1977 to July 15, 1977 on ABC. Jim Peck hosted, with Jay Stewart and Jack Clark serving as announcers. The show was a production of the Carruthers Company in association with Warner Bros. Television.

Second Chance shared many similarities with the 1980s game show Press Your Luck, which premiered in 1983 and was produced by the Carruthers Company for CBS.^[1]

Game play

Three contestants competed on each program.

Like its successor series six years later, Second Chance saw players answer trivia questions in order to earn turns on a large game board with various cash amounts and prizes. Two rounds of play, consisting of one question round and one round at the board, were played.

Question rounds

Each question round consisted of three questions. After hearing the question, the contestants wrote their answers on pieces of cardboard and placed the answers in a slot in front of them. None of the contestants could see what the others had answered.

Once the contestants answered, Peck would read a list of three possible answers. If at least one of the contestants gave a different answer than the others, he would inform the contestants that at least one of them was either right or wrong. He then gave the contestants a choice of whether to stick with their answers or take a second chance at answering the question. If the second chance was taken, the player that took it had to choose from one of the three answers given by Peck.

Correct answers earned points which were converted to "spins" in the second half of the round. If a contestant wrote down the correct answer without needing to change it, he/she earned three points. If the contestant came up with the correct answer on a second chance, one point was awarded.

Board round

Each contestant used their spins to accumulate money and prizes on an 18-space game board. To do this, the contestants used a buzzer in front of them to stop a flashing randomizer light which moved in a pattern around the board at a high rate of speed, and whatever the randomizer landed on when the contestant stopped it was given to him/her.

The gameboard featured nine cash squares with orange and yellow backgrounds and six squares with gift boxes in them which were used to represent prizes. Once one of these was landed on, a slide showing a prize was revealed and the prize's value was added to the contestant's score. There were also three squares with a cartoon figure referred to as the Devil in them. Hitting one of these cost a player whatever he/she had earned to that point, and hitting the Devil four times eliminated a player from the game. Unlike on the later Press Your Luck, the squares on the board did not change as the randomizer moved.

Initially, the top dollar value in the first round was $2,500 and $5,000 in the second. Later, the second round also rewarded players that hit the top dollar value with an additional spin. Later still, the top value decreased to $1,000 in the first round. In the second round, a randomizer with an eggcrate display was placed in the big money square and its value could be anywhere between $1,000 and $5,000 in thousand dollar increments.^[2] Prizes were typically worth less than $1,000 in the first round and significantly more in the second.^[3]

In both rounds when the players faced the board, play began with the player with the least amount of spins and went in ascending order. If any of the players were tied, the player closest to Peck was given first chance. At any time, a player could pass his/her remaining spins. If any of the trailing players passed, those spins went to the leader. If the leader passed, they went to the player in second place unless there was a tie, in which case the player got to select which player received them. The player receiving the passed spins was forced to take all of them. If a Devil was hit, all of the remaining passed spins (if there were any) became earned spins and the player could do what they wanted with them. If the big money square was landed on with a passed spin in the second round, the player earned a regular spin.

The player in the lead at the end of the second board playing won the game, kept whatever he/she earned, and came back on the next program. If there was a tie between two or more players, they returned as well provided they had not hit four Devils. This happened at least once, on the next-to-last episode.^[2]

Broadcast history

Second Chance debuted on March 7, 1977 at Noon, replacing a short-lived variety series starring Don Ho (which had itself replaced Peck's Hot Seat on October 25, 1976). Almost immediately the series faced problems as the Noon timeslot on the networks was long subject to preemptions for local newscasts and other programming. The CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless, which was starting to become a ratings success in its fourth season, also proved troublesome for Second Chance in the timeslot (NBC, which aired Name That Tune and Shoot for the Stars at Noon during the first three months of Second Chance's run, was also struggling).

Unable to compete with the hit soap on CBS, Second Chance came to an end after nineteen weeks and aired its final episode on July 15, 1977. The Goodson-Todman game show The Better Sex replaced it the following Monday but was cancelled after almost six months in January 1978.

Press Your Luck

Press Your Luck, a game similar in format to Second Chance, later aired on CBS from 1983 until 1986. Although both shows featured nearly-identical gameplay, Press Your Luck employed a constantly changing gameboard, its villain was the animated "Whammy", and its question rounds were conducted differently. Also, the leader at the end of the first round got to play the board last in the second round while the player with the lowest score went first.

Episode status

Most episodes of Second Chance have likely been destroyed due to network policies of the era. The only episodes known to exist in video form are Pilot #3 (taped November 9, 1976) and the June 27 episode. An opening announced by Jack Clark (date unknown) and the July 15 finale also exist, albeit only on audio tape.

Australian version

The show ran in Australia in 1977 on Network Ten hosted by Earle Bailey and Christine Broadway and produced by Reg Grundy.^[4] There was later an Australian version of Press Your Luck from 1987-1988 on Seven Network hosted by Ian Turpie and also produced by Grundy.

References

External links

• Second Chance at the Internet Movie Database