Wipeout's Criminally Negligent Death

Have you ever wondered why certain shows don't make it in one country despite being a roaring success elsewhere? For instance: Last night while doing research for this blog I went down a rabbit hole and found a soap opera called "Another Life," a Christian-based story that lasted three seasons on CBN in the early 80s. I had never heard of it myself, and I guess it could be called a 'mild success' for running three years, but was completely floored to learn that the show is STILL on in repeats in Scandinavia! It's like their "I Love Lucy" or something.

I have quite the same feeling about "Wipeout," the game we covered in Episode 2. Despite some flaws in the game mechanics, it was a perfectly serviceable show which found an amazingly long run by comparison in the UK.

Why didn't it work here?

Gameplay is simple - you have a board with 16 options and a given category. The three players in the first round have to uncover the correct answers that fit the category and earn escalating dollar amounts for each one they find. But if you pick an incorrect answer, you "Wipeout" everything you won up to that point and lose your turn.

As we discussed in the episode, I feel that's a great foundation for a front game, but it often leads itself to an anticlimax: The round ends when either all 11 correct answers or all five Wipeouts are exposed - whichever happens first. More often than not, the latter is what happened, leading to situations where you have two out of your three players with no money accumulated. That means a tie-breaker, but whoever wins that tie-break gets moved on to the next round… with no money or prizes to show for it.

With no stakes at risk, that doesn't leave much reason to stick around and watch, in my opinion. A token amount should have been offered. I suggested 50% of whatever Player 1 won, or a base amount.

I think that also is the issue with Round 2, the bidding round. It's a best-of-three match in which players have to bet how many correct answers they can find (in a category with 12 possibilities) without hitting a Wipeout. I think cash should have been offered for correct answers given - maybe $50 each? - with the pot up for grabs should the bidder Wipeout and the challenger successfully steal. Or a flat monetary win for each match won.

Let's also talk about the company behind the show - Paramount. Acting as syndicator, they definitely had/have the money to have made this a real cash-grab of a game. But you often see winners with less than $500 in cash make it to the bonus round, and not win the grand prize of a luxury vehicle.

I suspect that Paramount didn't have high hopes for the show's success to start with. Looking into the history of the show, I see that many stations which carried "Wipeout" for its sole season didn't put it in advantageous timeslots - many after 11pm at night or in the early morning hours - or pushed the show to those times after only giving it a few weeks in their first position.

It traveled well

That's not the case with "Wipeout" when it moved to the UK. The show started off in 1989 on the then-brand-new world of satellite television. Under the title of "One False Move" it debuted on the ill-fated British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) network shortly before their acquisition by Rupert Murdoch-backed Sky Television.

But it was when the format was sold off to the BBC that it finally found its footing. Renamed Wipeout, the show had a format tweak. Instead of a single 16-answer front game, it had two or three before moving the two highest-scoring people into the second round. This led to more of a chance to hold onto and build up earnings, leading to more exciting outcomes.

It should be noted that especially in the 80s and 90s, British game shows did not have big-money jackpots until "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" hit the scene. So, when I say 'build up earnings' and 'exciting outcomes' I'm talking in the context of their ruleset.

Due for a rebooting

I think it's high-time a production company consider rebooting the Wipeout format, even if by now the name is more recognized with the unrelated physical challenge game show with the giant red balls.

If ABC can find major success expanding Press Your Luck into an hourlong series, why couldn't Wipeout, even if they had to change the name to avoid confusion? Or, if they go the Pyramid and Hollywood Squares route of playing two 30 minute episodes in an hourlong slot, they could still raise the stakes and make the tweaks to make Wipeout a big money gameshow with all the glitz and glamour and excitement the 2020s have brought to other classic formats.