Game Theory

Happy Friday, and welcome back to another edition of Buffering. The Oscars air on ABC Sunday night (at a new, East Coast-friendly 7 p.m. ET start time), and once again, millions (or at least a few hundred thousand) movie fans under the age of 35 will curse the fact that the only way to legally stream the show live is if you spend $50+ per month on a pay TV package (either cable or something like YouTube TV). Yes, most people can also just get an antenna and watch via their local ABC affiliate (and really, unless you live in a rural part of the country, you should definitely spend $20 on an antenna so you have access to local news and sports). But for many folks, a TV antenna is right up there with “fax machine” and “landline” as relics they’ve only heard about from their parents. And because ABC’s affiliates would have a total meltdown if the show also streamed live outside the network ecosystem, lots of younger folks will only catch up on the Oscars via social media clips.

As for this week’s newsletter, our topic is one that’s near and dear to your correspondent’s heart: game shows. Even though network primetime is currently packed with all manner of quiz shows, the same cannot be said for streamers. Read on to find out why that is — and why it might be changing. Thanks for checking us out every week, and here’s a PSA from Miss Minute and our friends at the TVA: Daylight Saving Time begins at 2 a.m. Sunday morning, so make sure to spring forward before you turn in Saturday night. —Joe Adalian

Reach Joe on Twitter @tvmojoe or email [email protected].


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One of the hottest formats on network television right now is also one of the oldest. With broadcast budgets shrinking by the hour, programmers are increasingly filling primetime hours by turning to game shows, both classic (Password, Jeopardy!, The Price is Right) and new (The Floor, Snake Oil). While nothing has yet broken out in the way Who Wants to Be a Millionaire did back at the turn of the century, these quiz shows generally all do respectable ratings and often finish first in their respective time periods — and given their low production costs and quick production time, almost always manage to turn a decent profit. So why aren’t streamers rushing to flood the digital airwaves with their own takes on the genre? Survey says: Good question!

It’s not that there haven’t been a few modest attempts at bringing buzzer-beaters to streaming. Floor Is Lava, which was geared toward kids and families, had a brief moment in the pop culture spotlight when it debuted during the first pandemic summer, but it lasted a mere 20 episodes. And two years ago, Netflix dropped ten episodes of Bullsh*t: The Game Show, and even recruited Deal or No Deal icon Howie Mandel to host. It got a couple of decent reviews and little bit of buzz (the New York Times wrote a think piece about it) but quickly disappeared into the algorithm, as did last year’s deception-based quizzer Ch£at, produced out of the U.K. But for the most part, both streamers have tended to be more interested in reality and comedy shows with game show elements — stuff like Netflix’s Is it Cake? or Prime Video’s international format Last One Laughing. The traditional big money, studio-audience quiz shows American TV has been cranking out since Truth or Consequences hit the air in 1950 have pretty much been MIA.

But there are signs that could be changing, at least a little. Vulture hears that two not-yet announced new game shows (first reported on this week by BuzzerBlog) are actually being produced in association with Amazon MGM Studios, and could potentially end up at one of the company’s streaming platforms (more on this later.) And earlier this week, Amazon’s Prime Video said that it had hired comedian Patton Oswalt to host The 1% Club, an upcoming adaptation of a gameshow format that’s been a hit on U.K linear television as well as in several other international markets. Despite having greenlit hundreds of shows and movies over the past decade, the streamer says this is the first time it has ordered a straight-ahead quizzer. Perhaps even more interesting than this development, however, is how Prime plans to help the show find an audience in the States. Instead of dropping all episodes at once, or rolling them out just on its own platform, the streamer is trying something radically different in order to help the show find an audience: Eight days after a new, weekly episode of 1% Club drops on Prime Video, that same episode will air in primetime on the Fox broadcast network. The innovative deal feels like a win-win for both companies: Fox gets original content for far less money than it would spend on its own original, while Prime gets to put 1% Club in front of what will probably be a couple of million game show-loving viewers every week.

The deal also likely means Prime’s per episode cost for the 1% Club is slightly less that it would be without a broadcast partner, though as one veteran TV exec told me this week, given Amazon’s deep pockets, it’s unlikely the streaming giant agreed to this arrangement just to save a few dollars in the short-term.

On the other hand, Amazon could be looking to build a case for opening more secondary windows for some of its more broadcast-friendly originals — what the TV business used to call syndication. It hasn’t gotten a ton of attention, but hundreds of episodes of Judy Justice and spin-off Tribunal Justice, two courtroom shows Amazon MGM Studios produces for its FAST platform Freevee, were sold into local TV syndication last month, with reruns of Judy set to begin airing on upwards of 200 local broadcast stations this fall. The arrangement with Fox for 1% Club accomplishes the same objective, but with the additional revenue stream opening up almost immediately.

In addition to testing out a new financial model, Amazon probably sought out a broadcast partner for 1% Club as a low-risk way of seeing what happens when one of its originals gets a linear window so close to its streaming debut. Amazon’s data crunchers will surely be looking closely for any impact on the show’s week-to-week audience on Prime Video, such as whether any of the audience which finds the show via Fox ends up seeking out more episodes on streaming, or whether the broadcast run increases overall awareness of the title. At the very least, putting 1% Club on Fox should help the show stand out from the glut of streaming series by giving it weekly primetime exposure on a platform which already has a strong core of younger viewers into game shows.

Indeed, Fox has already sort of proven that a dual window strategy can boost tune in for a hot game show. The new Rob Lowe-hosted quizzer The Floor has been a very strong primetime performer, particularly in Fox’s targeted demo of adults under 50, where it ranks No. 5 among all Fox series this season. But while the bulk of its average audience-to-date of 5.2 million viewers has come via linear TV, the network also says that about 25 percent of its total consumption has come through viewing on Hulu, which debuted new episodes a few hours after they aired on television. Specifically, out of the 2.2 billion total minutes of viewing for the show (yes, broadcasters are now throwing out minutes viewed metrics like streamers), 411 million were racked up via 2.3 million unique Hulu accounts, per Fox. What’s more, The Floor regularly popped up in Hulu’s top 15 trending list in January and February, indicating audiences were returning every week to watch the latest episode. That sort of consistent tune-in is particularly important for advertiser-supported platforms, since fast food restaurants, soda sellers, and other advertisers want to be able to reach audiences on a regular basis in order to remind them they really need to grab products they use all the time, like Taco Bell or Listerine.

Advertising might even be one reason streamers finally start putting more of an effort behind making game shows work for them. Remember that until recently, the biggest platforms — Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video — didn’t offer ad-supported tiers at all; now they all do (save for Apple TV+). And while a subscription model relies simply on making enough shows to get people to sign up and stay signed up, advertisers want to see actual eyeballs in front of screens, as often as possible and across all kinds of programming. If game shows can finally prove successful at getting audiences to turn up week after week, or to settle in for a daylong binge of 20 half-hour episodes, there’s a ton of incentive for these companies to start making more of them. For the same reason, free streamers like Tubi and Freevee might also be similarly motivated to start making original game shows in the coming years.

Also helping the case for game shows is that, in the post-Peak TV world, platforms have become much more careful about how much money they spend on programming. Game shows are far cheaper to produce than scripted series, or even most reality shows. And it’s also easy to accumulate a large library of game show episodes in a relatively short amount of time. That could be one reason why Brandon Riegg, head of nonfiction programming at Netflix, told Vulture late last year that he is still “really trying to crack that area,” despite the lack of breakout hits so far. “We’ve got a game show pitch in development that I’m pretty bullish on,” he said. (A Netflix rep said there were no new updates on the status of that project.)

As for Prime Video’s 1% Club, which comes from BBC Studios Los Angeles Productions and Magnum Media, there’s no word yet on a premiere date, though given the Oswalt announcement and the usual production timetable for game shows, a debut by sometime this summer seems likely. Meanwhile, as noted earlier, Amazon MGM Studios is involved with the production of two other game shows, both of which are adaptations of UK formats: the Shark Tank- like Buy It Now and the prize-focused Win Your Wishlist. The involvement of Amazon’s studio arm does not guarantee the shows will end up on Prime Video or the company’s free streamer Freevee, but it seems logical that either (or both) could end up hosting them. An Amazon rep declined to comment on speculation about the company’s involvement with the two projects.

It’s obviously far too early to say that game shows will soon be flooding the streaming marketplace. The slight rumble of activity in the area suggests only that streamers are willing to experiment with such shows; the bulk of interest in the form is still coming from broadcast and cable TV networks. But as digital networks start to look more and more like their linear predecessors, I think they’ll increasingly turn to some of the tested formats from the broadcast era. Netflix’s focus on live events — like its just announced showdown between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul — underscores how streamers want more programming which feels urgent and must-stream right now.

And while most game shows don’t fit that pattern, I could easily see one of the streamers taking a go at recreating the magic of a Who Wants to be a Millionaire, which in 1999 launched as a multi-night event series and drew increasingly large numbers of viewers eager to see if anyone would claim the titular prize. The hoopla surrounding long streaks on Jeopardy! (or even that show’s tournament of champions) also demonstrates that a good game can bring urgency to viewing. Full disclosure: I’m a game show superfan who watches titles old (Super Password) and new (25 Words or Less) every day. But that conflict of interest aside, I really do think it’s time for streamers to come on down… and see if they can reinvent another classic TV format.