Media launch: 1 vs 100

Last night I attended the media launch for 1 vs 100 at Studio Central at Docklands – the only place big enough to accommodate the whopping set Nine needs for the show.

And that’s what people are going to be talking about with this show -the set, the set, the set. It’s 3 stories high and when the lights are on and the music is spinning it looks quite a sight. I was one of the 100 trialling the game for the launch.

I was way up in the gods, peering down on Eddie McGuire and FOX FM’s Matt Tilley (the “1”) as they took us through the game. I’ve also seen the American production and in almost every way ours is identical. Okay maybe not so many “whoops” thank God.

1 vs 100 is very much Deal meets Millionaire (presumably the reason its being rested). For this trial version it didn’t matter whether we got the questions right or wrong, we were just randomly buzzed out at some point (grr!). So I was out after about 4 questions, and I got pretty bored after that. I’m sure if I was a real contestant and there was real money at stake the adrenelin would be pumping. But this was all a bit of fun.

One of the curious aspects of the show’s format is the phrasing of questions and answers. ie. “Which 2005 film won the Best Documentary Oscar in 2005?” The multiple choice answers showed: a) The one with the Farm Animals b) The one with the Cyclists c) The one with the Penguins? I’m not sure why they just didn’t have the titles there, and I bet leaving such variance open for interpretation will come back and bite them in the bum sometime down the track.

The show’s “lifeline” options also differ from Millionaire and I’m not sure we really understood them. This is where I think the simplicity of Millionaire, together with its stakes, works extremely well. They’ll want to give away big, big amounts in the first few eps I imagine.

Eddie is also the right host for this. Whether you like him or not, he’s very accomplished at this sort of thing, and I even agree he can juggle the CEO role and the hosting of this by just knocking over a few of these in back to back recordings. I’m told he’s happier to do this from Melbourne where the crews are used to a high turnaround of live entertainment and there are less nosy Sydney execs peering over your shoulder. But if the show doesn’t take hold here he will wear a lot of flak.

And there are 100 Sydney journos ready to take on the 1 of Eddie.

Disclaimer: I was one of 10 people who won a $100 electricals voucher as part of the media launch. Yeah!