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ALL IN THE GAME December 22, 2007 Mike Greenberg now knows how Jackie Gleason must have felt the morning after You're in the Picture debuted nearly 47 years ago. Gleason and his one and only attempt at a game show were ravaged, pilfered, savaged and surgically removed by critics from The Washington Post and The New York Times. Greenie had the same treatment Wednesday morning from Tom Shales of The Post. The only consolation for the host of Duel may be the fact that Shales has not liked anything in the last 15 years that was not on PBS or the NBC Thursday night lineup. Duel is obviously not going to be the next Deal or No Deal. Nor the next Power of 10. If you judge by the Nielsens, it's not even the next Identity and that's a tough one to swallow, even for those of us who are game show devotees. During the week, I've had an ongoing communication with someone who is a veteran in the industry as both a host and producer. What has been amazing is how much in parallel we have been in our reactions to Duel. In a nutshell, here is our consensus: ---Duel comes across as a game that would capture the imagination in the U.K. or in other parts of Europe than here. The pace is way, way, way too slow. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Deal or No Deal are both slower-paced than most of the best daytime games in television history but each has emotion, drama and storytelling. Duel has little, particularly with the latter of those three. ---Because of the slow pace, ABC made a terrible miscalculation in making those first two episodes 90 minutes. Even the e-mailers were telling me they were struggling to stay with it in that final half-hour. ---Was it just us....or do we have too little time with these contestants to really care about them, who they are, or why they want to win? Greenie is a terrific interviewer on Mike and Mike in the Morning but every conversation with the players appears rushed. ---The game is too complex in its structure. Our impression is Duel is attempting to be a little bit Millionaire, a little bit $64,000 Challenge without the isolation booths and a touch of the World Poker Tour. In extending tentacles in all of those directions, Duel violates a cardinal rule of game shows ----it isn't simple enough. Hardcore game show viewers, the ones who attend Game Show Congress, can figure it out but they are having to work hard to do so. Casual viewers don't want a complicated format. They prefer a game that simply tells you: the more questions you get right, the more money you win. ---The scoring system is too much like The Skins Game in golf and that's far too demanding for viewers who demand a quick hook to zero in on a game show. I had several people who sampled the show ask me why contestants who won less money were listed lower on the leaderboard. When I explained that the object is to win more duels than money, unless you end up tied with another contestant, I got that dreadful, "Ohhhhhhhh," which usually means, "I didn't understand that at all." If you have a scoring format which requires viewers to navigate a mental maze to figure out, that is not a good sign. ---Large elimination fields are difficult for viewers to follow, particularly when it's not a single-elimination tournament such as Grand Slam offered on GSN. Jeopardy!'s ratings did not go through the roof with that 150-player Ultimate Tournament of Champions in 2005. Duel would have been easier to follow with a 16-player field and straight head-to-head, single-game matchups, perhaps finishing with a two-out-of-three for each of the Final Four competitors. ---Greenberg 's on-air performance, particularly after shaking out the cobwebs of the premiere, has been smooth and solid, regardless of what Shales says. However, the pacing is killing his personality. Here's where Shales doesn't have a clue (and that's something few people ever say about Tom Shales). Mike Greenberg and his sidekick Mike Golic do more hours of live television each week than anyone else in the medium at the moment. On Mike and Mike in the Morning, Greenie is witty, warm, the perfect straight man and foil, and full of energy. On Duel, the producers appear to have put Greenie in a personality straightjacket. It's as if he was told: "Be cold. Be detached. Be unemotional." Anyone who has watched Greenberg for eight years on ESPN knows the Duel persona is not Greenie. He appears to be doing exactly what the producers have told him to do and that is not to be the Greenie we know. ---Also: a word to all future producers: the cliffhanger tease to a commercial is now a cliche. Are you listening? It is an overbearing cliche. Ever since Ryan Seacrest started it on American Idol, the holdover tease has become as annoying as an abcessed tooth. Duel carried on the tradition to excess. I am going to add one more element to the mix: I may be in the minority but despite what happened two years ago with Deal or No Deal, I am still not sold on the week before Christmas as the time for a mass introduction of a new game show. Until Deal or No Deal, not one single hit had ever been developed on network television with a December premiere after the middle of the month. Deal just happened to be that one show with a format which rang the bell with viewers, caught fire the first night and spread by word of mouth. What also helped: none of the other networks threw anything major against it. This time, CBS aired a first-run NCIS, which is almost impossible to beat, and NBC tossed in a lightly-promoted choir contest that actually drew more total viewers than Duel. Identity did not burn up the woods in the ratings last Christmas and sank fast with its spring return. I still contend people are doing late shopping, traveling, attending office Christmas parties or church functions on this particular week. Unless it is that unmistakably compelling game, the folks at home are not going to revolve their schedules around it for the holidays. Duel was definitely not it. Duel was miles from an A-list game; yet, it was a long way from the pits of a show Shales described. It was a valiant effort and we hope, at some point, Greenie will get another shot at a game show that better reflects his personality. Perhaps the best observation came from Hall of Fame baseball writer Peter Gammons on Friday's Mike and Mike in the Morning: "I've watched it. It's fun. Greenie is good. The people seem to be having a good time. But it's somewhat like when I went to my first cricket match----it's hard to figure out what's going on." johnnygilbert.tv Miss Francis' gowns by Bonwit Teller © Copyright 2006   TVgameshows.net.    All Rights Reserved.

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