Lucky for who?

I never watched one second of Lucky 13, an ABC game show that came and went last summer. 

It was a twist on the big money prime time quiz format... dangle a $1 million prize, make it tough to achieve and hope it fascinated the masses. 

An article I just read suggests it dazzled a few people by summer 2024 TV standards, yet the program fell woefully short in the very important revenue demographic.... it failed to generate enough. I'm not clear on all the ways it was supposed to generate cash for UK producer Studio 1, but its share of ABC's ad revenue wasn't enough to pay the bills. 

I don't work in television, I won't pretend to know the ins and outs of game show production. What little I do know is that game shows are cheap to produce in comparison to scripted dramas. Prize money and host salaries make game shows an appealing alternative for filling hours of prime time television these days, or so I've been told, many times. 

Why has Let's Make a Deal filled an hour of CBS's daytime programming for more than 15 years in a slot that was once, at least here in Minnesota, reserved for a network soap opera? It's cheaper! 

The same story has been sold many times. Game shows, tired reality competition formats like Big Brother, news chat.... they're often touted as cheaper to produce than crime dramas and soap operas. 

In a world where 2.7 million viewers of a network's summertime, prime time programming is respectable, somehow game shows are supposed to be financially viable. 

And it appears to have worked for game shows that attract and maintain an audience. ABC has tried a variety of game shows in prime time during the past several years. Celebrity Family Feud, Pyramid and Press Your Luck aren't being churned out by the dozens each year, but they have survived for several seasons and irregular scheduling. And ABC is eager to churn out any variant of Jeopardy it can get its hands on, with or without celebrities. 

And let's not forget that The Bachelor, which is far from unscripted yet still considered a reality show by some, draws far fewer viewers than it did as a hot new dating show two decades ago. But ABC has a rotation of Bacheloresque shows plugging its prime time schedule through the year. 

All of this begs the question, if game shows are cheaper to produce than scripted dramas, if Lucky 13 is as valuable and proven as the CEO of Studio 1 claimed in the linked article, how the hell were both the contestants and the hired hands producing the weekly episodes left waiting to be paid? 

I can't know all the nuances of television production or how much Lucky 13 hosts Shaquille O’Neal and Gina Rodriguez were supposed to be paid. I didn't see the show, but having seen Shaq on TV plenty in my life, I'm going to guess he was overpaid for his presence, whatever his salary was supposed to be. 

My initial response to the Lucky 13 story left me wondering if game shows aren't the cheap network fix for prime time programming in 2025. But I'm more inclined to believe that the folks running Studio 1, which I knew absolutely nothing about before today, simply aren't as brilliant when it comes to producing game shows as they think they are. 

The ironic twist to all of this: I had zero interest in watching Shaq host a game show of any kind last summer. I'm still not interested in watching Shaq do anything. But given the disaster this show turned out to be, I'm going to check out an episode on Hulu in the near future. 

Lucky 13 for the win!