Sunday, September 8th, 2013 at 7:16am Eastern Standard Time: This was the exact date and time when the million-second clock began counting down and the Money Chair timer began counting up for a lucky contestant. The Million Second Quiz, hosted by Ryan Seacrest, has officially kicked off and will be premiering tonight at 8:00pm EST live from midtown Manhattan. Here's how the game is played: contestants will compete in a series of head-to-head bouts with each bout lasted for a short period of time (300 seconds in primetime). The contestant with the most points in a bout will take control of the Money Chair, which rewards the contestant about $10 per second. At this rate, a contestant who stays in the chair for 10 days straight will win the promoted top prize of $10 million. At the end of the one million seconds, the top four highest-scoring winners plus the contestant currently in control of the Money Chair will compete in a series of knockout bouts for an additional $2 million prize.
To my knowledge, the most money ever awarded on an NBC game show was $1,765,000 won by David Legler on the network revival of Twenty-One in 2000. Back then, NBC was the game show record-holder of the "most money given away to a single player" and they could make game show history again at the end of this event. Over Hundreds of contestants have already stepped up to the challenge of competing on The Million Second Quiz and some have won more than $120,000 already. With enough knowledge and physical and mental stamina, someone could break Kevin Olmstead's $2.18 million game show record of the "most money won in a single season" and even Ken Jennings' all-time game show winnings record of over $3.9 million.
I've told you the good news about the show and now it's time for the bad news. According to BuzzerBlog, the event has already fallen prey to technical difficulties as the 24/7 live feed inside the Hourglass has been down for at least a day now. This is not a good sign for The Million Second Quiz since the show largely relies on its advertised Orwellian, Big Brother theme having the ability to follow the non-stop action at any timed during its week and a half duration. One of the only ways to see the contestants' progress in their bouts for the time being are through the tweets, photos and short videos posted on the show's Twitter (@MillionSeconds), Instagram (millionsecondquiz) and Vine (@millionseconds) accounts.
Even though the clock has started ticking, it doesn't mean that time has run out for you to apply to compete on the show or to get tickets to see the live show. You can go to the show's website for more information on ticket requests, how and where to apply to play on the show and playing the game online and downloading the app to your smartphone. The show has already proved to a success as over 700,000 people are playing the online game now and over 13 million games have been played. But, the question at hand is "Will it be a hit in the ratings?" Stay tuned for the live event tonight and for the next couple of weeks and for a TBIR review on The Million Second Quiz tomorrow.
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