My GamesFever

My Games Fever was a live daytime television game show in which viewers could participate via text messaging and Internet for a chance to win cash prizes. Players were charged 99 cents per text message they sent to the show but could enter for free on the Internet.

The show premiered online on December 4, 2006. One week later, on December 11, My Games Fever debuted on the 10 stations of MyNetworkTV which are owned by Newscorp, Fox Television Stations Group; the eventual plan was for it to be syndicated to other stations. The show aired in two different live feeds Monday through Friday. The Eastern Live Feed aired at 1 p.m. ET/noon CT and the Western Live Feed aired at 1 p.m. PT/2 p.m. MT.

The program aired without commercials; it has been reported in the New York Daily News (see below) that the stations carrying the program received a percentage of the proceeds from the text messages that were received during the show in lieu of ad revenue.

My Games Fever was taped in Miami, Florida, under a grant from the Governor's Office of Film and Entertainment.[1] and was produced by Shine Matrix Limited. The company's principals are Elisabeth Murdoch, daughter of News Corporation chief executive officer Rupert Murdoch, and Debbie Mason.

The show was cancelled after the episode of April 20, 2007. It was the second interactive game removed from national television in the U.S. in the calendar year. The other, Play2Win, was cancelled on March 10 after it had aired on Superstation WGN and some local stations.

However, a blog entry posted on April 21 indicated that the show could return to the air at some undetermined point in 2007. The blogger cited an e-mail from Shine Matrix indicating that the show "has simply ended its first season."[2]

Methods of entry

• By text messaging: text the letter G to the short code 55355. (When the show debuted, the requested message was FEVER; this was changed on New Year's Day 2007.
• Online at www.gamesfever.tv (See external link below). The website also had the complete official rules.

Hosts

• Natalia Castellanos
• Nikki Stanzione
• Charlie Venturi
• Kourtney Brown
• Erin Myers

Format

The show consisted of mini-games that rotate throughout the two hours. During the first two weeks, all cash prizes on the program were $500 each. Amounts since Christmas 2006 have been lower, either $200 or $250. Occasionally there are bonus prizes.

My Games Fever had no "players lounge" (PlayMania once had this), and callers are not screened in advance. Viewer/contestant selection was based on call volume, as reflected by an on-screen thermometer. When the thermometer reached a certain level, or after a certain amount of time, a caller is selected to play the game.

Mini-games included the following:

• "Find the Celebrity" consisted of celebrity names shown in an anagram format. It is up to the viewer/contestant to unscramble the anagram.
• "Read My/Our Minds" was similar to Match Game. Here, contestants had to guess what the host(s) had written on card(s) to complete a phrase. On the first show, four hosts (Kourtney, Erin, Nikki, and Charlie) contributed answers, but it future games had only one answer.
• "Sink or Swim" is similar to the "Will it float?" portion of The Late Show with David Letterman. Of course, the contestant attempted to guess whether or not a given item will float when placed in a tank of water.
• "Letter-Piller" (a portmanteau of letter and caterpillar) is a game in which players had to figure out a nine-letter word in which all the letters snake through each other.
• A crossword-style game in which a contestant had to guess a four-letter word going down which also makes four other common words that go across.
  • There was also an actual crossword game in which there are multiple connected answers and multiple cash prize awards.
• A word search that consisted of a 5-by-5 grid with four correct answers hidden within it. The words can appear horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.
• A game in which contestants had to "fill in the blank" to form a phrase. The correct answer is sealed in an envelope, which is open after the correct answer is revealed.

In addition, two other long-running games asked contestants to count the number of triangles or the number of times the word "yo-yo" (without the hyphen) appeared within a puzzle board.

As on PlayMania, the money can be raised in some cases, like low call volume and after incorrect answers. Wrong answers in "Sink or Swim" result in an automatic carryover.

Jackpot game

During the February sweeps in 2007, My Games Fever offered a $10,000 jackpot prize to a contestant that guessed, correctly, the number of cents in a fictional check in the amount of a little more than $10,000.

Reference

• Review in the New York Daily News
• Also, some information comes from TVGameShows.net, which discussed the show online on September 24, 2006

See also

• Quizmania
• PlayMania
• Midnight Money Madness
• Play2Win

External links

• Official site