$50,000 a Minute

The unsold pilot of Bob Stewart's where contestants give & answer questions & clues to win big cash prizes.

Broadcast
Unsold Pilot 1985

Packager
Bob Stewart Productions

Hosts
Geoff Edwards Meredith MacRae

Announcer
Jack Clark

Premise
Two teams of two (consisting of one celebrity & one contestant) compete in a contest to see who would go on to play for up to $50,000. One host manned one team, and the other manned the other.

Main Game
On a team's turn, the celebrity saw a series of answers on his/her secret monitor. The host for that team gave the first half of a question and then the celebrity must come up with the remainder of the question afterwhich his/her contestant partner must give an answer or pass. Each time the contestant gave the correct answer he/she lit up a checkmark. The team's round ended when the contestant gave seven correct answers/lit up seven checkmarks. While all this was going on, a clock that started at zero was ticking. When the clock stopped via the seventh correct answer, the time it took the first team to get seven became the time the other team had to beat. The team with the fastest time won the round indicated by the star lit in front of them. The jobs of giving & receiving alternated throughout the game. What made this show far more different is that the team must win the game by winning two consecutive rounds other than the traditional best two out of three. The first team to do that won the game and a chance to play the bonus round.

Bonus Round
In the bonus round, one member of the wining team faced a circular board with nine circles inside it. Contained in each circle was a set of initials to a common phrase, title or name. The giver saw the complete answers in a secret monitor in the winning team's podium, and gave incomplete sentences for each one to get his/her partner to say the answer. Each time the receiver is right, he/she turned the initials he/she got right on into a checkmark. Either team member can pass and can come back to it with time leftover. Each correct answer/checkmark was worth $200. If the team can get all nine in one minute (60 seconds), the contestant won the grand cash prize for that round. The grand prize for the first bonus round was $10,000; subsequent bonuses were worth that amount more than the previous round until the contestant reached $50,000 for the fifth and all subsequent bonus rounds. Hence the title, $50,000 a Minute.

Championship players stayed on the show until they lost the main game or if they won the $50,000.

Episode Status
Two pilots were made, and they both exist among tape traders.

Trivia
Geoff Edwards & Meredith MacRae worked together before the pilot in a local TV show Mid-Morning LA.

Links
$50,000 a Minute @ usgameshows.net $50,000 a Minute @ Game Show Utopia