Big Spenders

Big Spenders was an auction based spending game show pilot.

Broadcast
Unaired 1975

Packager
Warner Bros. Television

Carruthers Productions

Distributor
NBC Television Distribution

Host
Jack Clark

Gameplay
In the beginning, the players are staked with the total dollar amount of the prizes to be given on the show, which for this episode was $7,441. The husbands were then showed the first prize, which was a kitchen table plus 6 chairs. The husbands then locked in the price they believed the prize would cost. The wives than began an auction for the prize with Jack Clark giving an opening bid of $1,700. If a wife bid a price higher than what her husband had locked in, they lost their chance for the prize. If the wife hit the price exact, the couple won the prize. The bids started at a decent clip — $1,710, $1,725 — but then degenerated to single digits, with the next 10 bids just covering $28. In this first prize, two of the couples lost when the wife exceeded their husbands bid, leaving the prize to the winning couple at a price of $1,757, well below the actual price of $1,825. At this point, the bid made by their husbands were deducted from the couples total was deducted from their opening stake, meaning that the couple with the winning bid had their bank docked the most ($1,875). The game then was to continue with the spouses swapping roles (wives guessing and husbands auctioning) until a couple had won three prizes. The money stake then became important in the later rounds since the sum of the initial guesses could not exceed the stake given the players at the beginning. The bonus game was the saving grace of this show in my opinion. The winning couple is presented with three groups of prizes with each group containing three prizes. For example, the trip group had a 14-day Vienna trip, a 10-day Japan trip and a 10-day Rome trip. The other two groups were jewelry and cars. The wife then picked one prize from each group, with the caveat that you could only win the prizes if the total price of the three selected was greater than $10,000. After the wife chose, the husband could make changes as he see fit.