Pandemonium

Host

Steve Edwards

Announcer

Rod Roddy

Broadcast

Unsold Pilots for CBS: 11/2-3/1979

Packager

The Bud Austin Company Burt Sugarman Productions

"Fun! Prizes! Money! Madness! And because every member of our studio audience receives $50 to start our game, you know you're in the land of Pandemonium! And now, here's the host of Pandemonium, Steve Edwards!"

Pandemonium was an unsold game show involving audience participation.

Gameplay

The game revolved around audience participation.

Round 1

The first round would begin with the 118 members of the studio audience, seated around host Steve Edwards, being staked $50 (represented in the intro as people rushing around picking up money). Edwards would ask a yes/no question, and the audience members would be given five seconds to lock in an answer with buttons on their desks. Once Edwards revealed the correct answer, the people who had voted incorrectly would "disappear" (in reality, the crew would stop tape, allow the people to exit the set, and then resume); the second question would be done the same way. The third question, however, would be crucial, as only the first four people to correctly answer would move onto the next round; this would be represented by a chromakey display flying in behind Edwards as he read the contestants' names and numbers (while the chromakey would display the people's faces).

Round 2: Bounce

Round 2 was called The Bounce Game. Edwards announced that all the people who had "disappeared" in the preceding round had "magically reappeared". The four contestants who had survived the previous round would now get seven "bounces" each. The bounces were indicated by the seven circle lights on each of their podiums. They would need to make them last the entire game. This round was a simple Q & A game, with questions from various categories (three questions per category). Edwards read out a category, and the players could secretly "withdraw" some of their bounces (from one to four), depending on how much they felt they knew in the category; however, they could not get those bounces back. After that, Edwards then read the first question to the contestant who had answered correctly first to the final question of the previous round. They could either answer the question or bounce (pass) the question to an opponent. That opponent had the same choices; the game continued in this manner until either someone decided to answer, or ran out of bounces (in which case the contestant would be forced to answer). If they answered correctly, they would then be read another question in that same category, and the contestant would try to use how many bounces they had initially withdrawn. (This added a bit of strategy to the game, as players could answer before they ran out of bounces, while opponents had used up some of theirs in trying to get rid of another.) An incorrect answer eliminated that player, regardless of how many bounces they possessed. When a new category was announced, any previously withdrawn bounces were forfeited (no matter if they were used or not). Play continued as written above until only one contestant was left. That player won the game, $500 and advanced to the bonus game. The other contestants received $100, $200 or $300 depending on when they were eliminated.

Bonus Game: People Puzzle

The endgame was called the People Puzzle. The sole remaining contestant would get to meet 10 "citizens from the land of Pandemonium," which were people in costumes (all of whom come from the studio audience), such as Santa Claus and Fidel Castro. They would come out two at a time and be holding various props. Edwards would pose a question about one of the pairs of characters to the contestant. If the contestant picked the right character, the character directed the contestant to pick one of ten envelopes, each with a different dollar amount. The amounts total $6,500. This would be repeated for the next four pairs (so there were five questions altogether), at which point Edwards would reveal the amounts of cash inside the envelopes; that cash would also be duplicated and divided amongst the other audience members. If the player managed to accumulate $2,000 or more, they would also win a prize package (in this case, a motorcycle, a trip to Tahiti and a Corvette Stingray).

Studio

CBS Television City, Hollywood, California

Trivia

• This was the second pilot hosted by Steve Edwards, better known as co-anchor of Good Day LA at KTTV-11 in Los Angeles; his first was 1977's Get Rich Quick!, and this pilot was followed by the 1990 attempt at a syndicated run of Scrabble.
• The set was intended to resemble a flying saucer, and was painted shades of blue and aqua; the intro showed the set hanging in space, cutting to a shot of money (blue fake money with producer/creator Jay Wolpert's face on it) falling from the sky and then falling onto people scrambling to pick it up (to suggest the money was being given away to the audience); Steve Edwards would then enter from a pair of upstage doors.
• The music used was apparently the John Williams-composed theme to the 1978 Superman film.
• The audience used for this pilot primarily consisted of contestants who had previously been on Wolpert's first solo show, Whew! (which was still on the air at the time this pilot was taped).

Links

An account of the pilot taping
The Pandemonium Pilot