30 Seconds to Fame was a talent search show where auditionees were given 30 seconds to impress the audience. Hosted by Craig J. Jackson, it ran on FOX as a summer replacement for two seasons in 2002-2003. After the demise of Running Wilde, repeats aired on late Saturday nights as a stop-gap measure in the early 2010s.
24 acts were presented, broken down into halves in each segment. Any audience member who didn't like a performance can press a keypad to vote it off, bringing up the "Eliminator" graphic. Once its needle reaches the red zone, that act is history and will end early. After the last performance, audience members voted for their favorite act. The best three got to perform for 30 seconds one last time. After one final round of audience voting, the winning performance received $25,000.
Unlike The Gong Show and American Idol, 30 Seconds to Fame had no celebrity judges. Each act's fate was decided entirely by the audience with Jackson overseeing how they reacted to the undesirable acts.
- Personnel:
- The Announcer: Jonathan Magnum.
- Game Show Host: Craig J. Jackson who would also introduce the acts and provide commentary after each.
- Studio Audience: Responsible for overseeing which acts sucked and who would win $25,000 at the end of the show.
This show provides examples of:
- All or Nothing: Only one act took home the $25,000 prize on each episode.
- Audience Participation: Audience members took part in three rounds of voting:
- Judging which acts should be eliminated while they were performing.
- After the last performance, they voted for the best three of the survivors.
- After each act gave an encore, they voted for the winner of the $25,000 prize.
- Curtain Call: The three finalists of each episode got to perform one more time for $25,000. The winning act came on stage a third time to close each show.
- Downer Ending: Any time an act got eliminated with one second on the clock.
- Hopeless Auditionees: The acts were mainly subject to the mercy of the audience.
- Hold the Line: All acts had 30 seconds to keep the audience impressed, or else they risked elimination.
- Inept Talent Show Contestant: Keeping an audience entertained for 30 seconds is much harder than it looks, as some performers found out the hard way.
- Laser-Guided Karma: One episode had a troupe of costume-changing magicians as one of the finalists. At the end of their second 30-second performance, Jackson went onstage to interview them. The sole female in the group made fun of one of the eliminated acts (specifically a drum band). The audience took note and denied them the $25,000.
- Losing Horns: A one-note synth horn meant elimination.
- Never Trust a Trailer: More often than not, acts featured in promos turned out to be eliminated.
- Point-and-Laugh Show: The acts that were unintentionally bad fell into this, usually with the in-studio audience pointing and booing.
- Self-Deprecation: One bumbling stand-up comedy duo was well-aware that the audience hated them. Before they got the horn, they both shouted "We're both bad actors!"
- Thing-O-Meter: The "Eliminator" graphic at the bottom of the screen which came up if the audience started getting tired of an act. The needle would teeter towards the red section the more fed up the audience got. Once it hit red, the graphic turned into the word "eliminated" which disqualified the act.
- Whammy: Getting eliminated which happened if enough audience members hated a performance.
