History Main / PhoneInGameShows

A large stigma of pay-per-call numbers in the US going back to the kid-targeted 1-900 lines of the late 80's and early 90's didn't help either. There were phone-in interactive ''games'' on 1-900 lines (often based on popular ''real'' game shows such as ''Series/LetsMakeADeal'', ''Series/{{Jeopardy}}'' and ''Series/WheelOfFortune'', or otherwise endorsed by a GameShowHost of the era), but these were all played with a touch-tone phone and viewers interacting with a computer system, and not an actual TV show. In 1993, what was then [[Creator/{{Freeform}} The Family Channel]] built a quartet of game shows around this idea --''TabletopGame/TrivialPursuit'', ''Boggle'', ''Shuffle'' and ''Jumble'' -- which were all hosted and produced by [[Series/TicTacDough Wink]] [[Series/{{Debt}} Martindale]], and had "playbreak" segments during commercial breaks, wherein viewers could call in and play along with the questions on-screen. Even then, they did not interact with a live host, and excepting ''Trivial Pursuit'', none of them were very good. The U.S. also had two early examples of the concept: one in ''[[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialing_for_Dollars Dialing for Dollars]]''[[note]]going all the way back to the radio era, in 1939 more accurately[[/note]] (where it was the producers who called the contestors' homes, and not the other way - thus it could be more accurately called a phone-''out'' game show), a franchise which was at its most popular from the 1950s to the 1970s, way before 1-900 numbers were popular, and can still be seen in few markets,[[note]]Fun fact: Creator/OprahWinfrey presented the Baltimore edition of this show for some time in TheSeventies.[[/note]] and a more traditional one in ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_the_Music_(American_game_show) Stop the Music.]]''

* OneEpisodeWonder: ''The Debbie King Show'', aired by ITV Play, was a cross between a phone-in quiz and a [[NewsParody news satire]]. Hosted by [=QuizMania's=] Debbie King, they still decided to go on with the show, even though ITV had announced earlier that day that the Play channel would be "suspended" (read: shut down permanently) as part of investigations into their use of premium-rate lines. [[SarcasmMode Whoops.]]

* DoubleTheDollars: Sometimes done as an incentive to "[[{{Pun}} double the dialers]]"

*** The [[http://mikebattista.com/2009/12/05/play-tv-canada-has-no-legs/ Cats on a Bus]] puzzle has the hallmarks of a MoonLogicPuzzle: "4 girls are travelling on a bus. Each of them have 3 baskets, in each basket there are 4 cats. Each cat has 3 little kittens. How many legs are in the bus?" [[note]]"222": The kittens were not on the bus, and the count included the driver's legs, and the legs of the seats as well.[[/note]]
*** Here's ''another'' one: "4 girls are travelling on a bus. In each hand they hold 4 baskets, in each basket there are 4 cats. Each cat has 3 little kittens. One cat gets away. How many legs are on the bus?" [[note]]"1359": you begin to wonder what type of fuzzy math led to that.[[/note]]
*** Now, let's try a skill-testing question: "9+7-3x0+5-2+4-7+(4+6)x2=?" [[note]]"1238": the proper answer would be 36, which means someone royally screwed up their math there.[[/note]]

* DoubleTheDollars: Sometimes done as an incentive to "[[JustForPun double the dialers]]"

In the United States, the concept was mainly a middling to complete failure, with only Creator/GameShowNetwork's ''[=PlayMania=]'' actually getting any attention. Attempts by TBS, Fox's television stations and the Tribune stations lasted a few weeks to months. Not helping was the ubiquity of {{Infomercial}}s and other brokered programming (such as Byron Allen shows) as time filler in dead periods, which only require the [[EasierThanEasy painstaking]] [[SarcasmMode task]] of queuing them to air after ''Series/TheLateLateShow'' before you leave for the day, rather than needing to have the staff and budget necessary to put on a live program at 2:00 a.m. in the morning. At the same time, there is a Budapest-based production company, Telemedia [=InteracTV=], which has made their living producing these shows ''en masse'' for various broadcasters, including Canada and Ireland most infamously.

** Subverted to a degree with Brainteaser's host Alex Lovell. The scandal resolving the show tarnished her presenting career despite having nothing to do with it. The fact she was also a presenter on the infamous shopping channel Auction World which was also involved in a scandal that forced the channel into bankruptcy didn't help matters. Although she is rarely seen on national TV nowadays, what keeps her from being averted is she is very popular in her home region of the West of England as a presenter on BBC's Points West.

#Pose a question to the audience. Usually they were some sort of math or trivia question, but occasionally there were shows that used ''Series/FamilyFeud''-style questions asking viewers to name something that fits a specific topic, with different answers being assigned to different prizes.

* SpecialEffectsFailure: Given that they're often NoBudget, this is bound to happen. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkGqcib3ff4 This]] incident from the aforementioned TBS ''Midnight Money Madness'' counts as a minor case of TrashTheSet as well.