Marley's Report from the Syndicated WWTBAM Audience

I was lucky to just get into the studio in time to see My friend's taping yesterday. I won't say anything about how he did. I will say a few incidental things about the tapings I saw.

First of all, the schedule was all screwed up! The original letter I received said to show up at 12:30. A second letter received last week pushed that back to 1:30. Apparently, they changed that back to the original time and they said they made calls to the ticketed audience about that on Monday. If they tried calling me, it must have been after I started driving down to NJ. I'll have to check my messages when I get home. (It would be interesting to be able to say that I got a call from WWTBAM, even though I haven't gotten the call yet!)

Mom and I arrived outside the studio at 11:30. Since there were only a handful of people in line, and nobody from ABC there, we decided to splurge for lunch at the Tavern on the Green, which is just a block away, across from 67th St.

We got back to ABC around 1 PM, when we found out about the time change. Most of the audience, including stand-bys, had already been admitted. We got our tickets checked in (numbered by an ABC staffer), we got cleared through security and led all the way to the steps behind the stage, when we were told that all seats were full! We were offered "VIP tickets" for the second pair of shows at 4:30 (for which we were supposed to check in at 3:15). Saying that I was a friend of a contestant did no good, so we took the tickets, hoped that we wouldn't miss his taping (nobody knows the order contestants go on until they're selected to go by the independent auditors), then we walked a couple blocks to Lincoln Center, where we spent a hour people watching.

We walked back to ABC, got our VIP tickets checked in, then hung around outside the entrance (instead of walking away again for another 20 minutes, as the staffer suggested). Most of the dozen or so other VIP ticket holders did so too. When the first show of the day finished taping, a few audience members left early, so they admitted a handful of us to fill in their empty seats. They led us straight back to the set, just in time to see Taurus appear as the first contestant of that episode! I had just asked some other audience members if he'd taped already. Since there was another contestant with the same first name, they told me he had, so it was a welcome surprise to seen him being introduced!

Skipping over the details of his (and other contestants performances), here are a few observations.

Harder questions! As others have reported, the first five questions aren't gimmes any more. They're comparable to what the middle five questions used to be. Having to use a lifeline for one of the first five seems to be par for the course now. Higher level questions are also a step or two above the old difficulty factors. (Of course, what you know is always easy, and what you don't is hard.)

VIP seats aren't so hot! After the second episode ended, all the audience had to leave, as they had another bunch with tickets for the second two shows (which started around 4:30). Those of us with "VIP" tickets got to stay, and were seated in front of the section to the right of the contestant (what's reserved as the handicapped section in Play It!). They are closer than any other seats, but there are two disadvantages: there's no monitor to see in front of us, so we have to turn to the side to see the questions (the boom camera sometimes blocks that), and they never film the audience in that section.

No time limits! We speculated about whether contestants would have time limits in which to answer. We saw one example to show that's certainly not true, where one contestant took around 45 minutes for a single question (after we were told they'd try to finish up the whole episode in that time!). Meredith handled the stressful waiting pretty well, although she at least got to joke about the situation in her bantering. It's hard sitting quietly in the audience for that long without getting antsy! It will be interesting to see how most of that is edited out for TV.

Sound levels are quiet! At Play It! one has no problem hearing the host or contestant (unless he/she is particularly shy). In NYC, they seemed to have the speaker volume turned down awfully low! It was difficult to hear some of the questions/answers sometime. The sound is probably controlled correctly for the TV, but it's hard on the live audience.

- Marley

Read about Marley's trip to the WWTBAM Play It!.

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