Despite a star-studded President’s Day debut, CNN’s new political game show, “The CNN Quiz Show,” ended up plagued by problems, from the buzzers to the contestants.
“It’s like herding cats,” host Anderson Cooper said at one point of the show, as his fellow CNN hosts continually talked over each other.
Things were off to a rocky start as soon as Cooper began hushing the studio audience for applauding too often after contestants got correct answers.
“Let’s try not — let’s try to limit the applause so we can keep rifling through these,” Cooper told the audience. (Someone kept clapping anyway.)
At one point, the co-host of CNN’s “New Day,” Chris Cuomo, complained that his buzzer didn’t work, which Cooper called, “the oldest game show trick in the book.” At the same time, CNN anchor Don Lemon attempted to ring his buzzer even though no question had been asked.
“You can’t ring in Don, there wasn’t even a question there,” Cooper said, appearing out of breath.
“Oh, sorry,” Lemon said.
Cuomo gummed up the works again later, during a challenge to name Presidents’ wives based on hints from his partner. Despite the best efforts of his teammate Lemon, Cuomo kept submitting Presidents’ names instead of their wives, for a full minute.
“I can honestly say, 60 seconds have never felt quite so long,” Cooper quipped once the moment was over.
Not since Wolf Blitzer was trounced on “Jeopardy” by talk show sidekick Andy Richter in 2009 has a CNN anchor been so dressed down on a game show. (Blitzer scored -$4600 during his appearance.)
Watch a highlight reel over at Mediaite. Watch a trailer for the special below:
Do you remember when CNN was the go to place for news? Seems like a lifetime ago.
You have to be very careful…I mean, if entertainment does indeed break out it can flare and ignite into an uncontrollable conflagration that could reduce the entire studio audience to exhausted enjoyment…so be very careful.
Perhaps, old videos of ‘Crossfire’ could play silently on giant monitors out of camera range but not the audience?
Like pigs in shit…except it’s ignorance, not shit.
Sometimes, you know, you really want to finish off the idea of journalists as anything other than infotainment ridiculousness.
CNN is doing their part.
CNN = Kamikaze mission to irrelevance.