28 TV Show Secrets Hiding in Plain Sight

1.

I auditioned for X-Factor.You don’t go to the celebrity judges first you go in front of some “off camera” judges.So every terrible and horrible singer you see on the show has already been told they are better than the many talented ones not deemed “tv worthy” which makes it a lot more disgusting to me.

2.

My teacher was on wheel of fortune Australia and he won a life supply of wd40. It turns out with average usage a can of wd40 lasts twenty years, so a life's supply is four cans.

3.

The dishes the MasterChef contestants make are normally stone cold by the time they get to the tasting table, so the judges usually taste the elements of each dish as they're walking around the kitchen during the cooking stage. This allows them to have some idea how the finished dish will taste and to see the contestants' proficiency with kitchen equipment

4.

I was on Wheel of Fortune. You have to get there at 5 AM where you draw straws with other contestants to decide when you will film. They film the entire week of episodes in 1 day. Pat Sajak is incredibly friendly and interacted with us on every break. The wheel is HEAVY

5.

They let the other girl in the Showcase Showdown (Price is Right) rebid after the audience booed her original bid (something silly low like $10,000). When it aired, they cut her original bid and showed only her second, winning bid. I lost.

6.

I was a guest on The Tyra Banks Show back in 2005. The 'stylist' dressed me and the other guests in clothes that still had the tags on. They made sure to hide the tags so they could return the items after the show.

7.

I was on Cash Cab. You can't just hail a cab in New York which turns out to be the Cash Cab. There is a vetting process, but you don't know you are going to be on the show so the reaction is genuine. Also, there is alot of awkward silence time while he is listening to the producer in his ear. There is a cameraman riding shotgun unseen on TV. The money he gives is prop money for TV. They mail you a check after the show airs. Ben Bailey was genuinely a nice guy.

8.

"When my wife was a kid, she won a lifetime supply of Butterfinger candy bars. It was two cases. Not the cardboard flats you can buy at bulk stores, but two actual factory crates like a grocery store would get...so several hundred candy bars. She said when she first got them, she felt ripped off because while it was a lot, she was only a kid, so there was no way it was a 'lifetime' supply."She made it through half the first case before she started giving them away to anyone that would take them. By the end of the second case, she was throwing them away."Now, as an adult several decades later, she still won’t eat Butterfingers. So I guess it really was all the Butterfingers she would ever need for the rest of her life."

9.

I was on "Who wants to be a millionaire", and its all scripted. The filming took half a day for 30 minutes of film. When you win the intro round, you are taken out to get your make up on, and then they instruct you how to act when you celebrate.The reason the audience is so completely useless (And why you see so many press wrong on obvious answers) is because 20-30% of the audience is friends and family to the other 7 contestants who are waiting for their turn. We spent two days in the studio, and if the initial contestant loses, the others get their chance. If one contestant goes far and takes a lot of time, no one else gets a chance, so the audience tells the wrong answer on purpose.

10.

My formers BFF's sister was a contestant on "Swedens Next Top Model" many years ago and she told me it was all fake, from the start they were told who would win and they told her that she had to be a b***h on the show because that was her character.

11.

My wife got a tattoo on a tattoo competition show. They gave her headphones to wear while she was being tattooed, but she wasn’t allowed to actually plug them in and listen to music. Pure product placement lolOther than that it was a really good experience! Producers worked with her for several weeks leading up to and made sure she got a tattoo subject and style that she wanted.

12.

I was a contestant on the Price is Right. They don't choose people at random. They interview everyone in the audience for about 30 seconds earlier in the day and decide who to pick based off that.

13.

It’s not a game show, but I was at a group date for The Bachelorette. As you can imagine, the show is heavily produced. They only aired about 5% of what actually happened on the date. I have a really reactive face, so they used a bunch of my reactions in the show, but they were completely out of context because they cut all of the actual drama out of the date, and only aired the vanilla stuff. So one contestant says something like “women are always right” and they show me making this gasping face, that’s totally out of place haha.

14.

Not really a game show but I was an audience member with my class for America’s funniest videos. They literally had empty plates/cups at some tables and a light up sign telling us when to laugh.Sometimes they would even move audience members depending on how well they laugh. This field trip was for our school drama club btw

15.

The green slime at Nickelodeon tastes like pineapple.

16.

"Earlier this year I was on House Hunters, and obviously, everything was staged. You buy the house first and then you get to go on the show. You can always tell what house they’re going to buy because it’s always the empty one. The house touring was fake for us, at least when we did it, because one of the houses didn’t want us filming there, so we had to get a fake house to tour. I remember we were filming us going somewhere in the car, and I was dropped off in a cornfield."The filming crew were really nice and took us out for lunch. They were all super fun to be around and made us laugh during cuts. But the filming process lasted over three weeks, and it’s only a 20-minute show, so it was definitely tiring. I remember everyone, even people I barely knew, watched the show, and it was kind of embarrassing, but still a fun experience overall."

17.

Was in the audience at a Food Network taping and Iron Chef America really is a 60-minute competition. That's not fudged. The judging on the other hand takes foreeeeever.

18.

I was on Slime Time Live because my family visited Universal Studios Florida, including the old school Nickelodeon Studios building. They gave my sister and I an entire change of clothes, including boxer shorts (I'm a girl too) and watershoes.Our team was eliminated the first round so they took us back to get dressed in our regular clothes. Then we got to sit in the audience for the rest of the show.My family took 2 weeks off of school in order to make that Florida trip. I realized that Slime Time Live only filmed on weekdays, and not during summer, so 12-year-old me came to the conclusion that you had to be playing hooky in order to get on the show.

19.

I was in the audience at the price is right. You wait like 4+ hours just to get into the taping. They come by and give you a short interview to see if you are a good prospect to make it to contestant row. I was with a group of 4 and none of us made it. The studio audience is significantly smaller than it appears on tv. Drew Carey told jokes between filming. The set is tiny. The wheel is tiny. No secrets to reveal except that they must use some serious lenses and angles to make it appear bigger. It was a long day but it was a cool experience.

20.

A work colleague of mine was one of the couples in married at first sight. She had a horrible experience, needed counseling afterwards and is still receiving an “appearance fee” (read hush money) even though her season aired like 5 years ago.Her words: unReal may as well be a documentary

21.

Not me but my uncle's friend went on Big Brother this year and was a COMPLETELY different person. They made him the villain of the show which is completely different to him in real life. IRL he's actually a really nice footy bloke.

22.

I was in the audience of Polish versions of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. To prevent cheating you have to pass 2 metal detector Gates before entering studio. No phone or other electronic allowed. Everything takes sooo long here. Episode lasts around 30 minutes, but recording it - 2-3 hours, there are only 3 episodes recorded every day. Once the big screen behind host back broke and we had to sit for 4 hours until it was repaired. At least we got paid extra. Friend you phone in one of the lifelines is sitting in the same building as studio, just other room.I've also been author of few question for Jeopardy (which is called Va Banque here, pretty badass name). Most of the authors had to be Ph.D. Or experienced experts in their field, I was accepted as a student just because they were short on economy and mathematics question. Sadly it was only one-time gig, but it was pretty fun seeing contestants trying to find question for answers I wrote. It also paid pretty nice, 100 złotys (so around $25) for each 5 question from 1 category which was like 15 minutes of work.

23.

Was on a MTV game show called "fist of zen" on MTV. Basically a group of people subjected to painful and nauseating tasks for cash. We won every round but the producer asked us to purposefully "fail" one to change things up. Despite losing one round we were still paid the full prize money.

24.

Not a gameshow but was in the audience for the Steve Harvey show. Holy crap is he a shallow and fragile individual. We were told we could ask him questions between takes if he was in a good enough mood - which he would only be in if we reacted well during takes. We also were not allowed to ask him any questions about his teeth or mustache. He also said that his lifelong dream was always to just be on television and that's it.

25.

I was part of the "paid" audience for american ninja warrior. I was actually with a vegetarian group that collected the money earned for charity, so that was cool.What wasn't cool was getting downtown at midnight, for there to be hundreds of bats flying around and a two hour delay.We were only allowed to wear certain colors, no logos, and yeah they did take the audience cheering/booing to edit in later, which was honestly a good thing because at around 3 am, most of the audience started leaving. The stands were empty so they had us moving down the course as they filmed to make it look more full haha.I got to meet a couple of the warriors, we all were on tv, and we nabbed a sign from the set. Overall was fun.

26.

There’s an indicator that tells you when you can chime in with your clicker when responding to a trivia question/clue; if you try to ring in before it lights up, you are “locked out” for a few seconds, perhaps long enough for another contestant to ring in.In Jeopardy the indicator is a set of lights on the perimeter of the big board; in Win Ben Stein’s Money, it was literally a lamp on a lampstand sans a lampshade.Viewers never see it because the shot is of something else (e.g. the contestants or a closer shot of the game board).I was on WBSM in 2002 (became the episode’s champion but couldn’t beat Ben in the bonus round), and Jeopardy in 2013 (led at the end of Double Jeopardy but the competition was tough, bet big on Final Jeopardy but blanked, losing and coming in third).For Jeopardy, they tape five episodes (a week’s worth) a day, two days a week (the same crew works on Wheel of Fortune, which is literally next door). Twelve contestants show up for the taping day: the returning champion from the previous week, enough challengers to fill in the first four episodes, another challenger for the Friday episode, and two “alternates” in case something happens; the alternates tend to be locals from the LA area in case they have to come back later. Before the final taping, if the two alternates haven’t gotten to appear, one of them is randomly chosen to be the second challenger on the Friday show; the one who isn’t chosen is invited to come back on a future taping date, but then with a guaranteed slot as a challenger. Selections of challengers and even sets of clues are random, in order to stay fair.During the episodes’ taping, the rest of the “week’s” contestants sit in the front few rows way to the right of the audience, and thus won’t appear in audience reaction shots. In the middle of the day (after the third taping), remaining contestants are sequestered and treated to lunch at the studio commissary; if you’re done playing, you’re expected to leave/go home.

27.

In Deal or No Deal only the interesting people get picked, if you are outgoing and excited you've got a high chance of being selected. Also, if you appear to be their target contestant, but turn out to be a dud, then I think they have the option of not putting you on air and no prize for you (whether that is a threat they follow though with or not I'm not sure).

28.

They tell the audience to clap and cheer and they film that to edit it in during appropriate events. If we didn’t cheer or clap loud enough, they had us retake it. The same goes for grimaces/negative reactions and shock/surprise.