The biggest television game show jackpot ever in the Philippines, of 3.5 million pesos (more than $70,000), was won last week on what is claimed to be the most popular game show in the country: Game Ka Na Ba. The winner was a young woman from Car-car, Cebu, who not being able to afford a good education, was mostly self-taught through all the books she had read growing up.
The shock surprise of a person winning such a huge amount of money in one go was too much for one old man in Cotabato City, who died while watching the show on TV. His heart must have given in and just stopped beating. At least he died happy, said a friend of mine. Indeed.
Although I am myself a fan of Game Ka Na Ba and of other game shows, I do think that they more often than not raise false hopes of instant riches among a population that is overwhelmingly poor and desperate to strike it rich overnight. I also think that the money paid out to winners would serve better purposes if it were applied to projects that would benefit many more people, such as building a school with it or building homes for poor people.
Of course, the main impetus behind this surge in game show popularity have been the television networks that are desperately fighting for an ever-larger market share of viewers. For them, the more viewers they have, the more they can charge advertisers for commercials they air, and that means more revenue.
The current game show mania that has swept the entire globe originated in England where Who Wants to be a Millionaire was born. Its export to the US a few years ago sparked worldwide interest and produced local versions all over the globe. In the Philippines, Viva Television snapped up the rights for a local version, and got movie star Christopher de Leon to host it. The ABS-CBN television network, seeing what cash cows these shows could be, decided not to be left out and created its own shows.
Of course, ABS-CBN always had game show portions on many of its daily variety shows, especially its noontime show Magandang Tanghali Bayan. For a while it was Pera o Bayong and now it’s Cash o Kaha ("Cash or Box"). In Cash o Kaha a contestant (chosen through elimination from around 50 other contestants) has to guess how much a line up of seven boxes is worth. Each box has a number hidden in it. There are six "zeroes" and only one "two". The boxes are lined up by the contestant in random order, meaning he or she can win anything from 2 pesos to 2 million pesos.
Hosted by Amy Perez and Roderick Paulate, Cash o Kaha is the poor man’s version of Game Ka Na Ba. Here one wins the money through pure luck, there are no difficult questions to be answered, it’s just point and guess, and hope to high heavens that you hit the jackpot! On this show the numbers are revealed gradually, the contestant asked if he wants "cash" or "kaha" at the beginning of each round. If he says kaha they continue on to the next round and raise the amount of cash offered. Most contestants last until around the 80,000 pesos level than they begin to seriously waver. I’ve seen countless contestants break down in tears, overwhelmed by the emotion of possibly winning 2 million pesos, but also knowing they might be better off accepting the 100,000 pesos in cash rather than risk winning only 200 pesos from the "kaha". This is not capitalism at its best, but it’s what TV networks like to call "entertainment".
Just last night I watched Cash o Kaha and saw a tricycle driver accept 100,000 pesos in cash over the "kaha". I’m sure he was kicking himself when the numbers were revealed: If he had chosen "kaha", he would have won 2 million pesos!
On Game Ka Na Ba host Kris Aquino’s forced niceness gives her the tag of being "plastic" or fake, something she undoubtedly has won by being forced to film so many episodes every week. On one show she sounded so sick I thought she would keel over and literally croak on stage, but she made it to the end though her voice was fading quickly.
This game is much slicker than Cash o Kaha, and here contestants must use their brain cells to win money. It’s not just based on pure luck. Filmed in a slick and futuristic set that is obviously a spin-off from the Who Wants to be a Millionaire set, with its metallic game consoles and dramatic lighting, this show is tied in to cell phone users. Every week, several winners are chosen from participants who have sent in a combination of letters through text messaging. But these are not the main participants. For that we have people in the studio audience who have been pre-selected. Then through several quick rounds of elimination using true or false questions, one person is chosen to be that night’s star contestant. That one person then answers a series of multiple-choice questions, the questions getting trickier as the jackpot grows.
One can usually tell when a player gets an answer wrong, because Kris’ facial expression becomes extra serious and she keeps repeating, "Are you sure? Is that your final answer?" Kris also likes to pry into the private lives of contestants, asking them if they’re married, who came with them to the studio, and goading them to say hello to "mommy" at the end of each show.
I’m not denying the almost hypnotic spell that game shows have over television viewers, including myself. It must be something about watching a person either win or lose a huge amount of money that we all find so very compelling.
But is it really healthy to be sending out this message to the vast majority of poor Filipinos: That the quickest and easiest way out of poverty is to hit the jackpot on a game show? What about hard work and opportunity? The Calvinist within me likes to believe that hard work and grabbing the right opportunity is the way to make it out of grinding poverty, but perhaps in the Philippines opportunity has been so eroded that the only way out is through winning a game show.
