| abstract
| - Game Show loosely based on Sale of the Century which ran from 2007-08 and was hosted by former Arkansas Razorbacks kick returner Rossi Morreale. As before, three players (one typically a returning champ) were given $20...er, sorry, Temptation Dollars. The show began with a Speed Round for 30 seconds, with correct answers winning T$5 and wrong answers losing T$5. After this was the Instant Bargain, complete with occasional incentives (extra cash, reduced price, even plane tickets)...however the player was now put on a five-second "Shop Clock" instead of the auctioneer style which frequently led to more incentives. Following the Instant Bargain was the Fame Game, but this wasn't your mother's Fame Game (or, for that matter, anything decent) — while the "Who am I?" clues remained, the solution was revealed much like a Toss-Up on Wheel of Fortune; a correct answer won a flat T$15. The commercial bumpers promoted special offers, read by announcer Rolonda Watts. The game then continued with "Knock-Off", a wholesale ripoff of Wipeout despite the whole "not owned by Fremantle Media" thing. A category was given, with 12 possible answers — nine right (for amounts of T$2, T$5, T$10, or T$15), three wrong (which Rossi compared to knock-off handbags or jewelry). A player who found a Knock-Off was eliminated for the rest of the round; like the short-lived Dirty Rotten Cheater, the less obvious answers awarded more money. Another Instant Bargain was done, followed by... Dis or Dat? from You Don't Know Jack (aka Speed Round #2), with the same time limit and awards/penalties as the first Speed Round. This was followed by Instant Cash, which remained the same but with wallets and smaller payouts, then a game-ending Speed Round for +/-T$10. As before, the winner was the person with the highest score. The winner went on "the shopping spree of a lifetime", with prizes much like the original Sale endgame...although this prize list ended with a car or very expensive trip, with no big cash jackpot (unless one of the tiers was $10,000 cash) or opportunity to win all the prizes on display. The contestant first played Super Knock-Off, which was the same as Knock-Off except with a 6/6 structure and awards of $25, $50, or $100. The champion could either elect to buy one prize (or a Croton watch if s/he didn't have enough to buy the lowest prize) or return on the next show. Saying Temptation was a disaster would be an insult to disasters — it debuted on September 10, 2007 to low ratings and low-to-no praise (most fans had been expecting a continuation of the 1980s Sale or a good translation of the popular Australian Temptation, and as a result blasted the resulting show for failing in almost every aspect). It didn't help that to beat the oncoming Writer's Strike, they did about 13 episodes per taping session. The ratings never got above 0.5, resulting in last place among the games that season; first-run episodes aired through May 23, with reruns through September 5. Most stations replaced it with Trivial Pursuit: America Plays, whose ratings were...pretty much the same, actually.
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