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August 20, 2001
For the Week of 8/20/01
A Game Show Idea:
Pennies from Heaven
(Bob Barker's House) — I've got a really horrible idea for a game show, or rather an idea for a really horrible game show. We'll call it Pennies from Heaven.
The game is simple enough, we place someone in a round room about 15 high and 10 feet in diameter with a half-gallon scoop. Spaced equally along the wall and about four feet off the ground are three covered chutes. The person is locked in. Pennies will be dropped from a grate on the ceiling — for 24 hours — enough pennies to completely fill the room up to the grate in the ceiling by the end of 24 hours. Do you see where I'm going with this? Should I make the fill time shorter?
The object for the person inside, of course, will be to put the pennies in the scoop and then into one of the chutes. The person will win the pennies that he or she scoops out of the room and keeping ahead of the "penny rain" will keep the person from getting crushed under the pennies. Naturally if the penny mound gets higher than four feet it will cover the chutes, preventing the person from dumping any more pennies. The game then would shift to seeing if the person can stay above the penny mound.
Some interesting points to consider is how many pennies could someone reasonably scoop up in 24 hours and how many pennies would it take to fill a 15X10 foot cylinder. The host might remark wryly that the current contestant is actually making less money per hour than he or she makes at work.
For commercials promoting the show the network could go out on the streets, drop a penny and then ask folks, "Would you pick up that penny?"
How about 500,000 of them?