Buried in the TRL Graveyard
At least week's creative meeting, I pitched the following stunt idea, which was deemed "too mean" to our fans and shot down.
Who's the Dumbest Member of the Audience?
A Singled Out-type elmination game. We start with the entire audience and ask them either true / false or multiple choice questions (not pop culture stuff, more like math / spelling / geography). Anyone who gets the question right can sit down; get it wrong and you stay in the game. We continue this until we're left with one person who has gotten every question wrong, and we give that person a dunce cap and name them the dumbest kid in the audience.
I don't think it's mean to our fans. It's mean to the one fan who loses… and maybe the person who comes in 2nd. But it's fun for the smart people, and fun for the people watching at home who get to see the stragglers sweat it out.
Plus our audience can't be dumber than half of our guests.