Emotional dissonance through familial opportunism: The failure of ‘Bet on Your Baby’
Between 2013 and 2014, the American broadcaster ABC aired two seasons of the toddler game show ‘Bet on your Baby’.
The reviews of the show were terrible from the start* and the programme was cancelled after a total of 16 episodes.
What stratagems were responsible for BOYB's failure?**
Let's take a look at the rules of the game.
Four families compete against each other with their toddler. Each family can win five thousand USD, but only one family gets the chance to win the 50,000 USD jackpot college fund.
In the first round, the games are played in the Babydome. Under the guidance of a parent, the child must complete a task. These tasks include stacking a certain number of Oreo cookies without nibbling any, unrolling a toilet paper roll within ninety seconds, or staying alone in the Dome for sixty seconds without looking under the bowl in the center of the room, which may or may not hide a surprise.
The other parent stays with the host and has to bet for USD 5,000: will my child complete the challenge or not? Yes or no?
If you bet on your baby, the dynamics of the game present no problem. But if you bet against it for tactical reasons, stratagem 10 comes into play: ?Hide the dagger behind the smile“. A friendly demeanour hides a sinister intention. Or to put it another way: soft shell, hard core (Senger 1993: 135-146).
Who likes someone who talks about their child as their champion in the audition video, only to stab that same child in the back as soon as money is involved, by hoping they’ll fail? It's unsettling to see the disappointment on the faces of parents who just lost $5,000 because their star performer did better than they believed.
In the second round, the parents had to guess the word or term that host Melissa Peterman discussed in a video recording with the four children.
Whoever guesses the term correctly first moves on to the final. However, if you guess incorrectly, you can only continue once another family has guessed wrong.
Keeping your nerve and guessing at the right moment were key factors in the second round - patience and timing. In terms of stratagems, this aligns with number 4: ?Await the exhausted enemy at your ease“. The idea here is to unbalance your opponent with a small, well-timed action (Senger 1993: 59-66).
If you struck out too early and were therefore sidelined until further notice, the dynamic changed for the affected parents. You were condemned to inactivity and had to wait for the other families to make a mistake. From a stratagemic point of view, number 25 then came into play: ?Replacing the beams with rotten timber”. The (friendly) facade remains intact, but there are internal structural changes that lead to an overall deterioration (Senger 2004: 343-398). The sidelined parents could only watch with forced smiles, grinding their teeth in frustration, while wishing a plague upon the other parents because of a few lousy dollars.
The family that made it to the third round faced ten piggy banks in the final. One contained the $50,000 college fund, while the others held 'consolation prizes' ranging from $500 to $25,000.
You could smash up to four of the ten piggy banks, but after breaking each one, you had to decide: do I want to keep the money or risk it to continue?
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From a stratagem perspective, there was an interaction between number 17 and its reversal. Stratagem 17, ?Toss out a brick to attract a jade stone“' represents an investment. You sacrifice something of lesser value with the hope of gaining something more valuable later on.
The problem arose if, for example, you had USD 10,000 secured before the last strike and only found USD 500 or USD 1,000 in the final piggy bank. Then you had given away your jade stone and received a brick in return - a reversal of the original situation (Senger 1993: 295-330).
So why did ‘BOYB’ fail with the audience?
In the first round, the show encourages parents to bet tactically against their own child in order to maximize their chances of winning. As a result, one parent outwardly supports the child while inwardly hoping for their child's failure.
This creates an uncomfortable tension, as the parents appear to be loving and caring, but at the same time, they act opportunistically, which is emotionally alienating for the viewer.
In the second round, parents are condemned to inaction and must wait for their competitors to make a mistake to get back into the game themselves. If they do advance, the emotional bond between the viewer and the finalists has been damaged because the audience knows what they have wished upon their opponents in the meantime.
By the third round, the joy of winning might still dominate, but if the finalists gave up their bird in the hand for a brick from the roof and only took home a much smaller amount than they could have, every audience member will witness the conflict that erupts between the couple as soon as the curtain falls.
This also leaves the viewer with a bitter aftertaste, as the target audience can relate to the inner dynamics based on their own parental experience: They know what money means, they know what it feels like to lose it, and they understand what happens when the parents don't agree on a number, but one takes the lead.
All in all, it can therefore be said that Bet on Your Baby was designed to entertain the masses at the expense of family well-being, and it failed precisely because of that. They underestimated the emotional intelligence of their audience, which is hardly a success formula for television.
Foot notes
* See Keane 2013; McCarthy 2013; Powers 2013; Stuart 2013
** These statements only apply to BOYB's American (English) version. The programme could be successfully sold abroad and culturally adapted by changing the concept, making it a hit in the Philippines, for example (Kimball 2014; Kimball 2015).
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