New game shows to test limits

LOS ANGELES, California -- Two prospective game shows will test the physical and financial limits of their contestants.

ABC is giving a 13-episode commitment to a new show called "The Chair." The premise? A player must to maintain grace under pressure, answering general knowledge questions with a machine monitoring his or her heart rate. The contestant can win money by answering the questions correctly, but only if the heart rate stays within a prescribed range.

If the contestant's heartbeat races above the range, however, he or she loses money and may not answer more questions until the rate returns to the prescribed range. A person's time in the chair ends when an incorrect answer is given.

In the show, up to eight contestants vie for a turn sitting in the hot seat where most of the action takes place.

No premiere date was given, but the show will likely debut in the spring on the same ABC prime time schedule with "Millionaire," which was cut to two airings in the current season from four last fall as its ratings flagged.

Meanwhile, two producers are developing an American version of a Japanese reality show in which contestants play poor in order to strike it rich, Variety reports.

The new one-hour weekly series "Minimum Wage" will take two middle-class couples and force them to live on minimum wage for a month; whoever saves the most coin at the end of the period wins a yet-to-be determined cash prize.

Producers Lionel Chetwynd and Ted Steinberg, who snagged the U.S. television rights to Asahi National Broadcasting Co.'s "Live Frugally on $100 for a Month," will begin pitching their concept to broadcast networks this week.

"This (show) is as close as you are going to get to a marriage of a reality show with the underpinnings of a public service program," Chetwynd said. "It takes the entertainment we've become accustomed to from reality shows and builds in something you can take away from it."

Chetwynd believes the show will help shed light on the plight of the working poor. While the current U.S. economic recession may make it seem like an odd time to pitch a show about poverty, Chetwynd said audiences in Japan and Turkey, where a version also airs, have flocked to the program despite those countries' severe economic woes.

"It's a format that has had phenomenal success in two post-traumatic cultures because there is no manufactured adversity," he said. "The contestants deal with real challenges."

Reuters contributed to this report.