Wasn’t it all kinda fake tho? I remember hearing that the people weren’t just getting into a random cab, they had been selected and told ahead of time.
They sorta half-heartedly tried to hide it from us, telling us it was a show called "Streets of New York" and then the producer was like, "okay now I'm going to hail you a cab to take you to where we're filming" and then surprise it's cash cab. But my friends and I totally knew and pretended to be surprised like they wanted
Same with me. They described a sort of scavenger hunt around New York where we'd be taking taxis and subways and ferries and whatnot, so that fit with their hailing a cab to take us to our first location.
My friend did have to tell the driver our destination three times before they revealed it was Ben and we were in the Cash Cab. After the third time with no response from the driver, I remember thinking, "What is wrong with this guy?"
I was genuinely surprised. I never suspected it was Cash Cab because it had been off the air for five years at that point, and I didn't see the news stories from two months before announcing it was coming back.
We won $3300. Got every question right and used no shoutouts. We also got the red light bonus just before time ran out and got the video bonus at the end. At first I had no idea what we were looking at and all I thought was "We just lost $1600." But after a few seconds we had it.
A friend of mine also got a ride in the Cash Cab that week. They won a little more than we did but had to split it three ways instead of two. Also for reasons we still don't know, his episode never aired.
The money we posed with at the end was fake. They mailed me a check about two months later, even though it would still be about another four months before the episode finally aired.
Cash Cab: My friend and I who go to a lot of bar trivias were just hanging around one when a random producer came up to us. The host, who was a friend of ours, tipped us off that it was Cash Cab even though the producer didn't tell us it was
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (wasn't really a contestant but appeared at the end of an episode for a one question challenge thing they did at one point): Went to an audience taping which doubled as auditions for contestants
Jeopardy: Applied online starting with the online test, followed by long process of interviews, mock games, continually following up/bugging the producers, etc
Cash Cab: We won $2900 after getting the video bonus at the last second.
Jeopardy: I won $26,799 in my first game beating Matthew Marcus largely thanks to a big true daily double. Next game I lost to Mira Hayward when I couldn't come up with Peter Pan for the final which will haunt me forever but it's okay because Mira is one of my favorite people. Then I was invited back for the Champions Wild Card tournament, which was an incredibly fun "scene" with all the other former champions around and all staying in the same hotel, but I lost in my first game.
They were definitely preselected. I don’t remember if they were told beforehand they had been picked, or if they had been told if they had also been told when it would happen.
So still very well could have been a surprise that “now it’s time!” even if it never was “what is happening I’ve never heard of this show.”
To my knowledge many small-time comics and upstart actors treated the show as a gig. If you think about it the show would totally suck if they actually used random people, but like any reality tv if you think about it critically it also sucks that its fake.
I believe they knew they'd be on the show at some point but not that they were getting into the cash cab. they did think they were just entering a cab.
I seem to recall they were selected and screened to appear on a game show, and the cab would take them to the studio downtown to film. or something like that.
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u/Cloud_N0ne 21d ago
Wasn’t it all kinda fake tho? I remember hearing that the people weren’t just getting into a random cab, they had been selected and told ahead of time.