Bingo America Review

I thought this was going to be a Bingo game when I first heard about it, so it was a pleasant surprise to find out that it's actually a trivia game in disguise. Bingo serves as the overall theme and allows the audience to participate at home filling out game cards.

Name	Bingo America (originally National Bingo Night)
Original Run	May 2007 to present
Host	Patrick Duffy (formerly Ed Sanders et al.)
Length	Half hour
Currently On	Game Show Network (weekdays at 7 p.m. and 11 p.m., weekends at 4:30 p.m.; check your local listings)
IMDB	Current Version and Old Version

Description: Bingo America is a simple head-to-head trivia contest. To win, a player needs to correctly answer a B, I, N, G, and O question to win a round and two out of three rounds to win a game. Each question is preceded by a Bingo ball being randomly drawn from a giant globe, and the letter on the ball dictates what the question will be (the number is used for viewers at home; click on the GSN link above to participate). After the question is read, the players race to buzz in (probably with a Jeopardy!-like lock out system to prevent early clicking) and answer. Correct answers earn the letter on the ball if the player needs it, and the number on the ball is added to the prize pool in dollars.

If the two players split the first two rounds, the third round consists of only five questions, whose answers begin with the letters 'B', 'I', 'N', 'G', and 'O' respectively. Whoever wins three of the five wins the match.

The winner proceeds to a bonus round in which a prize is randomly selected by a process that isn't worth describing. If you think of the shopping round at the end of the original Wheel of Fortune, you have an idea how senseless this part of the show is (well, the advertisers probably like it).

Conclusion: Overall, Bingo America is a nothing-special trivia game that tries to achieve popularity by running a simultaneous contest for home users that has nothing to do with trivia. The questions are fairly simple (approximately $1,000 or lower Millionaire caliber, which makes much of the game a buzzer race), the interruptions for the home game are numerous (before every question), and the prize round is pointless. The show is almost tolerable on a DVR, but its longevity will ultimately depend on Bingo-lovers, not trivia fans.