TV Talk: Frank Nicotero hosts Very Local game show on the streets of Pittsburgh
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Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.
Pittsburgh native Frank Nicotero has experience hosting a man-on-the-street quiz show: He was the host of the early 2000s game show “Street Smarts” for several years.
Now, Nicotero is back on the streets for Hearst’s Very Local Pittsburgh free, ad-supported streaming channel with the new game show, “Wait, What Happened?”
The half-hour game show debuts May 3 with a new episode premiering each Wednesday for the next eight weeks. The first four episodes shot in Pittsburgh, home of Hearst’s WTAE-TV, over two days last September. The second set of four episodes filmed in Orlando, home of Hearst’s WESH-TV, in January. (Very Local is available via Amazon Fire, Apple TV, Android TV and Roku devices.)
The game play is simple: Nicotero asks contestants a series of true or false questions about unusual news stories. Each correct answer earns a contestant $25. For the final double-or-nothing round, contestants answer a multiple-choice question.
In Thursday’s premiere episode, a contestant opts to leave with her $75 winnings rather than try to double that amount in a final round.
“$75, that’s a crummy night out on the South Side, and I love those,” the contestant says.
“Wait, What Happened?” uses video footage from Hearst-owned TV stations for each question.
“They had all these great news stories just sitting there,” said Nicotero, a 1987 graduate of North Allegheny High School. “Its a genius thing.”
The first episode includes contestants filmed at Point State Park (the Fort Pitt Bridge is in the background for one player while Acrisure Stadium dominates in another) and in the Strip District. Contestants are pre-vetted, not just plucked off the street.
Nicotero said when his manager called with the possibility of hosting a game show shooting in Pittsburgh, he said, “If I don’t get this job, I’m quitting show business. We did 800 episodes of ‘Street Smarts,’ which was me on the streets all over the country. And I think we ended up having to do, like, 10,000 interviews or 8,000, so out on the streets, that’s my thing.”
After an audition via Zoom, Nicotero learned a few weeks later he got the job.
Nicotero praised the show’s crew – senior producer Hannah Snyder, director of photography Luke Keibler and B camera operator Stefano Ceccarelli – as “pros who were all excited about doing the show,” Nicotero said. “After the first day, they came up to me and they’re like, ‘Hey, thanks for making this fun. We thought this was gonna be the most boring, stupid show. But you made it fun.’ People were finding the material great.”
Based in Los Angeles – framed Terry Bradshaw and Franco Harris jerseys hung on the wall of his home office during a recent Zoom interview – Nicotero will be back in Pittsburgh for a stand-up show July 29 at The Oaks Theater in Oakmont.
Frank is the cousin of special effects makeup expert/director Greg Nicotero (“The Walking Dead”). Frank lived with Greg when he first moved to L.A. in 1996.
In addition to stand-up and game show hosting, Nicotero, 54, sometimes works as a warm-up comic for game show tapings. He was scheduled to work the latest episodes of ABC’s “Press Your Luck,” but he got covid.
Prior to the pandemic, Frank Nicotero was the regular audience warmup act for syndicated game show “25 Words of Less” hosted by Meredith Vieira.
“A lot of the big game shows, including ‘25 Words or Less,’ have gone without an audience for the last two seasons because of covid,” Nicotero said, adding that when the show got picked up for its current season, he sent congratulations to the executive producer. “He goes, ‘They save so much money not having an audience. They’re not going to use the crowd. And the cameras are all robotic.’ So the camera people lost their jobs and I lost my job. I’m really sad that I can’t go back to it, not just for the money. I enjoyed working on it.”
Nicotero, who’s also hosted the game shows “Game of Life” and “Pontoon Payday,” said he sold a game show to NBC several years ago but it never made it to air. He’s now working on another game show concept and a true-crime documentary (tentative title: “Kung Fu Killer”) based on his father’s book about the 1975 Beaver Falls case of Willy Wetzel, who died in a martial arts battle with his son, Roy.
“It was a big trial and he was acquitted in self-defense, but it divided the town,” Nicotero said. “So I’m coming back in May to hopefully do some more interviews and try to get more interest and if not, I’m just going to shoot it myself.”