A Part-Time Job Pays Better Than Greg Gutfeld’s New Game Show

It’s a crazy premise for a game show. On Gutfeld reads real and fake headlines to the contestants, who then need to guess what really happened. It’s not unlike what the rest of us do when sorting through the daily news.

Here’s the insane part: After being sequestered “in complete isolation” for three months, the four contestants (there were five before one abandoned ship) compete for a winner-take-all prize of $25,000. The rest of the players go home with nothing. “The prize money is a joke,” notes Hollywood Reporter’s Tony Maglio. “The contestants just should have just kept their day jobs.”

No kidding! Hollywood Reporter did the math. In New York, where the contestants holed up in a farmhouse for 90 days, minimum wage is $15.50 per hour. That’s eight grand over the course of three months, more than everyone but the winner gets for giving up three months of their lives. Several of the contestants even have spouses and kids. Or they used to, anyway.

Even Gutfeld understood that the show’s prize money was a joke. “This is the cheapest game show in modern history!” he says during a visit to the rural isolation chamber. “These people are in a house for 90 fucking days for 25 grand — they could have made that on OnlyFans!”

Gutfeld supposedly starts badgering Fox Nation executives for more cash. He gets the number up to $30,000 at one point, which barely seems worth the effort. Then Gutfeld gets to play (scripted) hero. “I managed to go further,” he boasts to the poor yahoos being held captive for a game show. “After more than one strongly-worded email and two or three yelled phone calls, I got you a total prize fund tonight of $50,000.”

Whatever. It’s still a meager amount for giving up three months of one’s life — and that’s only if you win. After Gutfeld, who reportedly makes $7 million a year for his Fox News duties, itted that the prize money was “pennies” to him, one contestant suggested kicking in a little something. Unsurprisingly, Gutfeld opted to keep his cash. 

The first contestant to go home got a surprise chance to answer one final question for $1,000. Woo-hoo.

“I feel terrible. I feel like I just spent 90 days of my life for no reason at all,” said that loser on the way out. “For a thousand dollars, which for in New York you could get a slice of pizza and maybe a Diet Coke.”