Laughter Is the Best Debt Relief
Paid Off creator Michael Torpey knows that a game show is a ridiculous way to save people from crushing student debt. But what’s the alternative?
Torpey, with one of the show’s prop piñatas.
Photographer: Amy Lombard for Bloomberg Businessweek
It was nearing 10 p.m. on a recent Tuesday, and a small production team gathered around a monitor in a studio on the seventh floor of a Midtown Manhattan office building to watch a rehearsal for that night’s live broadcast. On the screen, a high-energy, 39-year-old comedian fielded fake phone calls in front of a backdrop hung with college diplomas. On either side of the studio sat stacks of pizza boxes labeled in Sharpie: “DO NOT EAT. PROPS. DO NOT EAT.”
The pizzas and the people were there for a live segment of Paid Off with Michael Torpey, a trivia-style game show now in its second season on the network TruTV. Each episode features three contestants competing in a prerecorded trivia contest for a chance to have all their student loans taken care of. The new season, which had kicked off the week before, had a new feature: a live, 3½-minute lightning round held at the end of each episode, during which viewers with student loan debt could call in and answer three questions for a chance to win up to $3,000.