Hosted by comedian Ben Bailey, the show allows riders to win big money by answering trivia questions while Bailey drives them to their destination. Still located in New York City, Bailey actually drives the cab while delivering witty banter and hurling a slew of questions toward the contestants.
Regardless of how well they do, contestants never pay a fare for riding in the Cash Cab. Bailey also has assistants who hop into the cab after he has revealed his identity to passengers. The original run ended in , but the series was revived in It moved to Bravo in If you are fortunate to hail the Cash Cab, keep in mind that the cab has about 10 cameras inside of it that are filming constantly.
Sorry to take away some of the TV magic but not all contestants on Cash Cab just happen upon the game show on wheels.
Ben Bailey, a comedian and licensed cab driver who hosts the program, is known for greeting passengers in a fake accent as they climb into the cab. Helpful tips. Are Cash Cab contestants prescreened? Is Cash Cab still filming in ? He got the Cash Cab job, and left his old chauffeuring job behind. Esquire reported that a black van housing the audio and video team trails behind the car.
Bailey also has assistants who hop into the cab after he has revealed his identity to passengers. These assistants also, crucially, keep track of how much money is on the line.
Not all passengers are chosen randomly off the street. Some are prescreened, although even that process is a little sneaky. According to previous contestants , the Cash Cab staff often approaches people by saying they work for a made-up series called Show Me New York , where residents share their favorite spots in the city.
If they do well, the staffers will tell them to go to a certain location to film their segment. While most people shriek in delight when the lights go off in the Cash Cab, not everyone is into the game. Bailey told NPR that when the show was first starting out, people regularly declined to participate.
Producing a show on the fly like that is also way more difficult than the traditional game show Here are some things you may not have known about Cash Cab.
Cash Cab host and driver Ben Bailey moved to Los Angeles in the early s to pursue a career as a stand-up comedian. He worked at The Comedy Store and performed support services like answering phones and bouncing before he was finally offered the chance to go up on stage one night because he got the other comedians waiting backstage to laugh. Bailey then did stand-up for more than a decade before he auditioned for Cash Cab, and it was his energy, charm, and ability to think quickly on his feet that won him the gig.
He'd never driven a cab, but he had worked as a limo driver to help pay the bills during his comedy days. Bailey, of course, had to move to New York when production of Cash Cab got underway.
He also had to go through the extensive training and legal paperwork required to become a fully licensed taxi driver. California had no such regulations for limo drivers. Per the guidelines of the Taxi and Limousine Commission, Bailey had to take a six-hour defensive driving course, get a signed letter from a doctor declaring him physically healthy enough to drive a cab all day, prove he was proficient in the English language, attend Taxi School, and pass the Taxi and Limousine Commission's cab driver exam, which consists of lots of questions about reading maps and New York City geography.
Bailey successfully passed every aspect and received his New York City "hack license" "hack" comes from "hackney," a horse-drawn vehicle for hire. It's hard enough to ask strangers a bunch of trivia questions while also navigating traffic in one of the world's busiest and most crowded cities.
That's why Bailey doesn't and probably couldn't keep track of all the workings of a Cash Cab game in progress. One of several production assistants Bailey calls them " the Vanna Whites of Cash Cab" rides shotgun and does most of the effects.
The assistant triggers the flashing lights, music, video monitors, and other in-cab game machinery. The assistant is also in charge of scoring, as well as shuffling contestants in and out of the cab and getting them to sign release forms. One thing the production assistant doesn't do is feed Bailey the trivia questions—those are provided to the host through his earpiece.
So while Bailey doesn't operate the game machinery because he has to drive, he is responsible for pushing the flag down on Cash Cab 's real, working fare meter. The New York Taxi and Limousine Commission requires all New York City cabs to have a working meter so as to have a legal record that each trip took place. However, those lucky enough to land in the Cash Cab—win or lose—don't have to actually pay for the ride.
Bailey has joked—however accurately—that the only two free forms of transportation in the Big Apple are the Staten Island Ferry and appearing on Cash Cab.
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