What Would You Do? (2008 TV program)
What Would You Do? (commonly abbreviated as WWYD, and formerly known as Primetime: What Would You Do? through the program's fifth season) is an American situational hidden camera television series that has been broadcast on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) since February 26, 2008. Created by Chris Whipple, the show with a social experiment format follows the reactions of passing strangers as they encounter conflict or illegal activity in a public setting, unaware that it is all staged and being recorded with hidden cameras. Throughout all of its sixteen seasons, the show has been hosted by news correspondent John Quiñones.
| What Would You Do? | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Hidden camera |
| Created by | Chris Whipple |
| Presented by | John Quiñones |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 16 |
| No. of episodes | 137 (+10 specials) (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producers |
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| Camera setup | Multi-camera |
| Running time | 60 minutes |
| Production companies |
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| Original release | |
| Network | ABC |
| Release | February 26, 2008 – present |
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Appearing periodically on ABC's Primetime from 2005 to 2007, What Would You Do? became an instant success for the ABC network. Following the 2007 writers' strike, ABC ordered the first season of the show. The series was annually renewed for a second, third, fourth, and fifth season. Starting with the sixth season, the show began to feature guest appearances, which included Barbara Corcoran, Howie Mandel, and Meredith Vieira. Following the seventh season, What Would You Do? aired its first Christmas special in its eighth season. This was followed by guest appearances by Daymond John and Pnina Tornai in the show's ninth season, Winnie Harlow in the show's tenth season, and an era without guests in the show's eleventh and twelfth seasons. A 10-year anniversary special was aired in 2017 as the season finale of the thirteenth season, titled "What Would You Do?: Then and Now", featuring scenarios originally aired on Primetime and in season one being remade with the same actors in the same locations. Following the fourteenth and fifteenth seasons of the show, ABC announced that they would air episodes filmed before the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the show's sixteenth season, as well as a special hosted by Gio Benitez as part of the sixteenth season's season finale. In May 2023, ABC renewed the series for a seventeenth season after a three-year hiatus.
As of September 8, 2020, 147 episodes of What Would You Do? have aired, including ten specials, concluding the sixteenth season.