Other poster: Aside from that, you've got your usual suspects, localized College Bowl clones (mostly for high schools or small area colleges) and lottery game shows. Worth mentioning: At present, Ohio is the only remaining state lottery to feature a regular, weekly game show (the long-running Cash Explosion Double Play).
On the blog I try to keep up with news about local shows. Probably the biggest story in recent years was Washington D.C.'s Mac McGarry retiring after 572 years (slight exaggeration) as host of the local It's Academic. And there were a few stories about Ohio's Cash Explosion surviving to its 25th anniversary.
There are a surprising number of local high school and college quizzers around the country. It's cheap programming, after all. Stories about them turn up in Google News, and then in my faux tweets. Local sports quizzers are also an interesting variant, like The Batter's Box in Chicago.
I remember three lottery game shows from my youth in Connecticut that I've been trying to find video evidence of for years, but have had no luck whatsoever. One, The Money Tree, I barely remember anything about except its title, while the other two (Connecticut's Rainbow Jackpot and Massachusetts' Big Money Game) I fuzzily recall the gameplay of both. Anyone else remember these?
ReplyDeleteAlso, growing up straddling the state line between CT and MA, I got to experience two different academic quizzers, High School Bowl out of WTNH in New Haven and As Schools Match Wits out of Springfield's WWLP. I know the latter is still around today, though now airing on Springfield's PBS station (WGBY). Here in Columbus, the format once called In the Know recently returned to broadcast TV following the closure of the ONN cable network last year; during its time on cable it picked up a corporate sponsor and is currently known as the Westfield Insurance Brain Game. It now airs on WBNS Saturday nights.
And although it's indeed been twenty-five years since the debut of Cash Explosion, two things are worth mentioning: One, the familiar "Double Play" format didn't start until about 18 months after the premiere; it was originally a much simpler game, with seven players trying to climb to the top of a pyramidal game board for a flat $50,000. And two, the number doesn't take into account Make Me Famous, Make Me Rich, which replaced Cash Explosion in October '06 to results that can only be described as "disastrous" -- yet it lasted almost exactly one year before the Ohio Lottery mercifully pulled the plug and reinstated Cash Explosion as it had been.
I've put up a few faux tweets about High School Quiz Show (dull name) and Brain Game. And there have been a few stories about other local shows, like one in Atlanta.
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