Game show follies

News from Alex

2012-02-12T15:54:00.000-06:00

My feud with BuzzerBlog's Alex Davis has gone public a few times. He's said some unflattering things about me, and I've occasionally been less than complimentary about him. Probably the oddest thing about Alex, from my POV, is his Brit-mania. Not really sure why, but Alex just loves all things British, or at least all things British-game-show. His tagline "the British are better than us" has become well-known around the game show Internets.

But enough of the personal back-and-forth. Alex runs a non-faux Twitter feed, where I noticed a couple of interesting items recently. First, he's trying to raise money for a full-scale studio version of his War of the Words game. He's asking his readers for contributions to renting a studio and putting together a decent prize package. Again, I'm not Alex's biggest fan, but good luck on his entrepreneurial ambitions.

Another item was a string of tweets on Family Feud's off-color moments. This subject has been getting some web play lately. Alex is a big fan of Steve Harvey, and I mean a big fan. So I can well believe his tweet that he regularly deletes angry comments at BuzzerBlog about the show's less-than-clean bits.

Personally, I don't mind such material on Feud all that much. My bigger beef is with Harvey making the show into his personal comedy act. But Steve has improved the ratings, with an assist from methodology changes at Nielsen. And that's what (literally) counts in TV.

Sweeping up and smarting up

2012-02-11T16:02:00.000-06:00

We're in February sweeps now, when Nielsen does something or other that's important to the ratings. Okay, what they actually do is unleash a gazillion paper diaries on the nation to get some idea of what we're watching on TV.

Sooner or later, set top box data might replace paper, but we're not they're yet. Or at least Nielsen isn't there yet. Rentrak is boldly going where no man has gone before in STB data, especially in those pesky smaller markets where paper diaries are still used.

Anyway, a poster on Matt Ottinger's board wondered whether game shows save their "smartest" contestants for sweeps periods. Gotta admit, this is one of many, many subjects I never thought about much. Matt typed an interesting reply:

I think it's pretty obvious that Millionaire - which, as others have mentioned, has a lot of flexibility here - saves their best games and highest paydays for sweeps...they tape their games, and when they have one with a smart contestant who wins a lot of money, they set it aside and air it during sweeps. Jeopardy, again as others have mentioned, typically reserves sweeps time for their tournaments.

It's true that Millionaire just had a quarter-million winner in sweeps. And Jeopardy is, of course, running their college and teachers tournaments this month. So Matt looks to be right, or at least he has some recent evidence on his side.

Being wrong

2012-02-10T19:23:00.001-06:00

I thought Dancing With the Stars would do a lot better on GSN than it did. The network is now cutting the show back a lot after underwhelming numbers.

As you might expect, a few of my buddies on the GSN board are letting me know how wrong I was. We all gotta take our lumps now and then...

Other poster: Yeah I went back to the original DWTS thread, and you were WAY wrong. You predicted the show would easily get about 500,000 viewers, and would easily become GSN's most watched show. You also told us all we didn't know what we were talking about, and that we didn't depict GSN's real audience. How does it feel to be wrong?

In response, I originally posted something snarky but eventually toned it down: "Won't be the last time I'm wrong. Nobody's infallible." Another of my good friends joined in: "I tried to tell you it was going to be a bomb." I just ate the humblest pie again: "You were right and I was wrong."

What can I say? Dancing looked like the perfect show for GSN's old-skewing, female-skewing audience. I blew the call. And GSN apparently blew some serious money, by the network's thrifty standards.

It's an election year

2012-02-09T21:38:00.000-06:00

A faux tweet noted Chuck Woolery's appearance at CPAC, now running in Washington. Media reporters have long spotted the trend toward the political right among game show hosts. Which is something of an oddity in the definitely left-leaning media business.

It's easy to overstate the "trend." The syndie hosts, for instance, split pretty much down the middle. Pat Sajak and Alex Trebek lean right, while Steve Harvey and Meredith Vieira tend to the port side. Harvey even got upset with a couple of black pundits who dared to criticize Obama.

Politics and game shows may have collided most directly when The Price is Right's producers reportedly vetted Rosie O'Donnell as the successor to Bob Barker. After a gale of jokes about The Price is Left, they settled on the much less divisive Drew Carey. Rumor is that Drew tends Libertarian. But he doesn't lecture people about it...at least, not very often or very loudly.

Hey, it's a free country and game show hosts can get as political as they want. Except when they're actually hosting their game shows. I don't care for politics injected directly into what should be just fun. There's an old saying about Western Union and sending a message. (Once upon a time, Western Union really did send messages.)

Calling all casts

2012-02-08T21:00:00.000-06:00

A couple casting calls have gone out for new game shows previously noted on this blog.

The CW is looking for "thrill-seeking daredevils" to play a devilish game of musical chairs in Oh, Sit! At the other end of the propriety spectrum, GSN wants folks with "great personal testimonies of coming to faith" for its new American Bible Challenge. The Bible show doesn't care for daredevils but would like "competitive spirits."

The calls have one thing in common: contestants have to live in or near the Los Angeles area. Which eliminates me, though I'm not looking for a berth on a game show any time soon. The Oh, Sit! call also says applicants must be "physically able to compete in an obstacle course." Such ability is probably not crucial on the Bible quizzer.

The only age requirement is 18+, so neither show is blatantly discriminating on age. But I bet the CW will only pick young'uns for its target audience of twenty-something ladies. The Bible show will likely include some more mature folks.

Syndies edge down

2012-02-07T17:27:00.000-06:00

A pretty blah week for syndicated game shows. TVNewsCheck spreads the discouraging word for the week ending January 29...

Wheel of Fortune 7.6 - down a tick
Jeopardy 6.2 - down a couple ticks
Family Feud 3.1 - down a tick, seeing a pattern?
Millionaire 2.6 - down a tick, I told you there was a pattern

Not the greatest week but hardly a disaster. Supposedly, "people using television" levels were down in the week due to unseasonably warm weather. We blame global warming, as a certain political pundit likes to say.

When TV by the Numbers puts up their top 25 syndie list, I'll post the viewership averages. But you knew that already, didn't you? Hey, they got the list up: Wheel of Fortune 12.1 million (weekend repeat 5.9 million), Jeopardy 9.7 million, Family Feud 4.6 million. Meredith just missed.

Meanwhile, Wipeout continues its ominous descent. The latest ABC run on February 2 tied a season low with a 1.8 18-49 rating and 6.0 million viewers. Yeah, it's up against American Idol right now, but the numbers were soft from the start of the season. If Who's Still Standing couldn't keep its place on woeful NBC with a 1.7 18-49 rating, I wonder how long Wipeout will hang around ABC with 1.8.

UPDATE: Douglas posted the GSN viewer numbers for the January 30-February 5 week. Overall averages were 310K/229K viewers prime time/total day. Dancing With the Stars continued to bomb but some old reliables like Deal or No Deal and Family Feud delivered.

College kids everywhere

2012-02-06T19:39:00.000-06:00

Google news is busting out all over with stories about college kids on Jeopardy.

Besides the story about Harvard's Carrie Tian mentioned in the faux tweets, there's one about William and Mary's Zach McDonnell, and one about North Texas' Monica Thieu, and one about Stanford's Matt Olson, and one about Indiana's Sarah Bauer, and one about YouTube's Weird Al Yankovic.

Oh, scratch that last one. But the Weird Al story does mention I Lost on Jeopardy. Which, unfortunately, will be the theme song for all but one of the fifteen students when the tournament wraps up February 14. But the student left standing will get a hundred grand, which is about $99,990 more than I ever had when I was in college.

I've already grumped about too many Jeopardy tournaments. But it's hard to begrudge college kids a shot at real money. Especially when the tournament is a real-life Revenge of the Nerds. Bookworms and trivia geeks on campus get their day in the sun, or at least syndication. That's not bad at all.

Hosts with the mosts

2012-02-05T17:11:00.000-06:00

At about.com Carrie Grosvenor reports that Best Game Show Host is a hot category in this year's Readers' Choice awards. We won't know the finalists until February 22, but the nominations are coming in fast.

Last year the five finalists were Drew Carey, Jeff Foxworthy, Steve Harvey, Alex Trebek and Pat Sajak. None of these guys put me off with their hosting style, though I'm not super thrilled with Harvey's constant standup routine on Family Feud. But Steve has breathed life back into Feud's ratings, so who cares about my picky criticisms?

Sajak won last year as part of Wheel of Fortune's overall sweep of the awards. Another win this year would not be a crushing surprise. Whatever you might think of Pat and Vanna and all the rest, Wheel draws by far the biggest audience of any game show. Pat's understated but sly style doesn't hurt. Neither will the laughable hoohah over his "drunk" comments.

One guy I wish had made the finals last year was Ben Bailey. He keeps Cash Cab fresh, as anybody could see by comparing Beth Melewski's flat style on the Chicago-based episodes. And after a pretty stiff start, Ben also relaxed and thrived on Who's Still Standing. The guy deserves his Best Game Show Host Emmys, and I hope he lands among Carrie's final five this year.

Wipe-ology

2012-02-04T13:58:00.000-06:00

As everybody knows, lots of old game shows got wiped. That was back when video tape was expensive and few people figured old game shows would be worth anything.

Game show boards regularly argue over the term "wiped," which is not supposed to be technically correct. Instead, we should say "reused" or "degaussed" or something. But wouldn't you know, somebody came up with an old Brit video showing a tape getting wiped. And the narrator actually says the magic word, "wiped."

Anyway, Matt Ottinger's board, after chewing over the niceties of "wiped" vs. "degaussed", got into which shows received the, er, treatment. A poster made an interesting comment:

Conversations about what exists and what (likely) doesn't always fascinate me. There are numerous other shows that had off-network reruns right through the '70s (at least in some cities, according to old TV Guides). Gambit is one that comes to mind, as is Joker's Wild. For years we thought all that was left of CBS Joker was the final season - then GSN surprised us by running most of the first season (1972-73) after the whole run was found at WCBS...I guess the real answer is, because a lot of stuff has been discovered over the years, you can never really know if something's truly gone.

For instance, those really early What's My Line eps "lost to history" (as the episode guide says) might turn up somewhere someday. Hey, maybe I've got 'em in my attic! Wikipedia often asserts that such-and-such seasons of so-and-so show are presumed lost. But as the poster says, "lost" episodes pop up now and then.

Boycott 'em

2012-02-03T20:03:00.000-06:00

KKTV, the CBS affiliate in Colorado Springs, has bumped Jeopardy from 6:30PM to 4:00PM to make room for more news. At least one fan won't take it sitting down.

Carl Hansen, who builds race car engines for a living, squawked: "I don't need more news. And I'm willing to bet there are a lot of people like me who would rather have an intellectually stimulating program to unwind with when they get home instead of over-sensationalized hysteria about the weather, etc."

Sorry, Mr. Hansen, but TV has lived on hysteria since the dawn of the tube of boob. Anyway, Carl started a boycott-KKTV page on Facebook. So far 13 other folks have signed on, which won't inspire fear at the station.

To mollify Jeopardy fans, KKTV runs old episodes on one of its digital subchannels at 6:30PM. The CBS station in my home Dallas-Fort Worth area does the same. And this September, those famous "contractual issues" will be fixed and KKTV will start rerunning the new Jeopardy eps at 6:30PM.

Meanwhile the boycott will have no effect, of course. But Facebook exists for this sort of thing, doesn't it?

Five things I learned from contestant stories

2012-02-02T19:23:00.000-06:00

The faux tweets link to lots of contestant stories, mostly scrounged from Google news. After a while some common themes start to emerge. Five of them...

1) The Wheel of Fortune set is small. I mean, really small. To hear the contestants talk, they tape the show in a closet. A small closet...but with a really heavy wheel. It's hard to spin that thing.

2) Jeopardy is for nerds. Don't mean this in a bad way. I'm an actuary, which makes me practically a champion nerd. But Jeopardy contestants always talk about how they're bookworms and nerdy grubbers after all sorts of trivial knowledge. Which is good preparation for the show, after all.

3) Meredith is really nice on Millionaire. Funny thing, she always seems a little chilly to me, emotionally distant compared to folksy old Regis. But contestants swear up and down that she's super-friendly and supportive. So what do I know?

4) Steve Harvey does lots of standup on Family Feud. This is immediately apparent to anybody who watches the show. And what else do you expect from a standup comic? But contestants often talk about how long the tapings run as Steve does his shtick. The episodes get edited down later.

5) Lots of people really want to be on game shows. Stories about auditions usually mention hordes of would-be contestants storming the talent evaluators in hopes of that precious TV appearance. We're all looking for that fifteen minutes, or twenty-two minutes plus commercials.

Cancelled

2012-02-01T20:01:00.000-06:00

Who's Still Standing has almost certainly breathed its last. There's been no formal announcement, but there usually isn't. The show's page on NBC.com says the next showing is...blank. Not a good sign.

Strangely enough, the show didn't perform that badly by NBC's admittedly miserable standards. The final episode this week fetched a 1.7 18-49 rating and six-and-a-half million viewers. Considering some of the numbers NBC regularly draws for its disaster-area prime time, the network can (and will) do worse. Much worse.

As for the quality of the show, I don't want to argue any more. Who's Still Standing got trashed a lot on the web, but I liked the pace, the exit gimmick, and the host. But like fans everywhere who see their shows get cancelled, there's not much I can do. Write a letter to NBC? Yeah, sure.

But maybe I'll put up a blog post. With a picture of Ben and a couple contestants. Why not?

Syndies: a couple of new season highs

2012-01-31T18:25:00.002-06:00

Not much ratings movement among syndicated game shows for the week ending January 22. But TVNewsCheck does say that a couple shows hit new season highs. The good news for Alex and Meredith...

Wheel of Fortune 7.7 - down a tick but still leads all syndies in household ratings
Jeopardy 6.4 - up a tick to that season high
Family Feud 3.2 - flat but at a nice level
Millionaire 2.7 - also up a tick to a season high

All four shows made the top 25 syndie list at TV by the Numbers. The viewership averages: Wheel of Fortune 12.5 million (weekend repeat 5.9 million), Jeopardy 10.2 million, Family Feud 4.8 million, Millionaire 3.9 million. Everybody can be happy about these audiences.

In other Nielsen news, the game show pair on Monday night at NBC went out with subdued ratings. Who's Still Standing, in its last hurrah, pulled a 1.7 18-49 rating with 6.5 million total viewers. The corresponding numbers for the Fear Factor repeat were 1.5 and 4.0 million. Fear Factor got a rerun because NBC chickened out on a literally ass-inine stunt. But the show will reappear now and then.

UPDATE: Dancing With the Stars is really bombing on GSN. The best it did was 264K for one of the Friday night runs. The bad numbers dragged GSN's overall prime time/total day viewership averages down to 287K/217K for the week of January 23-29. Look for Dancing to get cut back soon. Gotta admit I'm surprised. I thought it was a great demo fit for GSN.

Good book quizzer

2012-01-30T20:24:00.000-06:00

Last year stories popped up about a Bible-based quizzer on GSN. The network reportedly offered the host job to Mike Huckabee, ordained minister and presidential candidate, but he declined. Huckabee instead chose political punditry. GSN went into the great original production hiatus, and the Bible stories faded.

But now the stories are back. GSN is piloting The American Bible Challenge, produced by Michael Davies of Millionaire renown. Amy Davis, GSN's programming veep, says the show will feature an "entertaining, unconventional format that makes The Good Book more accessible to the whole family." Nice to know the Bible is going to be "accessible."

I shouldn't sound so cynical. The show could be an intriguing quizzer. At least greed won't be the main motivator. Not that I have anything against greed on game shows. But it might look a little odd on a Bible show. Contestants will play for their churches.

No word on format details or the host. Probably won't be Jerry Springer. This doesn't seem like a compatible project for Baggage.

Technical difficulties

2012-01-29T14:59:00.000-06:00

Washington D.C.'s high school quizzer It's Academic just endured the dreaded technical glitch. Sadly, this glitch was a biggie. It wiped out today's entire show.

Woodgrove High School won the game but the episode didn't get recorded properly. It's Academic posted an apology on Facebook: "We are all devastated by this, and extend our deepest apologies to the three teams, their families, friends and classmates, and to the teachers who had worked to prepare them for their appearance."

GSN suffers technical foul-ups regularly, thanks to its shoestring budget. For some odd reason the network often has problems with its aspect ratio, so the picture doesn't quite fit the screen. Stories abound, of course, about technical snafus on various game shows, necessitating retakes and re-dos.

Naturally Stoned, the old Chuck Woolery reality series, showed one goof on Lingo when the judges couldn't decide if a team's W-E-A-L-D guess was a real word. After a cursing fit from producer Phil Gurin, they tossed the round and played a new puzzle. But at least the entire episode didn't disappear into vapor. It's Academic really screwed up.

Drunk or no drunk

2012-01-28T11:01:00.000-06:00

Pat Sajak's adventures in drinking, exaggerated or not, have spawned a lot of Net chatter. On Matt Ottinger's board, a poster took the chance to debunk a (supposed) myth:

Alex Trebek was not intoxicated on the 1980 High Rollers finale. This rumor likely stemmed from the fact that the finale was the only circulating episode of the '78-80 run of HR among tape traders for many years, and many people thought that the odd jokes and non-sequiturs uttered by Trebek indicated he'd been drinking. However, other episodes that have since surfaced show him making similar jokes and comments; it was just his style of humor at the time.

Don't ask me, I wasn't there. But the Trebek story has even shown up in a comment on this blog. You can judge for yourself because the final High Rollers episode is now on YouTube.

Nowadays Trebek looks like the planet's soberest guy on Jeopardy. Gotta admit, an episode of the august quizzer would be pretty funny with an inebriated Alex. Love to hear him try to pronounce some of those polysyllabic foreign names under the influence. Hammurabi might come out Hammmmmurrrrraabbbbbaaabbbaabbbaaaaa.

Jerry gets another syndie?

2012-01-27T19:39:00.001-06:00

Baggage, GSN's combo remake of Dating Game plus the suitcase-reveal gimmick from Deal or No Deal, may be headed for syndication this fall. The show has reportedly been sold in 70% of the country. Baggage is getting pitched at NATPE, the annual cattle call for would-be syndies.

We'll see if the show earns anything more than exposure at 2:30AM instead of vacuum cleaner infomercials. Baggage got a syndication experiment on ten stations last year with unimpressive results. Once upon a time the show was the hottest thing on GSN. But the rerun grind has eroded the numbers considerably.

GSN hasn't made any new episodes for a while and none seem to be in the works. Don't know if the syndicated episodes would just be reruns or if there are plans to restart new production. My personal opinion of the show is fair to middlin'. Some of the secrets in the singles' suitcases are funny. Some are pretty cheesy. Some are plain weird. And you could say the same about the contestants.

Jerry Springer is competent as the host, and at least Baggage doesn't tolerate fisticuffs. Which puts it a half-step above Jerry's other syndie.

The category is Food & Drink(s)

2012-01-26T16:55:00.000-06:00

It's the biggest news in game shows since Watson! Well, sort of. Pat Sajak's half-serious "admission" that he might have imbibed between long ago Wheel of Fortune tapings has set off a fast and furious Net reaction.

Some generally respectable news outlets have joined in the liquid fun. The New York Daily News is running a poll (I swear) on this enormously significant issue. Right now the don't-care options are winning huge. Wish the News offered another choice in the poll: "I take a drink every time somebody buys a vowel."

Some Net posters have commented about the rumors of rampant boozing on the ancient Match Game. If I had been a contestant, I would have gotten good and sloshed, too. Hey, Richard, match this!

Halfway seriously, Sajak's image is hardly likely to get drubbed as a result of this silliness. Even if he batted back a few during some of the tapings, it was a long time ago. Nowadays, Wheel is so straight and sober, it makes Jeopardy look risqué. But game show bloggers everywhere are grateful for the story. I'd drink to it, in fact, except I hardly ever drink any more.

UPDATE: As you might expect, Pat Sajak now admits he was exaggerating a bit. "To be honest, and I hate to put an end to this drinking thing because we've gotten a lot of mileage out of it, but it was probably a half a dozen times we went across the street and had a margarita." Aw gee, Pat, just when the party was getting good, you take the punch bowl away.

Syndies: the big two get a little bigger

2012-01-25T17:05:00.000-06:00

The week of January 9-15 was kind to the big two syndicated game shows, and not bad to the other two. TVNewsCheck delivers the pleasant news...

Wheel of Fortune 7.8 - up a couple ticks to a season-high and leads all syndies
Jeopardy 6.3 - up a tick
Family Feud 3.2 - flat but Steve can live with it
Millionaire 2.6 - flat but Meredith can live with it, too

TV by the Numbers posts their usual top 25 list with the viewership averages: Wheel of Fortune 12.4 million, Jeopardy 9.9 million, Family Feud 4.7 million, Millionaire 3.7 million. Meredith made the list for once! And everybody can make money off these numbers.

In other ratings news NBC's Who's Still Standing and ABC's Wipeout got oddly similar numbers for their latest episodes. Who's Still Standing pulled a 1.7 18-49 rating and 6.4 million total viewers last Monday. Wipeout snagged a 1.8 18-49 rating and 5.9 million viewers last Thursday.

Who's Still Standing looks finished after next week. Wipeout's not in immediate danger but may be nearing its sell-by date.

UPDATE: Dancing With the Stars had an underwhelming debut on GSN last Saturday night. The five-hour block from 6:00PM to 11:00PM averaged 308K viewers. The reruns did much worse. For the entire January 16-22 week GSN averaged 283K/232K viewers prime time/total day. Forgettable, to say the least. The five-hour marathons each night: Sun 334K, Mon 200K, Tue 279K, Wed 255K, Thu 339K, Fri 210K.

Deepest trivia

2012-01-24T21:21:00.000-06:00

Just watched the first couple episodes of MLB Network's Baseball IQ. I can say two things for sure. One, you have to be a baseball fan to appreciate this show. Two, you must have a trivial mind to appreciate this show.

Both conditions apply to me, so I found Baseball IQ oddly interesting. Two trivia mavens from major league front offices battle over questions like, "Name the fourteen perfect game pitchers since 1957." The mavens go back and forth replying to the question, until somebody blanks or gives a wrong answer.

By the way, neither of the guys remembered Sandy Koufax on the perfect game list, though I kept shouting the name at the screen. How soon we forget. Matt Vasgersian hosts competently, keeping things moving with what I'll call play-by-play commentary. There are also plenty of clips of baseball action which relate vaguely to the questions.

The show could have used a live audience. After a while the library-ish quiet got a little creepy. And the format is broken, since only the final bidding round seems to determine the outcome. But above all, folks not interested in baseball trivia should steer clear. This show is strictly for aficionados like me.

Politicians still standing

2012-01-23T20:12:00.000-06:00

I've complained about comparisons of the Republican presidential debates to game shows. It's a lazy cliché used by pundits when they run out of fresh things to say about the endless string of debates.

But I can't help noting that NBC is preceding the umpteenth debate tonight with an episode of Who's Still Standing. After the grinding series of debates the candidates have started dropping through the floor. We're now down to the final four, and I'm looking for the speed round to begin shortly. Maybe we can get down to one nominee in a hurry.

Oh, enough of the clichéd comparisons that I used to complain about. Tonight was probably the second-last episode of Who's Still Standing. The show has gotten mixed reviews and mediocre ratings. Still, I like the fast pace and the cute exit gimmick, even if it was swiped from Russian Roulette.

Tonight's episode featured an intelligent central contestant who lasted through six rounds and took home significant money. The speed round among the four remaining contestants piled up twenty grand for the lucky winner, who chose to disappear through the floor. Too bad the show is apparently going down the hatch with him. Bye, as Vanna would say.

Jeopardy's tournament month

2012-01-22T09:53:00.000-06:00

As the faux tweets have noted, February will be Jeopardy tournament month. The first two weeks see 15 students battle in the college tournament. After the students finish up, the last two weeks bring on, you guessed it, 15 teachers to duke it out in the teachers tournament.

Tournaments on Jeopardy go back forever. YouTube offers a 1968 episode where host Art Fleming mentions the next tournament of champions. The ToC is the granddaddy of all Jeopardy tournaments, of course, where the best of the best face off.

Except for the ToC, which is something of an event in the annual game show calendar, I'm not really the biggest fan of Jeopardy tournaments. I guess they bring some variety to the schedule, but I like plain old Jeopardy, where a contestant can now go on forever (theoretically). It's nice that the show gives a special nod to teachers and students. But, after all, they could compete in regular episodes just like everybody else.

Oh, I'm getting too grumpy. Good luck to the teachers and students next month.

Garry and John

2012-01-21T13:26:00.000-06:00

They must have been invented as an opposing pair. For over a decade Garry Moore and John Daly led Goodson-Todman's matched set of panel shows, I've Got a Secret and What's My Line. The first one started out as the in-house ripoff of the second. But Garry's personality pushed IGAS further and further from WML's august dignity as the years went on.

Moore was the ultimate American everyman, cheery and down-to-earth. His background was pure entertainment, first in radio and then on the box with pictures. Daly was dignified and patrician, with a hoity-toity accent and a background in serious news. He announced the Pearl Harbor attack on CBS radio and covered World War II's Italian campaign in person.

It's no wonder that the shows diverged as time went on. I've Got a Secret became more of a hellzapoppin' variety show, with the actual gameplay sometimes an afterthought. Daly had no patience with such hijinks and told the producers to stuff any ideas of similarly remaking What's My Line. As you might expect, IGAS was usually the higher-rated of the two shows. TV is an entertainment medium, after all.

But WML would get a bit a revenge in the far-off aftertime. Daly's show got the better numbers on GSN.

IRRELEVANT UPDATE: For no particular reason, I've decided to keep the last dozen faux tweets on the blog instead of the last ten. But once they're gone, they're still gone.

Drew's five million

2012-01-20T18:10:00.000-06:00

Like ol' man river, The Price is Right keeps on rollin' along. Never a favorite of my shop-a-phobic self, the show still attracts about five million viewers every day. That makes it the most-watched daytime show on broadcast network TV.

True, the demos skew older than ol' man river. But TPiR draws so many people that it still ranks right up there in the beloved F18-49 and F25-54 demos. The show runs a gazillion different shopping games and has stayed fresh enough after four decades.

Being about as old as that river myself, I can remember the original black-and-white version with Bill Cullen. I can even remember Johnny Olson belting out "come on down" on Match Game...and Gary Burghoff, well, coming on down. Criticizing The Price is Right has become almost pointless. It's been such a game show monument from time out of mind, you might as well criticize the Statue of Liberty.

Drew Carey has settled in as host now, and the sour comparisons with Bob Barker have mostly faded away. The show has endured an almost ridiculous string of lawsuits from various models, beginning with Barker's ill-fated and ill-considered romance with Dian Parkinson. But even lawyers have to make a living, and the litigation hasn't stopped the endless seasons from rollin' and rollin'.

Vote early, vote often

2012-01-19T17:45:00.000-06:00

Seems appropriate for an election year. And Carrie Grosvenor has been so nice to this blog that I have to return the favor. Carrie is now running the second annual Readers' Choice awards at her about.com game show site.

Nominations are now open for a slew of game-show-related categories. They range from Best Game Show (natch) to Best Mobile Game Show Site. Wheel of Fortune pretty much swept the awards last year, and a repeat for Pat and Vanna this year wouldn't amaze me. After all, it's only the most-watched game show in the country.

Carrie says that nominations close February 15, and the five finalists in each category will be announced on February 22. Last year I made the finalists in Best Independent/Fan Game Show Blog or Site. You don't want to know how I did in the final voting. Okay, I'll tell ya: somebody's got to finish last in any election! Ask Rick Perry, except he's out of the race now.

But enough about me and my woeful election results. Head on over to Carrie's site and nominate your favorites in each category.

Syndies: the big two bounce back

2012-01-18T19:30:00.000-06:00

With the holidays finally in the rear view mirror, the big two syndicated game shows saw a nice recovery. Steve and Meredith didn't do so bad, either. TVNewsCheck brings the happy numbers for the week of January 2-8...

Wheel of Fortune 7.6 - up eight ticks and back ahead of Judge Judy
Jeopardy 6.2 - up five ticks
Family Feud 3.2 - flat but okay
Millionaire 2.6 - flat

TV by the Numbers says that Pat and Vanna also outpaced the field in total viewers. The viewership averages: Wheel of Fortune 12.2 million, Jeopardy 9.7 million, Family Feud 4.7 million. Meredith just missed the top 25 list. Maybe next week.

Sure, the demos skew older than really old hills. But in the 500-channel universe, these are impressive total viewer numbers.

In other ratings news, Wipeout may be slipping a little on ABC. But the show is doing nice business, by cable standards, in reruns on truTV. The latest run on Friday the 13th scared up a 0.7 18-49 rating and 1.8 million viewers. Best numbers yet for the retreads.

Is this normal, Oprah?

2012-01-17T19:33:00.000-06:00

A few days ago I posted a note about Are You Normal, America?, a new game show coming to OWN. (That's Oprah's, er, own network.) Now it looks like a casting outfit is recruiting contestants for the show.

At least the call asks for people who can "decide what is normal to the general public." Which does sound pretty much like the premise for the OWN project. The show is supposedly "comedy-driven," so I don't expect spectacularly interesting gameplay. Looks more like an attempted yukfest.

What really catches the eye is the top prize of a hundred grand. Not bad by cable standards. Though if anybody can afford the money, it's the affluent Ms. Winfrey. Contestants should be "fun, energetic, quirky and big personalities." So if you're no fun, listless, non-quirky and a little personality...try Jeopardy. (Just kidding, Alex.)

Of course, this casting call might not be for the OWN show. But I haven't seen any other game show projects lately based on deciding what's normal and what ain't. If you want to try out, good luck.

Back and forth

2012-01-16T19:00:00.000-06:00

Quizzers and word games are my favorites, as I've mentioned a few times here. And wouldn't you know, I just bounced back and forth between two of the best. GSN showed one of their 4,356,721 reruns of Bill Engvall's Lingo, while a local station ran an episode of Jeopardy from last season.

The remote came in handy as I flipped between the shows. Thanks to a quick thumb and some timely commercials, I caught a lot of both episodes, including the complete final rounds. I guessed some of the words in the bonus round on Lingo but bombed on the caduceus in Final Jeopardy. (It's the medical symbol with the two snakes.)

Both shows got me talking to the screen, since both are built for play-along value. Lingo has been rerun so often that I remembered the contestants but couldn't remember any of the words. Which is the secret of the show's resistance to GSN's legendary rerun abuse. Didn't have any such issues with Jeopardy. The episode was completely new to me.

One thing became clear really quick: the difference between the hosts. Alex Trebek was scholarly and gentlemanly as always. Bill Engvall was wise-ass as always. At one point Engvall told an attractive but wayward contestant: "It's lucky you're so pretty." Hard to imagine Alex saying that.

Wheel of bankruptcy

2012-01-15T16:18:00.000-06:00

We have such fun times on the GSN boards. One poster had some unusual worries, which I tried to calm...

Other poster: What do you think would happen even with a possible upcoming Dancing With the Stars fiasco of toilet ratings GSN (and its parent company, Liberty Media) files for bankruptcy? Would this mean the demise of the cable channel in 2012?

Hey, we got some humor on these boards!

First, Liberty Media is no longer one of GSN's corporate parents. Sony and DirecTV (a spinoff of Liberty Media) own the network. In an agreement between the two in 2011, Sony took day-to-day operational control of GSN and will assume majority ownership of the network over the next three years. (So much for bankruptcy this year.)

Second, GSN's recent ratings - about 300K viewers or a little higher in prime time - aren't spectacular by the network's historical standards. But they won't drive thrifty GSN into the ground. In 2007, for instance, GSN averaged around 250K viewers in prime time and still turned $50 million in positive cash flow.

Third, you're about ten years too late with your concerns. GSN did endure a brush with death in 2000-01, under the ill-fated leadership of Michael Fleming. But Liberty Media took a half-interest in the network and brought in Rich Cronin to clean up the mess. He turned the network profitable, and GSN has been generating positive cash flow ever since.

Saturday morning chatter

2012-01-14T11:21:00.000-06:00

Some back and forth on the GSN Schedule board between me and other posters on GSN's latest ratings. I make my usual suggestion for GSN daytime...

Other poster: Looks like the [night time] marathons are really starting to go downhill...

Really? Except for Monday the marathons didn't do bad (by GSN standards, of course). Daytime, especially pre-noon, was generally weak, and that dragged down the total day average. By contrast, the 301K prime time average wasn't spectacular, but GSN can live with it.

Other poster: The marathons when they started had much higher ratings than this past week.

Some did, some didn't. Again, the 301K prime time average is okay by GSN's historical standards, though it was dragged down by a bad Monday. The real problem is pre-noon. I don't expect wild and crazy ratings from morning, but the numbers were very weak for January 2-8. You pointed it out yourself...

10:30AM 100K Pyramid...197K
9:30AM Family Feud...179K
11:30AM Match Game...169K
11:00AM Match Game...158K
8:30AM Match Game...151K
9:00AM Family Feud...133K
8:00AM Match Game...97K

Other poster: If you notice, the ratings perk up some when all of the regular viewers wake up.

Somehow game show fans manage to rouse themselves for The Price is Right in the morning. I'm on record advocating very recent seasons of the syndie game shows for GSN daytime. I bet more viewers would find their way to the channel in the morning and early afternoon hours for them. If you put the 2010-11 seasons of Family Feud, Millionaire, Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune into a 10:00AM-2:00PM block, I think you'd get somewhat better numbers (wink).

Other poster: Do we not remember all the times they have tried newer shows in Daytime. They all failed to raise ratings, and some got worse ratings than the classics. Not even Karn can good ratings in the morning.

Gotta smile. Only on these boards could Karn Feud be considered "newer." His first eps will be a decade old this year!

You put Harvey Feud at 10:00AM, and you're kidding yourself if you think GSN wouldn't get better numbers. Follow that with last year's eps from the other syndies, and you've got a really nice daytime lineup. Millionaire, the lowest-rated of the shows, gets over three million viewers on average. Feud gets almost five million, Jeopardy nine-plus million, Wheel 11-12 million. As long as the episodes look new (and last year's would look plenty new) GSN would attract some pretty good daytime audiences for those shows.

Another new game show

2012-01-13T17:08:00.000-06:00

Lots of networks have lots of time to fill. And game shows are cheap. So surprise, surprise, we've been getting a bunch of new game show announcements lately. Now Oprah wants in on the act. Did I ever mention that I'm not a big Oprah fan? I'm not even a little Oprah fan. I know she's worried to death about that. No matter, her OWN cable outlet has greenlighted Are You Normal, America?

Well, hey, that's an easy question for me. Nobody has ever accused me of being close to normal. But the show does things "scientifically" by taking some of those famous polls to decide if contestants are normal or...I dunno, abnormal or something. There's also "a jury of real Americans, man-on-the-street polling, real life situations shot in the field and in-studio demonstrations."

All this normality is creeping me out a little. The show is from Zoo productions (5th Grader, Lingo, Family Game Night). No word yet on host or debut date. OWN had a rocky first year but may be getting some traction now that Oprah is doing original shows herself for the network. "Slowly finding its feet after a shaky first year," is how Variety puts it.

Oh, sit down

2012-01-12T19:25:00.000-06:00

A while back I heard about a Gurin Company game show pilot based on musical chairs. Yeah, it sounded like a weak joke to me, too. What's next, Million Dollar Ring-Around-The-Rosie?

But it turns out the woeful CW will take a flier on the show. The network for twenty-something lasses has ordered ten episodes of Oh Sit! - I swear that's the real title - for later this season. As James Hibbard sourly points out in the linked story, the CW has a solid track record of flops with unscripted shows. But hope springs eternal, or at least until next TV season.

The premise from the press release, as only p.r. language can describe it:

OH SIT! is a fun, high-stakes, high-octane musical chairs competition, in which 20 thrill-seeking daredevils race head to head through five physically demanding, obstacle course-style eliminations as they each compete to claim a chair, to the sounds of a live band. At the end of the hour, only one contestant will be left sitting triumphant to seize the cash prize.

Maybe I'm too cynical and the show will be entertaining enough. Really, I shouldn't prejudge. Host, premiere date, and further gameplay details will be announced later.

UPDATE: BuzzerBlog's Alex Davis saw the pitch film for the show and thinks it's pretty good. Wipeout-ish physical comedy. We'll see. Alex thought Improv-a-Ganza and Late Night Liars were great, too. Then the shows debuted, and you know the rest of the story.

Take me out to the game show

2012-01-11T16:57:00.004-06:00

It's one, two, three strikes you're out at the old ball game...show. MLB Network will debut a baseball trivia quizzer on Tuesday, January 24. The title is Baseball IQ, which is not a contradiction in terms (I think).

Thirty-two trivia mavens will pair off for one-on-one battles, leading to the final show on February 23. Prize money is kind of chintzy, but these folks aren't represented by Scott Boras. Instead, each of the thirty major-league clubs picked a trivia buff from their front offices. MLB.com and the Hall of Fame also got selections to round out the field.

MLB Network anchor Matt Vasgersian will host. He certainly has some applicable experience, like the gigs on Sports Geniuses and GSN's blackjack shows. Vasgersian has endured a few controversies during his sportscasting career. But he's sharp and witty enough and should keep the proceedings lively.

The rules (naturally a baseball game show has a published rulebook) say the game is played in, of course, nine innings. In fact, contestants can even go for "big innings." There are no relief contestants, though, if somebody tires in the late innings. Anyway, this baseball and game show fan will be watching.

Syndies: down and up

2012-01-11T16:31:00.000-06:00

The week between the holidays saw syndicated game shows wobble. The big two slipped some but the bottom two edged up. Political left-wingers might be happy that the rich got a little poorer and the (relatively) poor got a little richer. TVNewsCheck brings the bad and good tidings for the week ending January 1...

Wheel of Fortune 6.8 - down three ticks, as Judge Judy pulls further ahead in household ratings
Jeopardy 5.7 - down a couple ticks
Family Feud 3.2 - up a couple ticks to tie a season high
Millionaire 2.6 - up a tick

TV by the Numbers got their top 25 syndie list up in a hurry. The viewership averages: Wheel of Fortune 11.0 million (weekend repeat 5.2 million), Jeopardy 9.0 million, Family Feud 4.8 million. Meredith just slipped out of the list. Pat and Vanna did beat the loud-mouthed judge in total viewers, anyway.

The Monday, January 9 ratings saw an interesting split in NBC's game shows. Who's Still Standing got more viewers but Fear Factor snagged the higher 18-49 rating. You know who's gonna win that one.

UPDATE: Douglas just posted GSN viewer numbers for the January 2-8 week. The network averaged a so-so 301/227 viewers (in thousands) for prime time/total day.

Dancing With the Stars takes over soon, but the old checkerboard schedule did pretty well with the five-hour marathons on every night except woeful Monday. The averages: Mon 194, Tue 276, Wed 285, Thu 282, Fri 287, Sat 260, Sun 374. 5th Grader accounted for the big Sunday, of course.

Meanwhile, Wipeout continues to slip. The January 12 episode scored 7.1 million viewers and a 2.2 18-49 rating. Not exactly danger territory, but the show may be headed for a fall (like most of its contestants).

More fear, no standing

2012-01-09T21:50:00.000-06:00

No surprise considering the numbers, but Fear Factor is locked in for a ten-episode order and will probably reappear now and then on NBC. I'm not a big fan because there's only so much arthropod-eating I can, uh, stomach. But in the disaster that is NBC prime time, any show which can pull a two-something 18-49 rating will hang around somewhere.

The news is predictably sourer for Who's Still Standing. Even by NBC's low standards the show did not perform particularly well and looks to be finished this month. I watched tonight and enjoyed a double dose of the speed round, not to mention a drop for the unlucky hero in the main game.

I still found myself yelling answers at the screen and having a good old time. But the show looks like a goner once The Voice takes over Monday night on NBC next month. Lots of folks on the web didn't like the production, though the basic game seems to have gotten a little more praise. I dunno, it was a fun way to pass an hour for me, but the ratings were always mediocre at best. Hail and farewell.

Over at ABC Wipeout still does okay business, but the ratings may be slipping and sliding a little off the big Nielsen balls. The show is not in imminent danger but the bounce-and-bash novelty might be wearing thin.

Sometimes destiny is wrong

2012-01-08T10:38:00.000-06:00

My guilty pleasure Game Show Garbage has selected a contestant ominously named Destiny for the coveted "Dumb Answer of the Week" award. Appearing on The Price is Right, Destiny Ramsey was already semi-famous for mauling Drew Carey and guest celeb Neil Patrick Harris.

Sadly, Destiny's, er, destiny was to bomb out on the Grocery Game by guessing way too many cans of soup. It may not have been a hopelessly dumb strategy, but it was certainly a risky one.

At least Destiny took home $1,000 from the Big Wheel and a digital camera, so her destiny - okay, I'll stop it - wasn't all grim. Maybe she can buy some shoes for her next appearance on a game show. That would keep the barefoot contessa's footsies a little cleaner.

Truth to tell, I would bomb out even worse than Destiny on pricing games. My dislike of shopping leaves me mostly clueless on prices. To give myself credit, I might do a little better on quizzers and word games.

Picture this apology

2012-01-07T10:47:00.001-06:00

An interesting thread at Matt Ottinger's board talks about game show hosts putting down their own shows. Or at least some features of their own shows.

Like Pat Sajak obviously groaning over the "Megaword" category on Wheel of Fortune. Or Richard Dawson publicly disagreeing with some judging decisions on Family Feud. Or Drew Carey reacting sourly to the perfect showcase bid on The Price is Right.

One poster notes what might have been the best example of a host ripping into his own show. In 1961 Jackie Gleason tried a game show called You're in the Picture. The legendary bomb lasted only one episode. Really, it shouldn't have lasted that long.

Gleason appeared next week and apologized to his audience for the disaster. The apology was far more entertaining than the game show, as you can see on YouTube. Of course, Gleason managed to survive the bomb and went on to many more years in prime time.

To my knowledge nobody has ever apologized for GSN's Late Night Liars. Now there's a show that could have used a mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. For non-Catholics, that's "my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault." And Late Night Liars was really grievous.

Success and failure

2012-01-06T21:04:00.001-06:00

A couple comments on the GSN General board got me reflecting on how easy it is for a TV show to flop. This is not huge news, but it helps to keep some perspective...

Other poster: Look at GSN's history, and it is clear to see that all of the ratings blockbusters on the network have been GAME SHOWS: Deal or No Deal, Newlywed Game, Baggage, Millionaire, Lingo.

High Stakes Poker used to be the network's highest-rated show both overall and in 18-49, and it lasted seven seasons over six years. While HSP was a competition show with interesting gameplay, it was not a traditional studio game show. Other non-traditional series have enjoyed at least some success on GSN, including World Poker Tour, Celebrity Blackjack, World Series of Blackjack and Extreme Dodgeball.

Other poster: On the other hand, all ratings failures have been NON-GAME SHOWS: Carnie Unstapled, Improv-a-Ganza, Instant Recall, Love Triangle, etc.

Lots of traditional studio game shows have flopped on GSN. Camouflage, Funny Money, Late Night Liars, Starface, Money List, 20Q, How Much is Enough have come and gone in a single season. And those are just some originals. Many traditional game show acquisitions, like Win Ben Stein's Money, have crapped out with GSN's audience.

Success on any network is relatively rare, failure all too common. A traditional game show format is no guarantee of success on GSN, and a non-traditional format does not mean inevitable failure.

Carnie's back, sort of

2012-01-05T17:19:00.000-06:00

Posters on the GSN board noticed something about the schedule pdfs I posted in the sidebar last night. And darned if they ain't right...

Other poster: Carniewed returns to have some air time on Tuesday nights. Um, wow. I thought those would never see the light of day again.

Carnie and GSN just settled their lawsuit, as I noted in a faux tweet on the blog. So it's not a complete surprise. I'm not sure about those pdfs, though. Never trust 'em, though Alex Davis posted the same ones at BuzzerBlog.

Well, maybe you can trust them a little. The GSN online schedule says Carnie is back on Tuesday, too, at least next week. Interesting. My faux tweet reads: "Carnie Wilson and GSN settle their legal spat. No terms are disclosed, but I doubt that Carnie gets her Newlywed Game gig back." I still don't think she'll be hosting any new eps, but a few of her reruns are back on the network.

Other poster: Maybe one of the terms of the settlement was that GSN had to start giving Carnie's version of NG some airtime on the network again...Probably not, but it's just a thought.

Doubt seriously that it was a formal part of the settlement. But GSN probably intends a good will gesture that will provide Carnie a few bucks. She's had some financial difficulties over the last few years.

Syndies: Feud slips ever so slightly

2012-01-05T16:55:00.001-06:00

Not a whole lot of shakin' goin' on with syndicated game shows for the week ending on Christmas day. TVNewsCheck dutifully provides the numbers, anyway...

Wheel of Fortune 7.1 - flat, and just barely lost the household ratings race to Judge Judy
Jeopardy 5.9 - up a tick
Family Feud 3.0 - down a couple ticks
Millionaire 2.5 - up a tick and still in safe mid-two territory

TV by the Numbers was very sprightly with the viewership averages this week: Wheel of Fortune 11.4 million (ahead of Judge Judy in total viewers - take that, your honor), Jeopardy 9.2 million, Family Feud 4.7 million. Sure, the shows skew old, but these total viewer numbers are far from terrible even by broadcast network prime time standards. Of course, those standards ain't what they used to be.

UPDATE: Ratings for the prime time broadcast game shows this week, from TV by the Numbers and Zap2it...

Wipeout - 8.4 million viewers, 2.7 18-49 rating, 4.8 household rating
Fear Factor - 6.0 million viewers, 2.4 18-49 rating, 3.2 household rating
Who's Still Standing - 5.6 million viewers, 1.5 18-49 rating, 3.2 household rating

Sadly, my personal favorite Who's Still Standing did the worst and skewed the oldest. Afraid its stay on the air may be brief, even on woeful NBC. Wipeout got the best numbers of the three, but Thursday's show was its lowest-rated season debut ever. Fear Factor may be back for more episodes. Anything on NBC that can get a two-something in the demo is likely to hang around.

Wiping up

2012-01-04T16:25:00.001-06:00

You may have noticed ratings for Wipeout in the sidebar. And you may wonder where those numbers come from when Wipeout is off the air. (The show returns to ABC tomorrow.)

The answer: old game shows never go off the air, they just go to cable. The ratings come from Wipeout repeats on truTV, the Time Warner outlet formerly known as Court TV. Back in the old days, Wipeout wouldn't have fit in with the network's courtroom proceedings and true crime sagas.

But nowadays truTV has gone mostly reality in the endless hunt for younger demos. So the big-balls project seems right at home. The repeats are also generating quite respectable ratings, thank you. For the latest Friday, December 30, Wipeout got 1.53 million viewers and a 0.6 18-49 rating. Both are just fine by cable standards, especially for a retread.

On the GSN board I once wondered why our little game show network didn't seem interested in acquiring Wipeout. I dunno, maybe GSN tried and got outbid by Time Warner's deep pockets. Or maybe the network didn't like the show as part of its "adult female" targeting. But a million and half viewers look really, really good compared to GSN's usual paltry numbers.

Bloody Sunday afternoon

2012-01-03T11:56:00.000-06:00

Got some grief from a commenter about my irreverent attitude toward Million Dollar Mind Game. Sorry, folks, but the first episode still bored me to near slumber, and I didn't go back for any more Sominex.

Very few others sampled the mind-twister, either. The show quickly vanished after ABC burned off the six episodes which had sat on the shelf for many months. The weird Sunday afternoon scheduling gave the show's dozens of fans (slight exaggeration) a convenient excuse for its speedy demise.

But a glance at the Google news cache shows that ABC will try again on Sunday afternoon. Not with Mind Game, of course, but with a reality project called Bud United Presents: The Big Time. Yeah, the title seems swell to me, too. I don't cover reality shows, and this one looks like a loser from the get-go.

The Deadline story talks about ABC's experiment in "filling its weekend afternoon time slots with original, primetime-like programming." I don't think Mind Game would have stood a chance in prime time, and Deadline admits the quizzer was just Sunday filler when the NBA went on strike or lockout or whatever. (As if anybody misses the NBA in November.)

But Sunday afternoon is one strange place for any new show.

Drop in and stay a while

2012-01-02T20:25:00.001-06:00

Just watched the new year's first episode of Who's Still Standing. The annoying Santa Claus narration was gone, which improved things immediately.

But I did notice some odd rules discrepancies. The episode ran through two complete games. One of them was played with two passes for the central contestant, one with three. And the second game allowed the main contestant to walk away after just three rounds, instead of the five rounds necessary on preceding shows.

Guess they taped the second game earlier or later than some others, and tinkered with the rules in the meantime. But what they hey, the rounds were still fast-paced and entertaining, and Ben Bailey seems to be getting more relaxed outside the taxi.

I see that the BuzzerBlog crowd voted Million Dollar Mind Game the best new show of 2011. Which proves there really is no disputing tastes. I could barely stay awake through that Russian-based snoozer with its funereal pace and numbingly difficult questions. Who's Still Standing, rules discrepancies or not, is a whole lot more fun and moves a whole lot faster.

Remaking history

2012-01-02T12:45:00.003-06:00

GSN is running a marathon of Whammy tonight. Which gets me thinking about game show remakes.

Whammy, of course, is a faithful remake of the 1980s Press Your Luck. Though this time the board was truly randomized to avoid any Michael Larson replays. I'm not a huge fan of either version, because the gameplay - other than Larson's brilliance - was not much more than pushing the button and seeing what happens.

Game show remakes often get drubbed on the Internet boards, which tend to be dominated by fans of older shows. And for those folks, few if any remakes can come close to the divine splendor of those older classics. I'm not such a knee-jerk foe of newer versions myself. After all, my favorite game show ever, the 1973-82 Match Game, was an inspired comic remake of the sadly square 1960s original.

Once in a long while, a show remakes itself in the course of a long run. Millionaire is probably the clearest current example. Over the years the syndie has drifted further and further from Regis' ABC version (which was a faithful adaptation of the Brit original). There is still a money tree, though oddly randomized, and some multiple choice questions, and the ask-the-audience lifeline.

But otherwise not much is left of the original. And yet it's still recognizably Millionaire. And most importantly, it's still on the air.

That Barker fellow

2012-01-01T12:31:00.001-06:00

I've twitted Bob Barker on this blog for his obsessive support of animal rights. Maybe it's just because I like a good hamburger. Or maybe there's something more important about the 88-year-old legend that bothers me.

I'm not talking about Barker's endless legal travails on The Price is Right. To be blunt, I don't give a thin (fully rights-protected) rodent's behind about those shenanigans. Barker asked for big trouble with the lawyers when he diddled one of the models. He got what he asked for, but I have no idea - and I absolutely don't care - if he really deserved it.

Maybe it's the perfect hair. No, that's just a detail, but a telling one. Barker was always so in control, so the literal Master of Ceremonies. They might as well have coined the title for him. Perfection can't help but irritate a little, and Barker was real close to perfect for a long, long time.

So he has to command respect for his ability, even from my carping self. Criticism seems almost beside the point for anybody who was that good for that long at his work. I'll still give him a little grief about the critters, though.

Home invasion

2011-12-31T11:16:00.001-06:00

A faux tweet noted a casting call for a literally in-house game show titled Wake Up Call.

The premise? "Do you have a roommate or sibling that you live with? Wake them up in the middle of the night to compete in games for cash prizes! If they succeed, they win the money, and if they fail, you get to keep it for yourself."

The call asks for contestants aged 18-25. So it sounds like an MTV-ish effort with twenty-somethings waking up their snoozing housemates for goofball games. To me, it also sounds sort of like GSN's late, unlamented Hidden Agenda.

In that previous home invasion project, spouses would try to get their unsuspecting better halves to perform silly human tricks. For every success, the spouse earned money. At the end of the show, host Debi Gutierrez would let the unsuspecting better half in on the gag.

I really didn't think Hidden Agenda was all that bad, which made me a minority of one. GSN's audience reacted to the show with fear, loathing and near-unanimous revulsion. Hidden Agenda lasted maybe three days on the network (slight exaggeration). You can sample the premiere episode on YouTube and decide on its merits, or lack thereof.

One more note: this post is the blog's 387th and last of 2011. Happy new year, everybody!

Ratings 101

2011-12-30T20:55:00.000-06:00

I've started a thread on the GSN General board about non-GSN ratings. Some feedback from other posters and a few comments of my own...

Other poster: These [syndicated game show] ratings are steady compared to GSN. Back in the summer, you would have Lingo (8pm) have 450,000 viewers one day and 250K another day. Big difference.

All sorts of things here.

First, the syndie ratings are weekly averages across all showings on the five weekdays. Nielsen's sample is much more consistent when you average together a lot of days instead of looking at day-to-day fluctuations. Lingo does not vary in its weekly average from 450K to 250K. In its current midnight slot, for instance, the show's weekly averages have been consistent in approximately the 200K-250K range.

Second, GSN is out in the long tail of smaller networks, unlike the broadcast outlets that carry the syndies. This is where Nielsen's sample can get skittish from day to day, and where set top box data might be a useful supplement. Nielsen is using some STB data on an experimental basis. And Rentrak has emerged as the first plausible competitor to Nielsen in a long time by using STB data for local market measurement. STB data is no panacea, though. There are serious issues with its reliability, representative quality, and lack of demo information.

Other poster: I'm not Casey, but there has been some TPIR Ratings news...

Hey, you can be grateful you're not me! Anyway, The Price is Right ratings are hard to come by on the free Internet. Once in a while TV by the Numbers will print these ABC press releases that give a few TPiR numbers. And Soap Opera Network sometimes publishes pretty complete information for all daytime shows including TPiR and Let's Make a Deal. Like this.

Thanks for today's TVBTN link. I've now posted it in the sidebar on the blog for broadcast and cable game show ratings.

Rusty chains

2011-12-30T15:51:00.002-06:00

Just watched Chain Reaction in one of its last appearances on GSN. I still think it's a good show that deserved a couple more seasons on our little game show network.

The original version of Chain Reaction was a very short-lived NBC run with Bill Cullen in 1980. As is often the case with old game shows, some of that version has made its way to YouTube. I watched this episode to see how much things changed over the years.

The answer? Not...much...really, as the chain might say. I did notice that the chains were a little more loosely connected than on GSN's version, but the basic formats of both the front game and the bonus round were pretty similar. Oh, celebs made up two-thirds of the teams on NBC, thanks to a larger production budget.

Speaking of the production budget, the linked episode features a notable reversal by the judges after one of the bonus rounds. The team got buzzed on the questions leading to "Zsa Zsa" as the answer. But the judges reconsidered afterwards and awarded the civvie the full $10,000 prize. That's twenty-six grand in today's watered-down currency, which is a lot more than poor old GSN could afford. Those were the luxuries of a broadcast network before cable got big.

Another version of Chain Reaction ran from 1986 to 1991 on USA Network, and you can watch some of those eps on YouTube, too. YouTube is Boot Hill for defunct game shows.

Going on and on

2011-12-29T20:00:00.001-06:00

Jason Keller has now ended his nine-win rampage on Jeopardy. Which brings up the subject of returning champions on game shows.

It's a tradition that goes back forever. In fact, the bad old rigging days of the 1950s happened partly to avoid unpopular champions staying and staying on game shows. That's why Twenty One fixed Herbert Stempel's defeat by the much more popular and telegenic Charles Van Doren.

Not that rigging and returning champs go hand in hand. The honest Tic Tac Dough of the seventies and eighties - ironically produced by Barry and Enright of Twenty One notoriety - got a lot of help from Thom McGee and his victory string over 43 opponents. Of course, Jeopardy itself once had a five-win limit, but it was waived several years ago. Ken Jennings is happy about that.

Have to admit that Jason's streak got me more interested in Jeopardy than usual. But all in all, I'm a little leery of returning champs who overstay a long welcome. Let other folks play. Five wins are enough, as Family Feud's producers have long agreed.

Syndies stumble except for Feud

2011-12-28T11:48:00.000-06:00

'Twas the week before Christmas and people were shopping, or something. But they generally watched syndicated game shows a little less in the week ending December 18. Only Family Feud bucked the trend. TVNewsCheck delivers the forgettable numbers...

Wheel of Fortune 7.1 - down four ticks
Jeopardy 5.8 - a little worse than the soulmate, down five ticks
Family Feud 3.2 - up a tick, so just barely breaks the pattern
Millionaire 2.4 - down a couple ticks

When TV by the Numbers runs their top 25 syndie list, this blog will pick out the game show viewership averages just for you. Meanwhile, the broadcast network game shows pulled mostly lackluster ratings on the day after Christmas. But Who's Still Standing did get its best overall viewer number so far: 6.9 million.

The viewership averages are up at TV by the Numbers: Wheel of Fortune 11.1 million, Jeopardy 9.0 million, Family Feud 4.8 million. Meredith again missed the top 25 list.

The rumpus continues

2011-12-28T09:44:00.000-06:00

The pile-on at the GSN schedule board continues over the network using Dancing With the Stars so much on weekends. I added a few more notes...

Really wish Alex Davis would just post the schedule pdfs he gets from GSN instead of dribbling the news out on Facebook. I know he likes the Facebook traffic, but the pdfs would attract traffic to the main BuzzerBlog site, after all.

Blaming [GSN programming veep] Amy Davis for this schedule is silly. The Dancing With the Stars acquisition had to be in the works long before she ever took the programming job. Funny how she gets all the abuse around here while [GSN President] David Goldhill skates, even with the most hardcore older-is-better posters. Anybody who thinks Goldhill isn't responsible for the Dancing acquisition and scheduling is incredibly naive. The network is staking its future on this (by GSN standards) very expensive show. This is an executive decision from the highest level at GSN, folks.

As for Bob Boden, he took the now defunct Fox Reality job after leaving GSN. Strange how some posters around here now look back on him fondly. He used to get ripped for putting too many originals on the network instead of old stuff, then got ripped for taking a job at a (gasp!) reality network. Of course, Boden and Rich Cronin kept GSN afloat and turned the network profitable after the previous administration almost sank the ship. Boden most recently worked at the Hasbro, er, the Hub.

Alarums and excursions

2011-12-27T16:24:00.001-06:00

Alex Davis at BuzzerBlog must have gotten a new set of GSN schedule pdfs. Since he takes his time posting the pdfs, we have to make do with his Facebook descriptions. Alex says that Dancing With the Stars will get ten-hour blocks on Friday and Saturday 6:00PM-4:00AM starting the week of January 23. The hoofers will also dance 1:00PM-6:00PM Sunday afternoon.

5th Grader will get a new 3:00PM-6:00PM block on Friday and keep its Sunday night marathon. Karn/O'Hurley Family Feud moves from Saturday night to Monday night 7:00PM-12:00AM. Alex doesn't mention any other changes.

As you might expect, these changes are producing fainting and rage on the GSN schedule board. One poster does wander into a painful truth: "Obviously GSN does not care if we quit watching them or not. They think so little of the majority of people on this board."

You are correct, "flora1941." GSN worries a whole lot more about people who watch the network. And Dancing might as well be designed for those "adult female" folks. If a few dozen older-is-better posters on an Internet board get upset, well, GSN will deal with it.

UPDATE: Can't resist some of the perceptive analysis from the GSN schedule board: "you see i told you guys [GSN programming veep] Amy Introcaso-Davis is an evil spirited woman who has been possessed by the Devil or former V.P. of GSN Kelly Goode (take your pick)." Gotta love those cool, calm and collected posters. I do expect Brendy, the GSN board moderator, will take down that post. [The post's language has now been softened considerably. Don't know if Brendy intervened or if the poster just decided to look more reasonable.]

Boob tube

2011-12-26T13:17:00.000-06:00

'Twas the day after Christmas and all through the house, this creature wasn't stirring. Instead, I was camped in front of the tube and staring at game shows. Like Match Game, which once again reminded me why it's my favorite game show ever, and that includes everything.

Charles Nelson Reilly got off the best line on the episodes I saw. The set-up: "On Mars women have light bulbs instead of [blank]." Well, you knew where that was going. The contestant answered "breasts" and matched everybody, which shows where everybody's minds were. But Charles added the clincher: on Mars, girls have forty watts instead of b-cups.

Then I watched Jason Keller continue his rampage on Jeopardy for the seventh day. He's quick on the buzzer and knows his stuff. One of his opponents hit a big Daily Double and pulled within a few thousand of Jason going to Final Jeopardy. But the New Jersey tutor won easy by knowing a bit of history about Buckingham Palace. Or he guessed that bit of history from the slyly worded clue. I'll watch tomorrow to see if Jason's saga continues.

GSN runs a marathon of my beloved Chain Reaction tonight. I'll probably sample a few episodes, especially because the show disappears from the network in January. And I'll also check out my guilty down-the-hatch pleasure Who's Still Standing. The show's snooty critics - omigod, they go to commercial in the middle of a game! - have only made me like Ben and company more.

Perils of live TV

2011-12-25T10:55:00.000-06:00

On Christmas Day I'm giving myself a present by reviewing some of my favorite I've Got a Secret clips.

Some of the show's stunts came off pretty much as planned. But some of the funniest bits happened when things didn't quite go according to the script. Like the cow who pooped on center stage. Or Poor Jack Moseley, who almost had a coronary as he exploded the inner tube of a tire with his own breath on the January 14, 1959 episode.

Jack's lung-ripping efforts extended over two segments of the show. Guest Andy Griffith came out and watched, though he never got to do his own secret. Jack finally exploded the inner tube and fell onto the floor in complete exhaustion. But he managed to get back up and received a nice (and maybe relieved) round of applause.

There was a bit of time left after Jack finished his heavy breathing. So host Garry Moore had to vamp a little. He thanked Eydie Gorme for her guest panelist appearance and Andy Griffith for passing up his own secret to give Jack more time. The IGAS episode guide says Eydie actually guessed one of the secrets in the show. But nobody guessed what Jack was going to do, though everybody seemed to enjoy his inner tube exploits as they happened.

Number crunching

2011-12-24T09:42:00.000-06:00

Can't keep an actuary away from numbers, even on Christmas Eve. So a few comments of mine from the GSN schedule board...

Other poster: Is a 2.5/2.6 rating even good for Who Wants to be a Millionaire in daytime?

By syndie standards it's just fine, close to the top 25. The demos undoubtedly skew old, but Millionaire is in no danger with household ratings in the mid-twos. Lots of syndies get renewed nowadays with one-something household ratings. 500-channel universe and all that.

Other poster: What stinks is that they're [GSN] messing with Friday nights, just as they found their audience.

In total viewers GSN's Friday marathon has performed so-so at best, consistently worse than Tuesday, Saturday and (much worse than) Sunday. Based on previous demo information from Douglas, I bet Friday is one of the very worst performing nights in the target 25-54 demo, not to mention 18-49. In fact, Friday is quite possibly better than only woeful Monday in the demos. (Just a hint, Douglas, but demo info would be welcome again. Not complaining, though!)

So I'm not astounded that Monday and Friday are getting the shakeups.

Ho-ho-ho

2011-12-23T15:32:00.000-06:00

Happened to catch a little of a Deal or No Deal Christmas episode on GSN last night. My daughter thought the show was "cool" but I'm more of a Scrooge about the Xmas festivities in our little genre. You might think it's only natural for game shows - which exist to give away stuff - to celebrate the biggest giving day of the year. And you'd be right. But I'm something of a contrarian.

Since every day is Christmas in the game show world, why make a big deal of December 25? Okay, I should get a life and stop grouching so much. If the shows want to deck the sets with boughs of holly and put Santa costumes on the models, why not just relax and literally play along? The Deal or No Deal episode was passable enough, and I started calculating odds and expected values and next offers like I always do.

So Merry Christmas, everybody. Yep, it's a little early but I don't want to forget. And your conscientious game show blogger will be posting and faux-tweeting throughout the holidays. It's the blogger work ethic.

Love 'em or hate 'em

2011-12-22T20:32:00.000-06:00

As I watched Who's Still Standing tonight - it's getting to be a habit - I couldn't help disliking the main contestant. Which is probably unfair, of course. The poor guy was just trying to win some money. But he got on my nerves with trash talk and a generally acerbic attitude.

The night before on the show, the cute brunette contestant had me liking her a lot more. And not just because her skirt showed off some very nice legs, though that didn't hurt. (Call me sexist. Like I care.) She seemed modest about her ability and even admitted that she got intimidated by one of her opponents.

Both Ms. Sweet and Mr. Not So Sweet got through seven rounds before calling it quits, so both were reasonably competent. But it's weird how a few minutes on a game show can make somebody look very likable or downright unlikable. Maybe the most famous example was John Carpenter, the first million-dollar winner on Millionaire. He rubbed everybody the wrong way with a cocky attitude, especially when he mockingly burned an unnecessary lifeline on the final question.

But who knows? Most of the time Carpenter might be a downright charming guy. Do we really know anybody after seeing them under the lights for a few edited minutes? Of course we don't. But that won't stop audiences (including me) from making immediate and sometimes harsh judgments.

Stylin'

2011-12-21T20:39:00.000-06:00

Saw a couple funny tweets today about Who's Still Standing...

BothersBar: Mmm, Who's Still Standing basically not bad I thought. Either I'm getting soft or average quality is higher than it was.

shinydh: Or possibly you're more tolerant of the cartoony style than the buzzerblog crowd, most of whom didn't hate the _game_ as such.

Afraid I don't much care what the BuzzerBlog crowd thinks. But the comment about "cartoony style" got me thinking about the whole issue of style in game show production.

If I had to pick the game show with the most stripped-down style imaginable, I'd settle on Jeopardy. In fact, the Trebek epic seems almost style-less in a way, a show pared to the essential gameplay and little more. Don't get me wrong. I'm a big fan of the answer-and-question classic. But a slight bit of pizzazz wouldn't hurt. Trouble is, how would you fit it in?

When Millionaire brought game shows back to broadcast prime time, the show's dark foreboding style almost became a cliche with its many imitators. Maybe style went to obtrusive extremes here.

As for Who's Still Standing, I don't think its trimmings are particularly cartoony or obnoxious. The post-produced Christmas ho-ho-hos are grating but not a huge drawback. And the basic gameplay shines through the production style just fine.

Syndies wobble a little

2011-12-20T17:24:00.000-06:00

After the big recovery in the post-Thanksgiving week, syndicated game shows barely budged for December 5-11. But your ever reliable game show blogger is still on the case. TVNewsCheck presents the less than thrilling news...

Wheel of Fortune 7.5 - down a tick
Jeopardy 6.3 - up a tick
Family Feud 3.1 - flat, why bother moving?
Millionaire 2.6 - up a tick

A truly fascinating week, no? The viewership averages from TV by the Numbers didn't move much, either: Wheel of Fortune 11.8 million, Jeopardy 9.8 million, Family Feud 4.6 million. All in all, the syndies did okay. None of them are in danger of cancellation at these levels. It just wasn't a big week for movement in the numbers.

Meanwhile, a bunch of network game shows ran yesterday. Fear Factor led the pack with a 2.5 18-49 rating and 6.3 million total viewers. Down from its debut last week but okay for NBC.

The numbers weren't so kind for the premiere of Who's Still Standing: 1.5 in 18-49 and 5.6 million viewers. Still, by NBC standards the down-the-hatch quizzer's ratings were hardly awful. We'll see how the show does for the rest of the week. ABC's You Deserve It continues to languish, deservedly or not: 0.9 in 18-49 and 3.5 million viewers.

UPDATE: Douglas has posted the December 12-18 week for GSN, and it was a clunker. Prime time/total day viewership averages were (in thousands of viewers) 280/209. Yuck. The five-hour marathons each night: Mon 200, Tue 272, Wed 244, Thu 233, Fri 256, Sat 276, Sun 364. Poor to middlin' except for Foxworthy's good numbers on Sunday. I can see why GSN messed around with the schedule again.

I can stand it

2011-12-19T20:24:00.000-06:00

If there are two things I like in a game show, it's a fast pace and a lot of one-on-one competition. Who's Still Standing offers both.

So when I watched the show's debut, I could overlook some of its cheesier aspects, especially the post-production Christmas bits. The announcer with the ho-ho-hos got old immediately, but the rest of the show came through pretty well. Even the yelping audience and laughably melodramatic music had a certain low-rent charm.

If you've been reading this blog, you know the format features a (literally) central contestant who takes on ten competitors ringed around him. The one-on-one trivia contests flash by under extreme time pressure, and I found myself hollering answers at the screen.

Miss a question and you disappear through the floor. Except for that exit gimmick the show really has little in common with my long-lost love, Russian Roulette. And Who's Still Standing sure beats the old GSN effort for sheer pace.

Host Ben Bailey gets in a quip or three as the rounds speed by. He hardly has as much time for ad-lib hijinks as on Cash Cab, but he's not completely washed out by the format. The contestants on the debut were generally competent, though the guy with two masters degrees went down the hatch in a hurry. I don't know if the show will last, but I can see why it did pretty well in its native Israel. It's a quick and painless way to pass an hour.

Them old schedule games

2011-12-18T16:22:00.000-06:00

Changes are about to rain down on the GSN schedule. A new originals block on Monday night replaces the ratings-starved million-dollar shows. 100K Pyramid takes over the entire retro block on Friday night. And Dancing With the Stars gets a (restrained) debut on Saturday night, January 21.

Naturally, folks chat about these and other topics on the GSN schedule board. Some of my personal chatter...

Other poster: It seems quite evident now since the show is about to disappear from the schedule completely that the lease on the 1985-1986 season of $25K [Pyramid] is about to expire.

I've seen lots of comments about GSN leases but never any evidence for the comments. Where does all this mysterious information come from? Does anybody actually have reliable info about the leases?

Other poster: Or better yet, [a return of] Donny's Pyramid, right?

The show did decent numbers in the afternoon. Three weeks of ratings were published for Donnymid. A 313K average for June 1-6, 2009, 265K for July 27-August 2, 2009, and 292K for August 17-23, 2009. Not bad. But GSN has never seemed very enthusiastic about the show. I like Donnymid's tighter time limit, but I'm not holding my breath on a return to GSN.

And by the way, I'm really not holding my breath on that endlessly rumored remake with Andy Richter. That version seems trapped in eternal development hell.

Other poster: Off topic but I was looking at ratings again from the week of December 5-11, and Lingo at midnight is not doing bad at all.

That may be why GSN is giving it the first shot in the Monday originals block. But if people complain about the rerun abuse of 400 Match Game episodes, how about the incredible abuse of those 40 eps of Engvall Lingo? It's almost ridiculous how many times each episode has been ground through the recycle crusher in the six months since the show debuted.

Have nun, will drill

2011-12-18T11:12:00.001-06:00

For some odd reason, I have a soft spot for this one of the bazillion What's My Line clips on YouTube. I'm probably just getting old and remembering my childhood more and more fondly.

The nun in the clip looks pretty much like the sisters who tried, mostly in vain, to teach me in grade school (I was particularly bad at handwriting). Except this nun drills teeth. She's a dentist, which was offbeat enough for a nun to almost fool the panel. Only at the last minute did Bennett Cerf latch onto the right idea and identify the occupation.

There's some predictable anti-dentist humor, including a funny sequence where John Daly dances around a question about the sister's patients coming to her willingly. Everybody is excruciatingly polite, and even Dorothy Kilgallen and Arlene Francis stand to shake hands with the nun as she leaves. Whatever else you might say about that long-ago era, courtesy was more in vogue back then.

This January 31, 1960 episode isn't part of the current What's My Line Chrismastime run on GSN. But with the help of the invaluable WML episode guide, I tracked down the episode's other two segments: a pickle packer (honest) and mystery guest Nelson Eddy. Lots of complete What's My Line eps live on YouTube.

Full service blog

2011-12-17T14:21:00.000-06:00

A faux tweet teased about one-time The Price is Right and Deal or No Deal model Kristal Marshall. Since I want to be honest with my readers - and because I can use the blog traffic - I decided to put the photo from the tweet link into this post. I aim to please around here.

Kristal really didn't work a lot in game shows, so I don't have much excuse. Okay, she chipped in competent modeling on The Price is Right, as this fan clip proves. I like how she pets the Labrador Retriever, anyway. And she did hold suitcase #5 for a few episodes in Deal or No Deal's second season.

But her main claim to fame, besides looking great, is her pro wrestling career. Wikipedia (usual caveats) goes into exhausting detail about her ring exploits. Her finishing move was the "hair pull mat backbreaker." Sounds gruesome enough. In her personal life she had a long-term relationship with fellow power-slammer Bobby Lachey.

Kristal hits the mat a few times in this clip, if you want to see her in action. Not exactly as delicate as her hand gestures on The Price is Right. But we all gotta make a living.

Faux pas

2011-12-17T12:20:00.001-06:00

This blog doesn't usually feature housekeeping posts. But I've thought about getting rid of the faux tweets in the sidebar and just starting a genuine Twitter feed instead.

One thing stops me, though. Genuine Twitter is permanent. Every one of the comments lasts forever unless I delete it. And I don't want to bother trashing offhand comments I later regret.

So I'll just continue with the fake tweets you see alongside the regular posts. As soon as the faux items scroll off the top ten list, they're gone and I don't have to worry about them anymore.

Which of course isn't really true. I'm sure that somebody could rustle up all the faux tweets I've splattered around here. Internet Archive probably has some old stuff of mine, and somewhere the old faux tweets live on a Google database in the ever mysterious cloud. Don't know why anybody would want to get hold of my old tweets. But I'll make it a little harder to do, anyway.

Is it that time of year?

2011-12-16T19:19:00.002-06:00

Never really enjoyed end-of-year lists. Best of this, worst of that, so-so of whatever, zzzzzzzzzz. But folks just like to list things as December 31 draws near. They won't be discouraged by my grumpiness on the subject.

In that spirit, Carrie Grosvenor offers her "Top 11 of 2011" game show moments. Can't disagree with most of them. Watson deserves a nod, along with the new announcers on Wheel of Fortune and The Price is Right, the Emmys for Pat and Alex, and even Mr. Trebek's tendon-snapping encounter with the would-be thief.

I do quibble about a couple moments from Million Dollar Mind Game, though. This show attracted an audience of literally hundreds (slight downward exaggeration) so it's hard to see how any moment from it could qualify. But Carrie lists both a 600K win and a 600K loss from the show among her top 11 items.

All right, there's no disputing tastes. Still, big money wins and losses are hardly huge news any more, especially when the victory or defeat is spread over six contestants. Million Dollar Mind Game was a glacially slow quizzer with limited (to put it mildly) appeal to most game show fans. I think Alex's thief-chase was a lot more interesting, and there wasn't even a video of it on YouTube.

Going down

2011-12-15T18:22:00.000-06:00

NBC has posted some video from and about Who's Still Standing, due next Monday. Ben Bailey talks up the quizzer, which is based on an Israeli format, and even mentions his experience on Cash Cab.

His cabbie-quizmaster gig has taught Ben more trivia than he knows what to do with. But he admits that real trivia mavens could probably still take him down. Which is literally where the losers go in Ben's new show. Down the hatch, and the hatches look suspiciously like the trap doors on my old GSN fave, Russian Roulette. The NBC show has added footprints to the trap doors, just to be different.

The show starts by pitting a "hero" against ten other contestants. Miss one question, and you go through the floor. If the hero plummets to his game show demise, the show runs the remaining contestants through a speed round. The NBC site has an interview with a contestant on the show, who doesn't tell us what she won, if anything. Gotta maintain some suspense, after all.

In one of the videos Ben does say that the show hasn't yet given out the top prize of a million bucks. But he's confident that somebody will take home the big money sooner or later. I'll be watching, if only as a homage to that terrific little show from the Bob Boden days at GSN.

A modest suggestion for NBC

2011-12-14T17:12:00.002-06:00

Fear Factor is grossing (as in real gross) some terrific ratings by NBC's admittedly low standards. So maybe the woeful peacock net should try another revival. Others on the web have suggested it already. Why not bring back that other Endemol show, the one with Howie and the models?

Deal or No Deal did good business for the network once upon a time. Then NBC burned the show out with a ridiculous schedule, about 200 episodes packed into little more than three years. I can't really blame the network's execs. Whenever any NBC show does halfway decent, they're naturally tempted to overuse it. When it's an easy-to-tape studio game show, the temptation gets overwhelming.

As for Fear Factor itself, what can anybody say any more? I watched some of Monday's episode on the NBC website. When the contestants started chowing down on finger lickin' good scorpions, I wasn't too thrilled. But the explosions were neat.

At least we wouldn't have to worry about scorpions on Deal or No Deal. Even if one of the critters showed up, nobody would eat it.

Syndies prosper after turkey week

2011-12-13T17:17:00.008-06:00

Once America got finished digesting those turkey dinners, it went back to watching syndicated game shows. Most of the shows got nice bounces in the November 28-December 4 week following the holiday. TVNewsCheck gobbles about the numbers...

Wheel of Fortune 7.6 - up a dozen ticks - holy letters, Vanna!
Jeopardy 6.2 - not to be outdone by the soulmate, up eleven ticks
Family Feud 3.1 - up five ticks, Steve smiles
Millionaire 2.5 - flat, the party-pooper

As always, when TV by the Numbers puts up the viewership averages, I'll repost them. Well, the TVBTN guys delivered: Wheel of Fortune 12.0 million, Jeopardy 9.6 million, Family Feud 4.6 million. Good numbers all around. Meredith missed the top 25 list but not by much, just two-tenths of a ratings point.

Meanwhile, Fear Factor grossed out some very nice numbers in its return on Monday: a 3.5 18-49 rating and 8.7 million total viewers. Downright explosive by NBC standards. Look for even more WOW OH BOY stunts if anything like this story continues.

On the downbeat side You Deserve It proceeds tearfully toward the exits: a series low 0.9 18-49 rating and 3.4 million viewers. Chris Harrison loves the show. He's part of a dwindling group.

And Real Deal bounced back in its third week to 1.9 million viewers. Fine by cable standards and probably good enough for a renewal on History. No, it ain't Pawn Stars but it ain't no flop. And I ain't no grammarian.

UPDATE: Douglas posts the GSN numbers for December 5-11, and I blather about them on the GSN schedule board...

The prime time/total day averages were 305/227 (thousands of viewers) for the week. Not so great but not a disaster.

The 7:00PM-12:00AM marathon averages: Mon 240, Tue 345, Wed 251, Thu 230, Fri 250, Sat 321, Sun 373. Pretty blah except for Sherri on Tuesday, Karn and O'Hurley on Saturday, and Foxworthy on Sunday.

As pointed out in the post above [on the GSN board], the pre-3:00PM weekday schedule remains quite poor and pulls down the total day average. I've already made my suggestion to get recent seasons of the syndie game shows for the daytime window, and I'll make the suggestion again. Not only would the syndies get better numbers in the window, but they would feed a bigger audience into the later afternoon shows.

The schedule gets bashed around next week. We'll see what happens. Do we start another thread?

Shopping channel

2011-12-13T06:25:00.003-06:00

Like a grimly determined contestant on Wipeout, Time Warner keeps pursuing Endemol. The Dutch producer of the big-balls epic and Fear Factor and Deal or No Deal and a bunch of other game and reality shows makes such an inviting target. Time Warner has a lot of hours on a lot of channels to fill, and they could lease Endemol's huge library of shows to other media operators around the world.

TW hasn't raised the total value of its offer but has made it all-cash. The media conglomerate doesn't seem to be getting any more traction, though, as Endemol remains cool to the overture. The production outfit harrumphed:

Endemol has received a revised offer from TW. The company has passed it on to the lenders. We remain focused on our discussions with lenders and these have entered the final stages. We are confident that a solution that puts the company on a firm financial footing for the future is now imminent.

Truth to tell, Endemol does seem to be clawing out of its financial hole. Or at least the hole isn't getting even deeper. A renewal of the Brit Big Brother, among other deals, has brought some much needed cashflow to the heavily indebted firm.

I can see why Time Warner covets that big pile of game and reality shows. Why bother leasing them when you can own 'em all? But they'll probably have to blow everybody away with an apocalyptic offer to get what they want.

Just the facts, ma'am

2011-12-11T17:50:00.005-06:00

A recent faux tweet linked to a blogger who dissed Speed's new quizzer Pumped for its fact-checking. As I said, I have no clue what a black flag means in a NASCAR race. But I figure Speed would have some fact-checkers who would know.

The late, unlamented Million Dollar Money Drop got into much more publicized trouble on those pesky little facts. Seems that Post-It Notes were marketed a little earlier than the fact-checkers thought. It meant a big difference in the show's debut episode.

An interesting interview with game show writer Rick Rosner includes this discouraging word for would-be scribes:

Many questions are written but for one reason or another never make it to the show, whether because the writer can't make them work, or because the fact checker shoots holes through them or even because the head writer simply doesn't like them.

I get a grim feeling that a determined fact-checker could shoot holes in just about any question, given enough time. The Internet makes the checker's job even easier, since so many different references can be consulted so fast. It makes me all the more sympathetic to game show writers, as they try to stump the contestants while keeping the show entertaining.

More GSN ratings chatter

2011-12-10T12:00:00.009-06:00

We just love to chew over the GSN numbers on the network's schedule board. Some more of my profound thoughts on the November 28-December 4 ratings...

Other poster: Then again, [Dawson Feud's bad numbers] may be due to competition against a show that airs on one of the big three networks [on Friday night]. Card Sharks and The $25,000 Pyramid probably do really well because of lack of competition.

The competition from the broadcast networks is very soft on Friday. Only one network show on the latest Friday got more than ten million viewers, and that one just barely. There are plenty of viewers available all Friday night for the cable nets.

The only real effect from the broadcast networks may have happened on Monday and Tuesday, when Dancing With the Stars hammered GSN right in the demos. This was the first week with no Dancing, and Monday and Tuesday prime time did noticeably better for GSN than during previous weeks. Which also possibly indicates that Dancing will be right up GSN's demo alley when the reruns start on the network in January.

Other poster: Face it, Classic Family Feud, no matter what version, ends up not doing so great. If they could fit Dawson's Feud in a later time slot, that may work.

Dawson Feud doesn't work very well in prime time, with plenty of promotion for the retro shows and a good lead-in from Pyramid and Card Sharks. Don't know why it would work that great anywhere.

Other poster gives a list of underwhelming averages for GSN's pre-3:00PM weekday schedule.

Weekdays before 3:00PM are really forgettable for GSN. That's a big reason the total day averages are sagging around 200K for weekdays. Sorry to repeat the suggestion, but very recent Wheel of Fortune somewhere in daytime couldn't hurt. Come on, Sony, give GSN a little help. Meanwhile, GSN is getting rid of Chain Reaction, one of the shows that perk things up after 3:00PM. Shrewd programming decision.

The prime time/total day averages for each day (in thousands of viewers): Mon 264/206, Tue 361/213, Wed 278/204, Thu 282/220, Fri 265/198, Sat 388/241, Sun 433/279.

GSN can thank Messrs. Foxworthy, Karn and O'Hurley for the relatively good performance on weekends vs. weekdays. Sherri also produced a good prime time number on Tuesday.

Grade schoolers romp

2011-12-09T17:08:00.007-06:00

Another week of GSN numbers goes up, and the news is very good for Jeff Foxworthy and his fifth graders. My chatter on the GSN Schedule board...

Douglas has put up November 28-December 4. It's getting late and I don't want to analyze much. Overall prime time/total day averages were 324/222 (thousands of viewers). Okay numbers, not spectacular.

It was a blowout week for 5th Grader. All six runs ended in the top eleven. Wouldn't you know, soon-to-depart Chain Reaction got an episode into the top ten. Guess GSN doesn't want viewers. The 7:00PM-12:00AM marathons for each day:

Mon 258 - Not great but definitely an improvement from recent weeks - no more competition from Dancing With the Stars?

Tue 312 - Solid for Sherri

Wed 257 - Okay for Jerry, could be better

Thu 250 - Ditto for Howie

Fri 239 - Dawson hurts the night (and particularly his lead-out 100K Pyramid) with his 181 - I'm tellin' ya, a lot of folks don't like Richard, no matter how much the older-is-better posters admire him

Sat 342 - As usual, Karn and O'Hurley deliver, no matter what these boards think of them - as if these boards have much in common with GSN's actual audience

Sun 456 - ZOWIE for Jeff and friends

Immortal Raymond

2011-12-08T19:44:00.008-06:00

After umpity-zillion episodes, Wheel of Fortune has seen its share of memorable contestants. But none developed a legend quite like Raymond Taylor.

Appearing on the show in 1993, Raymond was actually a very good player. But his reality only occasionally matched up with the humdrum reality seen by other folks. As a result, his antics on the show inspired a YouTube highlights clip called Crack Head on Wheel of Fortune. That may be a bit harsh. Still, Raymond often seemed breathless, woozy, disoriented, and out to a very distant lunch. At one point he hugged Vanna tighter than any contestant before or since.

Pat Sajak realized that he had a burgeoning legend on his hands. He announced that some performers need only one name, like Cher, Garbo, Madonna, Vanna and...RAYMOND. Sadly, the story did not end well.

A few years later in 1997 Sony filed a lawsuit that complained about Raymond's menacing behavior. He had returned as an audience member to the scene of his triumphs, but was totally disconnected from any plausible reality. Sony said that he became "aggressively hostile and had to be physically ejected from the stage." Sony also claimed that Raymond trespassed on the Jeopardy set.

Some folks can't handle fame, even in small doses. At least Raymond's greatest line will never die: "Vanna, put those L's on there!"

Syndies sweep ahead

2011-12-07T18:28:00.006-06:00

This year the Nielsen Company gave a gift to syndicated shows with multiple daily runs, by counting all their viewers. The result was a nice boost for Family Feud and Millionaire in the November sweeps compared to last year. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, with only one run each day, didn't benefit from the methodology change but improved some, anyway. Broadcasting & Cable presents the pleasant year-over-year news...

Wheel of Fortune 7.4 - up a couple ticks and number one in household rating for all syndies
Jeopardy 6.2 - up four ticks
Family Feud 3.0 - up a whopping fourteen ticks, thanks to Steve and Nielsen
Millionaire 2.5 - up three ticks

TV by the Numbers has the viewership averages for Thanksgiving week, not the entire sweeps month: Wheel of Fortune 10.1 million (weekend repeat 4.9 million) and Jeopardy 8.0 million. Steve and Meredith didn't make their top 25 list.

Couple other ratings notes: You Deserve It continues to drop, down to a 1.0 18-49 rating and 3.6 million viewers in its third week. Say good-bye to the deserving folks. And Real Deal averaged 1.5 million viewers in its second week, which is not bad at all by cable standards. But the numbers did fall from its debut week.

Millionaire tidbits

2011-12-06T18:14:00.004-06:00

Around here I like to keep track of contestants named Casey. You already know how scary bloggers named Casey can be. Anyhoo, Casey Kelly-Walter of Potsdam, NY didn't win the million on Millionaire. Who does? But she did haul in $19,550.

That's more than I make from this blog, which so far has netted me $0.00. Some people named Casey make more money from game shows than other people named Casey.

The other bit of Millionaire news is that the Club Millionaire audience participation gimmick is no more. The official site offers this discouraging word:

Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are sorry to announce that, as of Tuesday, December 6, 2011, all activity related to Club Millionaire will be discontinued. We apologize for any disappointment this may cause and thank you for your participation of the Club. In the coming months, we will be exploring other options related to development and operation of a new Millionaire rewards program.

Don't ask me. Millionaire has slipped to fourth in the syndie game show pecking order, but it's still attracting decent-sized audiences. Guess the gimmick fell short of expectations. Sometimes things just don't work out.

Two good shows

2011-12-05T19:11:00.008-06:00

BuzzerBlog's Alex Davis, still insisting that Dancing With the Stars is a game show, facebooks - is that a verb? - that High Stakes Poker and Chain Reaction will leave the GSN schedule in January. He must have gotten a couple more weeks of the GSN schedule pdfs. So ends the story for two of the network's better originals.

Of course, neither show got much respect from the older-is-better traditionalist bunch who dominate the GSN Internet boards (and most other game show boards on the web). High Stakes Poker, though, got plenty of kudos from the poker press. They appreciated how the show caught the atmosphere of big cash games. Once upon a time HSP was the network's highest-rated show, in both overall ratings and in the advertiser-beloved 18-49 demo.

But the show fell on hard times and was clearly on the way out. I'm slightly more surprised at Chain Reaction getting the heave-ho, but not really too shocked. The network has ground through endless rerun cycles of the show's two seasons. CR could still produce decent numbers, and I often enjoyed my weekend fix of the clever word puzzles. But life...goes...on, as the chain might say.

When Alex posts the schedule pdfs, I'll link to them in the sidebar. He says that Whammy gets CR's 10:00AM weekend slots and Woolery Lingo gets the 3:30PM run. Oh, Jeopardy also gets a night owl slot at 2:00AM. GSN and Jeopardy owner Sony wants to keep Alex's reruns miles away from the access hour, I guess.

Chit chat

2011-12-04T10:21:00.010-06:00

Pretty lazy this Sunday morning, so I'll just repost some chatter of mine from the GSN Schedule board. We should all recycle, right? (Sorry for the political correctness.)

Other poster: So movement down [in Family Feud ratings] is exciting?

Oh jeeze, it was just a little irony. Everything else was flat, but at least Family Feud was slightly different. So the news wasn't completely blah.

So far this season Family Feud is actually performing very well, with average viewership up over four million most weeks. I'm sure GSN would like to get Harvey Feud.

Other poster: Where do WOF and Jeopardy rank in terms of longest continuous running programs of all time?

They're getting up there. Especially Wheel, which has now been on continuously, in one form or the other, since 1975. But Meet the Press has both of them beaten by a mile. From the Wikipedia article (usual caveats): "It [Meet the Press] is the longest-running television series in American broadcasting history, despite bearing little resemblance to the original format of the program seen in its television debut on November 6, 1947."

Other poster: If Retro Fridays do a 295 and Karn/O'H Saturdays do a 297, why is one just good and the other solid?...Another poster responds: It was probably just a different use of words. I don't think he was trying to talk down or play up one over the other.

Of course, I was just using different phrasing. The complaint is groundless.

Other poster: So I really don't think Sherri and Jerry are doing that bad.

I agree they're not doing terrible by GSN standards. The real soft spot is Monday, but that day has been a problem for GSN for quite a while now. Million Dollar Password and Power of 10 perform a lot better on Saturday afternoon than on Monday night. Weird.

Other poster: Even Match Game and Dawson Feud showed up this week.

Dawson dropped a lot of the Card Sharks lead-in, from 357K down to 252K. Again, not a terrible number by GSN standards, but I would put 100K Pyramid at 10:00PM. I think it would hold Card Sharks' lead-in better.

Miss Arlene

2011-12-03T11:26:00.006-06:00

The object of many John Daly compliments on What's My Line, Arlene Francis added a clever combo of elegance and everywoman to a lot of game shows. Of course, she was best known for WML but her IMDb page lists a slew of classic Goodson-Todman shows, from I've Got a Secret to Match Game.

Born Arline Francis Kazanjian in 1907, Arlene worked for many years as a Broadway actress. She made her way to radio and then to the box with pictures in the 1950s. Her big break was no doubt WML. The show gave her a national audience and a forum for marital discussions with her second husband and frequent WML guest panelist, Martin Gabel.

Although not particularly known for movie roles, she did score a nice part as Jimmy Cagney's wife in Billy Wilder's Cold War comedy (not a contradiction in terms) One, Two, Three. In her final years she suffered from Alzheimer's before her death in 2001 at age 93. She'll get yet another turn on GSN in the upcoming Christmastime run of What's My Line, and YouTube offers endless clips of her work in the genre.

Falling down

2011-12-02T18:11:00.009-06:00

NBC has put a promo on their web site for Who's Still Standing, debuting December 19.

Fans of Russian Roulette will think deja vu all over again (thanks, Yogi) as contestants disappear through holes in the floor. One obvious difference from the late, beloved GSN original is the money on offer. Standing will dole out a million-dollar top prize, which sounds familiar. Nowadays any self-respecting prime time game show has to risk at least that much cash.

For whatever reason the promo doesn't mention host Ben Bailey. You'd think his Cash Cab fame would earn at least a brief nod. But the promo is too busy showing contestants as they feel the force of gravity. No matter, Ben should run things more than competently, with an occasional quip or three.

I've seen comments that NBC is throwing the show away during the low-rated Christmas week. Well, December 19 isn't exactly Christmas Eve, so the show's not getting utterly dumped. It could have been worse. NBC could have run Who's Still Standing on Sunday afternoon.

Syndies: Feud slips...and nothing else

2011-12-01T18:05:00.011-06:00

It was dullsville in syndicated game show ratings for the week ending November 20. TVNewsCheck presents the yawn-inducing "news"...

Wheel of Fortune 7.6 - flat, and not the only one
Jeopardy 6.3 - flat
Family Feud 3.0 - off a couple ticks, at least some movement
Millionaire 2.5 - yep, flat

TV by the Numbers is still using that same picture of Pat and Vanna. Come on, guys, variety is the spice. Anyway, the viewership averages from their top 25 syndie list: Wheel of Fortune 11.9 million, Jeopardy 9.6 million, Family Feud 4.5 million. Millionaire again missed out.

UPDATE: Douglas just posted the GSN viewer numbers for Thanksgiving week, November 21-27. The overall averages prime time/total day were 306/225 (in thousands of viewers). Not so great but not a disaster. The averages for the five-hour 7:00PM-12:00AM marathons on each day:

Mon 181 - Million Dollar Monday is the usual OHIM for GSN
Tue 247 - Sherri doesn't do so swell
Wed 264 - Jerry at least does a little better than Sherri
Thu 331 - Howie again delivers despite turkey dinners
Fri 295 - Good showing for the retro shows on not-so-Black Friday
Sat 297 - Usual solid performance from stalwarts Karn and O'Hurley
Sun 351 - 5th Grader shines again

Question

2011-11-30T19:04:00.008-06:00

What if ABC had tried Million Dollar Mind Game in prime time instead of You Deserve It? It's a conundrum worthy of the well-dressed contestants on Mind Game itself.

Of course, the contestants couldn't have answered, because we can't run history over again. But that hasn't stopped some chatter on the web about how ABC chose the wrong game show to burn off in the schedule wilderness of Sunday afternoon. Especially now that You Deserve It looks to be tanking hard, with the second episode's 1.4 18-49 rating and only 4.4 million viewers. Both numbers are well down from the debut episode's already less than impressive totals.

Since it's pure speculation, I'll opine that Mind Game wouldn't have done any better and might have flopped worse. A painfully slow quizzer with painfully hard questions does not impress me as the ticket to Nielsen paradise. At best Mind Game might have collected a small cult following, which would have organized online petitions and letter-writing campaigns to save their unpopular favorite.

That would have been fun to watch but wouldn't have saved the show. You Deserve It's game is not sensational, but it's actually a lot better paced and more fun to play than Mind Game's numbingly tough puzzles. Too bad, but the producers stuffed way too many reality moments - hard luck stories and plentiful tears - into You Deserve It. If they had just stripped the show down to the gameplay, they might have lured decent ratings.

As it is, both shows seem destined for the famous six-and-out.

GSN checkerboard

2011-11-28T16:54:00.008-06:00

Douglas has skipped ahead to the week of November 14-20 in his GSN viewer numbers. Unfortunately, some of the times are scrambled - not complaining, Douglas, keep up the good work! - so I can't be absolutely sure of the following averages. But they're pretty close.

The huge winner in GSN's new checkerboard schedule is 5th Grader. The show landed three of GSN's top five slots for the week and racked up an impressive 372K viewer average for its five-hour Sunday marathon. Deal or No Deal also performed very well with its marathon on Thursday, a 356K average. Those are exact averages, by the way. No problem with the times on those shows.

Best that I can figure, these are the averages for the 7:00PM-12:00AM marathons on all the days in thousands of viewers...

Mon 202 - Million Dollar Password did best
Tue 272-275 - Newlywed Game (a little uncertain due to times)
Wed 304 - Baggage
Thu 356 - Deal or No Deal
Fri 250 - Pre-1990 shows, 25K Pyramid did best
Sat 293-298 - Family Feud (again, a little uncertain due to the time trouble)
Sun 372 - 5th Grader

The weak sister is clearly Monday, which has been a sore spot for a long time now on GSN. A lot of those million dollar shows have been severely rerun-abused. But the most abused of them all, Million Dollar Password, performed the best! Go figure. The pre-1990 marathon did semi-respectably on Friday but hardly set the Nielsen world ablaze, with the second-lowest average of any of the marathons. 25K Pyramid and Card Sharks delivered the best numbers. I love the first, don't love the second. Sadly, my beloved Match Game did the worst in the marathon.

The overall prime time (8:00PM-11:00PM) average for the new schedule was about 311K, which isn't terrible but ain't all that great. Again, there's a little uncertainty in this average due to the time trouble.

Really dealing

2011-11-27T21:11:00.010-06:00

History Channel brings a Brit import to Sunday night with Real Deal. The premise is simple. A contestant brings in a more or less valuable item. A pro dealer tries to negotiate a deal for the piece. If they can't agree the item goes to auction, and the contestant's haul may or may not exceed the dealer's final offer.

In practice, the show comes off like the negotiation scenes in Pawn Stars, without all the cutesy-pie "reality" bickering between Chumlee and the Old Man and the rest of 'em. Since those reality bits often bore me on Pawn Stars, I like how Real Deal strips things down to the essential game show. Take the deal or risk the auction.

The four pro dealers on the first two episodes were personable enough. Sometimes they seemed flat-out incredulous over what the contestants asked, like the twenty grand for the Spiderman necklace. (I was pretty dumbfounded by that initial demand, too.) My favorite character on the show was actually the auctioneer, though. A heavier version of Mr. Clean, he really milked his audience for every dollar.

The first two eps showed all three possible outcomes: agreed deals between the pros and the contestants, auctions that produced more than the final offer, and - the zonk outcome - auctions that yielded less than the final offer. The hour passed quickly thanks to a brisk pace, and the items were often interesting for historical reasons. It's a nice addition to History's lineup.

GSN number-palooza: four more days

2011-11-26T09:26:00.004-06:00

Not all the news about GSN concerns Dancing With the Stars lately. Douglas posted the October 31-November 3 viewer numbers for the network. My thrilling comments from the GSN Schedule board:

Averages for Tuesday through Thursday were fairly respectable. Monday showed the usual weakness. Prime time/total day (in thousands of viewers)...

Mon 264/213
Tue 316/245
Wed 341/241
Thu 360/251

The top 20 for the days was familiar...

Thu 4:30PM Family Feud 482
Thu 10:30PM Family Feud 458
Wed 4:30PM Family Feud 448
Wed 5:00PM Deal or No Deal 426
Tue 11:30PM Baggage 409
Wed 11:00PM Newlywed Game 402
Wed 10:00PM Family Feud 401
Thu 4:00PM Family Feud 400
Thu 11:00PM Newlywed Game 394
Thu 5:00PM Deal or No Deal 385
Thu 11:30PM Baggage 384
Tue 4:30PM Family Feud 378
Tue 3:30PM Chain Reaction 371
Wed 10:30PM Family Feud 371
Wed 11:30PM Baggage 364
Tue 10:30PM Family Feud 360
Thu 9:00PM Deal or No Deal 356
Tue 4:00PM Family Feud 355
Wed 9:00PM Deal or No Deal 354
Tue 5:00PM Deal or No Deal 345

Lots of Karn, O'Hurley and Howie, of course. Sherri and Jerry also snuck in, as did my beloved Chain Reaction. As always, Drew killed late nights by dropping half or more of his lead-in, which really hurt the total day averages. They just had to get him off the schedule.

Highest pre-1990 show was 10:30AM 25K Pyramid on Tuesday at 291K. Wonder if Pyramid is scoring the best numbers in the Friday night block. Speaking of which, we're almost up to the new schedule now. Guess that means a new thread [on the GSN Schedule board].

More dancing, more arguing

2011-11-25T19:17:00.011-06:00

The endless yapping over GSN's acquisition of Dancing With the Stars continues. BuzzerBlog's Alex Davis among many others has waded in. Some more of my chatter from the GSN Schedule board...

Alex Davis: I frankly, don't watch the network.

I guess Alex means he doesn't watch GSN that much. He apparently was one of the few people who liked and watched Improv-a-Ganza and Late Night Liars. But those were demo experiments designed to lure folks like Alex. They didn't work. In fact, the only demo experiment that succeeded for a long time on GSN was High Stakes Poker. And that show is just about gone now.

As for a Dancing With the Stars talk show, I think it's a far-fetched idea at best. GSN's audience does skew in Dancing's direction, but that doesn't necessarily mean they like talk shows. They like competition. That's why they tune in to GSN instead of The View.

I do agree that DWTS is a much better demo bet for GSN than Amazing Race, and a way better bet than a freaking, flipping disaster like Late Night Liars, which was one of the worst waste products ever excreted by any network anywhere. Of course, that doesn't guarantee success, but Dancing's got a much better shot with GSN's core audience.

Is Dancing a game show? Sorry, I gave up on those metaphysical discussions long ago. I will say that it's a competition show which is at least closely related to traditional game shows.

By the way, I like how Alex has now softened his description of GSN's audience to "middle-aged ladies." He has been more blunt in the past (wink).

Another poster: This will last like The Amazing Race. It will work initially but quickly go to pot once all the first run reruns of this show are used up.

I think the much better demo targeting will keep the numbers higher than with Amazing Race. I agree that if GSN abuses the show too ridiculously, the numbers will soften quick.

Thank you, Don Pardo

2011-11-25T11:29:00.015-06:00

Now that I've rustled through Chuck Woolery's Wheel of Fortune on YouTube, I went back and looked at Art Fleming's Jeopardy.

The big difference from Wheel is that Jeopardy gameplay has changed little since that ancient 1964-75 version. Old Jeopardy didn't have shopping rounds when folks could waste time spending their loot. Sure, the cash amounts were a lot lower before the Great Inflation. And they changed cards instead of TV monitors on the board. Watson was nowhere in sight, either.

But otherwise things went pretty much the same as nowadays. At the top of this 1968 episode Art even refers to the upcoming Tournament of Champions. The think music was also the same on Final Jeopardy. By the way, I had no clue where John Jacob Astor emigrated from.

Some formats are so solid that tinkering is foolish. Family Feud has also lasted a third of a century with few format changes. Though there have been some scoring switches and a couple tryouts for a bullseye round.

Jeopardy did try a few tweaks in the 1974-75 syndie and the 1978-79 revival. But the Alex Trebek version, which began in 1984 and goes on and on, went back to the tried and true original format. Why mess with timeless success?

BuzzerBlog meets the hoofers

2011-11-24T11:18:00.009-06:00

I've posted a lot of faux tweets today and I'm about ready to abandon blogging for turkey. The drumsticks taste better, after all. But I can't resist one more post about the ruckus over GSN acquiring Dancing With the Stars. My blogging confrere Alex Davis at BuzzerBlog reacted to the news on his twitter feed.

I already wrote a faux tweet about this, but I might as well give the full story. (Disclaimer: Alex has said some less than complimentary things about me, which may indicate he's no fool.) From my comments on the GSN Schedule board...

BuzzerBlog's Alex Davis does provide some humor on the subject. Part of it is unintentional, but nobody's perfect. He tweets: "Are the laughable hysterics over GSN picking up Dancing With the Stars over? Can I come out of hiding? I think I'm safe."

You're safe, Alex. But earlier he got a little grumpy over the situation, though I had to smile. Another poster commented: "I remember when GSN showed reruns of The Amazing Race and The Mole - I'd far prefer that, of course." Alex tweeted in response: "The old ladies that watch GSN don't. You and I aren't what GSN cares about."

Cry me a river. Alex did have an interesting suggestion: "Given the Dancing news, if I were GSN I'd consider making some sort of Dancing talk show if they could. Works with other cablers."

I dunno, I think GSN's viewers are more interested in competition than talk.

Dancing fallout

2011-11-23T15:19:00.010-06:00

Didn't have to be a genius to predict that the GSN Internet board would explode with righteous wrath over the Dancing With the Stars acquisition. The board is dominated by super-traditionalist older-is-better fans who don't much like anything on GSN produced after 1990. Especially when it's not a traditional game show. So they're yelping and yelping some more. Some of my sassy contributions to the screamfest...

I don't expect many posters on this board to watch DWTS. But posters around here are hardly representative of GSN's audience. Check Karn Feud's ratings if you don't believe me.

Stuff like Amazing Race was a demo gamble for GSN, an attempt to reach entirely different viewers than the network's usual old-skewing, female-skewing audience. Dancing With the Stars, in contrast, really hits that demo sweet spot for GSN. In fact, it may well be the broadcast show which gets the most viewers in those famous "adult female" demos that GSN specializes in.

Doesn't mean that the show will necessarily succeed on GSN. But it's a great demo fit for the network. It's not something like Improv-a-Ganza. Comedy generally skews younger and more male, and GSN's demos are anything but young and male. DWTS skews right into GSN's demo wheelhouse.

By the way, I doubt that [new GSN programming veep] Amy Davis had much to do with the acquisition. She's only been at GSN for a few weeks, and a huge acquisition like this must have been in the works for a long time. And it must have gotten signoffs from key people at Sony. I haven't seen any financial details, but a very large piece of change, by GSN standards, must have gone for these exclusive rerun rights.

Other poster: Actually the only thing I'm erupting with is I think these kinds of shows suck no matter what channel they come on, still can't believe it's been around for 13 years, and have no intentions of watching reruns of it...or first runs of it...ever.

Thanks for proving my point. I'm sure we'll see many more similar complaints on this board.

Another poster: But what about the possibility to add on more Match Game 1970's, Family Feud Dawson episodes, Card Sharks episode, and $25,000/$100,000 Pyramid episodes to the lease packages they have? Same for getting 100% of the Goodson-Todman library rights back?

If those shows got twenty million viewers, with heavy concentrations among GSN's current and target demos, the network might well spend whatever it takes.

Just one thing. Those shows don't get twenty million viewers.

Yet another poster: Surely, the acquisition of DWTS certainly doesn't seem like good news, and I can't help but be fairly pessimistic about the general direction of GSN in the future, but still I wouldn't yet presumptuously come to the conclusion that GSN is going to be all garbage reality programming.

Garbage is in the eye of the beholder. Twenty million beholders think DWTS is pretty good. That's why they watch. I don't watch it and I don't intend to watch it because I'm not a dancing fan. But the show has gotten generally favorable reviews as an interesting competition. And it's certainly built for GSN's audience (which again has little in common with this board).

One oddity: why didn't GSN get the first three seasons as well? I'm sure they would like to have John O'Hurley from the first season as a natural tie-in with Family Feud.

GSN spends some money

2011-11-22T17:30:00.007-06:00

Have to admit I didn't see this one coming. Seems like too much money for our little game show network. And GSN has lately emphasized traditional game shows.

But the network just plunked down some coin for seasons 4-14 of Dancing With the Stars. Might miss my guess, but I'd say the show will easily become GSN's highest-rated. Lately, any show that gets 500K viewers can claim that distinction. And DWTS should be able to clear that low hurdle with a dazzling leap. Even in its most recent, not so hot season, the show can pull around twenty million folks.

DWTS also skews toward those "adult female" demos we've heard so much about lately, so it should fit right in with GSN's audience. I'm sure that the GSN Internet boards will erupt with it's-not-a-game-show yelps, and I don't intend to watch the show myself. But the hoofers should definitely help the network's numbers.

The danger is ridiculous scheduling that burns out the show, just as Amazing Race expired a few years ago on GSN. Not really sure how the show will fit into the network's current checkerboard schedule. We'll see starting in January.

As with Improv-a-Ganza, I'm worried about the show succeeding all too well, and GSN crowding more non-traditional stuff onto the network. Improv-a-Ganza flopped big because it was a demo misfit for GSN. But I doubt the dancers will stumble nearly as badly.

Syndies: 3 outa 4 ain’t bad

2011-11-22T17:07:00.002-06:00

The week of November 7-13 was very nice to three syndicated game shows. The fourth one, let's just say, didn't perform quite so well. But it didn't bomb, either. TVNewsCheck delivers the numbers...

Wheel of Fortune 7.6 – up three ticks to another season high
Jeopardy 6.3 – up a couple ticks to its own season high
Family Feud 3.2 – up a couple ticks to a season high, seeing a pattern here?
Millionaire 2.5 – the party pooper, down a tick but hardly horrible

When TV by the Numbers sends out its top 25 syndication list, I’ll post the viewership averages. Three syndie game shows made the list for sure.

TVBTN keeps using that same picture of Pat and Vanna. But the Wheel duo won't mind the viewership averages: Wheel of Fortune 11.9 million, Jeopardy 9.6 million, Family Feud 4.8 million. Meredith again missed the list.

We deserve this?

2011-11-22T06:27:00.002-06:00

Mix Queen For a Day and a run-of-the-mill quizzer, and you get lots of tears in between the puzzle-solving. That's basically the idea for You Deserve It.

The game format is okay but nothing special. Each round starts with some money and a hidden answer. Contestants have to spend money to buy clues to the answer. When they finally guess the answer, whatever is left in the money pot is...well, not theirs.

Instead, the loot goes to deserving friends in need, who the contestants are playing for. You might imagine that this format produces a lot of waterworks, and you'd be right.

In the debut last night, the deserving friend was a young mother of two who recently lost her husband in a diving accident. When the young widow was surprised with the prize money at the end of the show (over a hundred grand, at least the show ain’t cheap) things really got lachrymose.

I know I'm sounding like a hardhearted old Scrooge here. I'm sure the lady can use the money and I'm happy she got some help with the bills. But the constant tug at the heartstrings pretty much tugged me out by the end of the hour.

Then again, I'm not the target demo. This one is for the ladies.

UPDATE: Preliminary ratings for You Deserve It were okay. TV by the Numbers warns of possible downward football-related adjustments, though. Against tough competition from Two and a Half Men and House, the show got a 2.1 18-49 rating (#3) and 10.0 million total viewers (#2). By no means a blowout, but hardly embarrassing by today's standards.

UPDATED UPDATE: As expected, You Deserve It got dinged in the final adjustments, down to a 1.7 18-49 rating and 8.6 million total viewers. Ah, so-so at best.

Inventing the wheel

2011-11-21T06:17:00.006-06:00

Long long ago in a galaxy far far away, Pat and Vanna didn't host Wheel of Fortune. A couple folks named Chuck Woolery and Susan Stafford did. Those ancient episodes have mostly vanished, but a handful survive and several have made their way to YouTube. I spent a few hours last night watching them. The differences from today's show were immediately apparent.

This 1975-81 NBC daytime version was much more of a shopping game, as game show mavens know all too well. The result was a significantly slower pace. Contestants spent their winnings and a lot of time on all that lovely merchandise, and Charlie O'Donnell read reams of advertising copy which also slowed things down. The show was lucky to get through three puzzles in an episode.

Things clunked along so slowly that Chuck often had to interrupt a puzzle for commercials. The contestants would turn their backs to the board during such breaks, which looks pretty funny today. In 1981 Chuck left the show - Woolery leaves Wheel, as game show fans often joke about old news - in the genre's most famous salary dispute. That paved the way for a weather guy named Sajak to take over.

Susan Stafford departed in 1982 and Vanna soon won the permanent (as in forever) job. While some older-is-better folks pine for the old Wheel with the long shopping interludes, I like the current show with its much brisker pace and many more puzzles. And contestants don't have to turn their backs to the board during commercials any more.

Pump it up

2011-11-20T17:20:00.003-06:00

Finally caught the first two eps of Pumped, Speed Channel's ambush quizzer and obvious knockoff of Cash Cab. In fact, the knockoff is so blatant that at the top of the show host Greg Fitzsimmons tells us there are a quarter-million gas stations in the country, but only this one pays out money. Ben Bailey, you've been paraphrased.

Just because a show is a knockoff doesn't mean it's bad. I honestly enjoyed Pumped. The pace is sprightly and the questions are more down to earth than the academic subjects tested on the august Discovery Channel. Cars and car racing naturally get a workout, along with other sports and pop culture in general. You can guess Speed Channel's demographics real easy from the quiz topics.

Fitzsimmons is a shorter and snarkier version of Bailey. But he never gets really nasty with the contestants who are ambushed at the gas station, and he manages some funny lines. Pumped also goes easier on contestants by starting with true-false and multiple-choice questions. And the format ensures that just about everybody walks away with at least a little cash, unlike many hapless players on Cash Cab.

One funny note: the episodes were taped before the conclusion of this year's World Series. So the Cardinals now have eleven Series victories, not ten as the show stated. The contestants still won, though. Too bad my hometown Rangers didn't.

GSN number-palooza once more

2011-11-19T16:19:00.007-06:00

Douglas took a little vacation from GSN numbers. After all the data he's supplied, he deserves a few weeks off. But now he's back with October 24-30, and it wasn't a great week for the network. There might have been a reason for the massive schedule shakeup. The daily prime time/total day averages (in thousands of viewers)...

Mon 222/207
Tue 364/240
Wed 354/240
Thu 296/234
Fri 231/203
Sat 325/219
Sun 220/193

Maybe the World Series didn't help on Thursday and Friday, though sports are generally not much of a threat to GSN's audience. But there were a lot of forgettable numbers. We'll see if the new schedule does any better.

The top 20 had a certain monotonous look to it...

Wed 9:00PM Deal or No Deal 413
Fri 4:30PM Family Feud (Karn) 408
Tue 10:00PM Family Feud (Karn) 405
Thu 4:30PM Family Feud (Karn) 403
Tue 10:30PM Family Feud (O’Hurley) 401
Wed 10:30PM Family Feud (O’Hurley) 389
Tue 9:00PM Deal or No Deal 375
Wed 10:00PM Family Feud (Karn) 368
Sat 8:30PM Family Feud (Karn) 361
Wed 4:30PM Family Feud (Karn) 360
Sat 9:30PM Family Feud (O’Hurley) 356
Tue 4:00PM Family Feud (Karn) 342
Tue 4:30PM Family Feud (Karn) 340
Fri 4:00PM Family Feud (Karn) 337
Sat 9:00PM Family Feud (O’Hurley) 336
Thu 5:00PM Deal or No Deal 331
Thu 10:30PM Family Feud (O’Hurley) 321
Tue 8:00PM Deal or No Deal 315
Sat 10:00AM Chain Reaction 313
Wed 11:30PM Baggage 312

Karn, O'Hurley and Howie almost ran the table, though Chain Reaction and Baggage just snuck in.

The scribblers

2011-11-19T11:47:00.012-06:00

In the faux tweets I linked to a video about Jeopardy head writer Billy Wisse and his eight staff writers. Game show scribblers never get enough credit. But somebody has to pen a lot of the words on each episode. Though game shows are often called "unscripted," questions have to be phrased, puzzles designed, intros written, etc.

Although the pictured Bard never tried his hand at Elizabethan quizzers, other writers have made a mark on our little genre. The Match Game group was particularly wild and crazy. Guys like Dick DeBartolo would try to sneak the most risque stuff possible past the censors. On GSN's Match Game documentary Behind the Blank, DeBartolo explained his strategy: submit some truly insane things he knew wouldn't make the cut, so the lines he really wanted on the show would look acceptable by comparison.

Game show writers may suffer from the same snobbery that besets the genre in general. After all, how many critics ever compliment "unscripted show" writers? Instead the critics heap praise on writers who churn out the hoity-toitier dramas and sitcoms that are somehow nobler than little old game shows.

But once in a while spare a thought for the people who write the questions. It's not easy to come up with an entire Jeopardy board.

Ten favorites, ever

2011-11-18T19:50:00.013-06:00

I've perpetrated a few all-time top ten lists of game shows. Except I can't remember where I put them. Anyway, the lists come in two varieties: my personal favorites, and the game shows I think have been most significant. The two are far from identical. The Price is Right would have to go on the second list, of course, but wouldn't come close to the first. Today I'm going to play favorites with myself and list the shows I like the most...

1) Match Game 1973-82. Perfect panel, perfect host, perfect writers. Can't beat it.

2) Pyramid. Just about any version, except maybe John Davidson's. And he couldn't really hurt the bulletproof format much.

3) Jeopardy. Great pace and never fails to get me talking to the TV.

4) Lingo. Maybe a surprise, but I can't stop shouting the obviously right answers (except when they turn out to be obviously wrong).

5) Wheel of Fortune. I'm a sucker for word games and nobody can run the show better than Pat.

6) I've Got a Secret 1952-67. Gets me to watch more black-and-white clips on YouTube than any sane human should consume.

7) Russian Roulette. Drop 'em Danno, er, Mark-o! By the way, Mark Walberg is my pick for most underrated host ever.

8) Family Feud. Any version except Louie's. He just didn't want to be there, unlike me.

9) Win Ben Stein's Money. Lots of people thought Ben and Jimmy were jerks. Well, they could tend that way but the show was still a hoot.

10) The Newlywed Game. Any version with happy homewrecker Bob Eubanks. Love the snark.

Five honorable mentions: Cash Cab, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, What's My Line, Deal or No Deal, Password Plus/Super Password.

Radio fun and games

2011-11-17T19:16:00.012-06:00

The news that NPR will try a TV version of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me got me rummaging around the web for old radio game shows. These shows are even more ancient than me, and I can't remember any of them very well. But one radio show, College Quiz Bowl, eventually jumped to TV as GE College Bowl. And I remember the television version quite well, thank you.

Turns out the primeval College Quiz Bowl is "well preserved", as they sometimes say about people like me. A site on old radio game shows offers the complete March 5, 1955 episode. This was a battle of the sexes, as an all-female team from Mt. Holyoke faced an all-male team from Colgate.

Allen Ludden, in his pre-Password days, hosted. I won't spoil the suspense in case you want to listen to the episode. But I can say that Allen was racing by the end of the show, because the contest literally went down to the last minute after a dramatic comeback by one of the teams. The episode is well worth your time.

This was long before political correctness, so the members of the Mt. Holyoke team are freely referred to as "girls." One of them tells Allen that she's wearing a bone in her hair, but she won't divulge the reason. It remains an unsolved mystery.

Churning 'em out

2011-11-17T06:18:00.000-06:00

A faux tweet quoted a Wheel of Fortune contestant marveling how they can produce six shows a day, thirty-nine days a year. Actually, I think it's five shows a day for 185 a year, but who's quibbling over numbers? Game show producers have always been able to crank out a bazillion episodes quick and dirty.

That naturally tempts network execs when they get a hit prime time game show. ABC's over-reliance on multiple weekly runs of Millionaire has become industry legend. NBC did much the same with Deal or No Deal.

But who can blame them? Get some contestants, roll the cameras, dole out the prize money, rack up the eps. It's not like scripted shows where you gotta pay prima donna actors, directors, writers, and God knows who else, and then the show usually flops, anyway. And even if the show succeeds, you only end up with a relative handful of episodes that you can peddle to syndication for some payback.

The critics who whine about the death of scripted shows on broadcast TV get little sympathy from me. Most scripted fare is garbage, and ridiculously expensive garbage at that. Frankly, I'd rather watch an episode of Deal or No Deal than just about any scripted show currently on broadcast prime time. At least the contestants are sort of real, unlike the overpaid actors.

Syndies: rich get richer

2011-11-15T19:12:00.005-06:00

Among syndicated game shows, the big two got a little bigger in the week ending November 6. TVNewsCheck brings the welcome news for Pat and Vanna and Alex...

Wheel of Fortune 7.3 - up three ticks to a season high
Jeopardy 6.1 - not to be outdone by the soulmate, up a couple ticks to a season high
Family Feud 3.0 - flat at previous season high
Millionaire 2.6 - also flat at its previous season high

If and when TV by the Numbers posts the viewership averages, I'll list them here. And Douglas hasn't released any GSN ratings for a while. But if he puts some numbers up, I'll chat about them a little.

UPDATE: Bill Gorman at TVBTN provides the viewership averages: Wheel of Fortune 11.3 million, Jeopardy 9.3 million, Family Feud 4.3 million. Meredith just missed the top 25 list. And Bill, let's get another photo of Pat and Vanna. You keep using the same old one!

Reege after all these years

2011-11-14T19:33:00.009-06:00

As Regis Philbin waves good-bye to that little morning show, the tributes rain down. A Fort Wayne site provides a nice slideshow of Regis' career.

The first shot displays an impossibly young-looking Mr. Philbin on local TV in San Diego. Reege and I have both aged considerably. Naturally, one of the shots has Regis in the Millionaire host's seat. Which doesn't even exist any more. They make Meredith stand through the whole show, the meanies.

Reege was perfect for the return of game shows to broadcast prime time. Everyman, folksy, completely trustworthy and non-threatening. Sure, the format was so strong that it could have withstood even an obnoxious, incompetent host. But relaxed and friendly Regis helped a lot.

Just finished watching Regis on one of GSN's endless repeats of Million Dollar Password. Again, a strong format helped, but Regis sure didn't hurt, either. Too bad the demos killed the show before CBS really gave it a chance. At least MDP still does pretty good business on our little game show network.

You'd think that Regis might consider retirement at age 80. But he's been on camera so long, I can see why he thinks he can keep going forever. I don't expect him to disappear.