Ratings: Steve leads all syndies

Family Feud kept riding high in a slow summer week for syndies. Steve led all of syndication, though he lost a little ground. But it's summer and people are out and about, even with the lingering lockdowns. TV News Check has the household ratings for July 13-19...

Family Feud 5.8 - down a tick but still #1 among syndies

Jeopardy 5.0 - flat with all those reruns

Wheel of Fortune 5.0 - down a tick into a tie with the soulmate

25 Words or Less 1.0 - down a tick

America Says 0.8 - flat as the syndie run winds down

Funny You Should Ask 0.5 - flat at the ancient number

While we're on the syndies, Fox will test GSN's Common Knowledge in syndication for four weeks starting August 3. Well, it could work and there's not much fresh product now in syndie game shows.

Poignant coincidence

An odd and touching accident means that Jeopardy will pay tribute to Regis Philbin today.

A while back the Jeopardy showrunners picked a bunch of celeb eps for this week's set of vintage reruns. Of course, they chose the very first celebrity episode with Regis Philbin, Carol Burnett and Donna Mills. And that ep runs today, after Regis' death a couple days ago.

If you want to spoil the result, you can always check J! Archive. The site has a link in this blog's sidebar for extra convenience in spoiling. I was a little surprised to see that Regis played three times on Jeopardy. He just kept coming back for more answers and questions. In addition to his original 1992 ep, he also played in 1998 and 2006.

After this week of celeb episodes, Jeopardy digs out their first million dollar tournament from 2002. That will occupy the weeks of August 3-7 and August 10-14. Who knows when the show will tape some new eps?

Those ads

Dropped by the GSN Facebook page. There was a complaint I've often seen on both the GSN and Buzzr pages...

I used to enjoy watching your channel. However, some of your commercials are heart wrenching, depressing and sad. They are played way too often. And for that reason I will not be watching your channel any longer.

We all know the commercials she's talking about. The disabled kids, starving kids, abused animals, etc. Have to admit, such downer ads depress me, too. Life is tough enough without getting repeated reminders that life is really tough for a lot of our fellow creatures.

But as a couple of other posters remind the complainer, economic times are hard and GSN or Buzzr or any other media outlet can't be too choosy when it comes to advertisers. In fact, my guess is that GSN is weathering the recession better than most TV networks, thanks to its big ratings over the past several months.

Still, the ad dollars are not flowing like they were before the lockdowns. So we're probably going to see a lot more of the depressing ads before good times return.

Regis Philbin dies at 88

Regis Philbin, iconic TV personality best known in game shows for his hosting of the original U.S. version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, has died at age 88.

As the histories always note, Millionaire marked the return of big money game shows to U.S. prime time for the first time in decades. Mr. Philbin offered the perfect friendly Everyman persona for a game that might have seemed cold and forbidding.

Prime time Millionaire succumbed to overexposure but not before it had sparked a rebirth of our little genre on all the broadcast networks. The format lasted for many years as a syndie and has returned to ABC with Jimmy Kimmel. Mr. Philbin came back to the new set for some chatter and a blurb with Jimmy.

Of course, Millionaire was only one job in Mr. Philbin's long and distinguished TV career. By a grim coincidence he eclipsed Hugh Downs' record for the most hours on U.S. television. Mr. Downs died earlier this year.

Mr. Philbin avoided controversy and was always a reassuring, amiable voice in the TV world. R.I.P.

Ranking game show hosts by Wikipedia page views

A stock market site (honest!) has posted a list of the most popular game show hosts in history.

The list seems designed to make members of the oldies boards throw up. The list even makes me laugh at some of the weird placements. The problem is that the authors gauge "popularity" by page views of the hosts' Wikipedia entries over the past two years. Of course, this creates a strong bias toward the present day. Not to mention that the list contains a few names who are questionable as game show hosts in the first place. So Ellen Degeneres lands in the #1 slot while Bill Cullen gets shoved down to #38.

Game Show Forum will purely love such rankings. Even I think they're pretty goofy. Be that as it may, the site's list of the most popular game show hosts ever, from #1 to #50...

1. Ellen DeGeneres, 2. Alex Trebek, 3. Jamie Foxx, 4. Steve Harvey, 5. Pat Sajak, 6. Michael Strahan, 7. Johnny Carson, 8. Wayne Brady, 9. Ryan Seacrest, 10. Bob Barker, 11. Liza Koshy, 12. Drew Carey, 13. Howie Mandel, 14. Aisha Taylor, 15. Richard Dawson, 16. Jane Lynch, 17. Anthony Anderson, 18. Jill Wagner, 19. Regis Philbin, 20. Mario Lopez, 21. Chris Hardwick, 22. Groucho Marx, 23. Brooke Burns, 24. Allen Ludden, 25. Sherri Shepherd, 26. Dick Clark, 27. Chuck Woolery, 28. Gene Rayburn, 29. Jeff Foxworthy, 30. Bert Convy, 31. Meredith Vieira, 32. Ray Combs, 33. Melissa Peterman, 34. Hugh Downs, 35. Bob Eubanks, 36. Monty Hall, 37. Wink Martindale, 38. Bill Cullen, 39. Marc Summers, 40. Art Fleming, 41. Peter Marshall, 42. John Daly, 43. Garry Moore, 44. Jack Narz, 45. Hal March, 46. Bud Collyer, 47. Tom Kennedy, 48. Jim Lange, 49. Dennis James, 50. Jack Barry

This list is a hilarious example of how wrong you can go when you rely on a single metric. It's true that very minor celebs like Liza Koshy and Aisha Taylor - the latter isn't even a game show host, by the way - have drawn more Wikipedia views in the last couple years than, say, Groucho Marx or Dick Clark. But my guess is that the overwhelming majority of Americans have only the foggiest idea (if any) of who Liza and Aisha are. It's crazy to call them "more popular" than Groucho or Dick, who appeared on TV shows (and other media projects) that drew ginormous shares of the population compared to the tiny slivers of the viewing public that Liza or Aisha garnered.

At least the older hosts still draw a surprising number of Wikipedia views. Last-place Jack Barry got over sixty thousand views during the past two years. Anyway, it's a silly list that's fun to laugh at. Enjoy the chortles.

Netflix sweeps

As a faux tweet noted a while ago, Netflix is now offering a few eps of the old David Ruprecht Supermarket Sweep.

This show has always had a rabid online fanbase which has pined for a Sweep reboot. ABC will oblige with an upcoming rewind hosted by Leslie Jones. But the debut date is uncertain as long as the lockdowns stay in place. Meanwhile, the rabid fanbase is whooping it up because the sweepers have invaded Netflix. This blurb from ET Online is one of the whoops...

While the renewed popularity of the series may largely be rooted in nostalgia, which there has been no shortage of thanks to streaming platforms making TV favorites from the 1980s and ‘90s readily available to binge, Supermarket Sweep is still just as appealing and relevant today.

Truth be told, Supermarket Sweep is not one of my faves, though I'll admit that the final mad dash around the aisles is always fun. But the front game just seems like a low-rent version of The Price is Right, with similar price-guessing games but without the pretty merchandise and prettier models.

The linked story doesn't mention all the Sweep eps on Buzzr. Our little oldies diginet gets no respect.

SLIGHTLY RELATED UPDATE: Deadline has confirmed BuzzerBlog's story about an ABC reboot of The Chase. And they've also confirmed my own (wild-blue) speculation that Ken Jennings, James Holzhauer and Brad Rutter may be involved. The Alphabet Net just loves to reboot game shows.

Deadline says there was some kind of competition to win the rights to the format. They offer no other details on this intriguing part of the story.

Alex's book

Alex Trebek is marking his 80th birthday with the release of his autobiography The Answer Is...

The reviews have been respectful and kind, which you would expect because of the Jeopardy host's well-known fight with cancer. This USA Today review is typical. It recaps some of the funny stories in the book - no, Alex was not sleeping nude when his hotel room was burglarized in 2011 - and describes how Mr. Trebek is coping with what might be his final days.

Right now Jeopardy is reprising some of the older eps from Alex's long, long run on the show. Without getting maudlin, I can't help feeling that the reruns have an end-of-days vibe, as the show gets ready for what seems like an inevitable transition.

There's already been endless speculation on who will succeed Alex Trebek as the host of the iconic quizzer. My own pick would be Chris Harrison. He kept Millionaire going a lot longer than most people expected. But he checks no affirmative action boxes, and they could well be a requirement. We'll just have to stay tuned.

Ratings: A good week for two syndies

In a week of summer and reruns and people getting out from the lockdowns, a couple of syndie game shows actually gained a little ground. It was a good week for Pat and Vanna and Meredith. Otherwise, the cellar-dweller fell back to its usual number. TV News Check has the household ratings for July 6-12...

Family Feud 5.9 - flat but still #1

Wheel of Fortune 5.1 - up a couple ticks to go past the soulmate

Jeopardy 5.0 - flat

25 Words or Less 1.1 - up a tick despite the endless reruns

America Says 0.8 - flat

Funny You Should Ask 0.5 - down a tick to its righteous and proper number

GSN slipped a little for the week of July 13-19. 413K/325K viewers prime time/total day. The network ranked 23rd and 19th in the windows. The lack of fresh episodes may be hurting a little, plus the usual summer doldrums. GSN is still doing fine by its historical standards, though.

Chasing ABC?

A commenter noted that BuzzerBlog has posted a story about ABC quietly scouting potential contestants for a new version of The Chase.

The story itself says that there's no public casting call yet. And I haven't found any other independent confirmation of the reboot, though Programming Insider has run with the BuzzerBlog post. And so have I, now that you mention it.

GSN's version of the storied format was one of the network's top efforts. The Chase drew consistently strong ratings, though it skewed old and ran up a big prize budget. Mark Labbett didn't often lose but when he did, the losses cost major money by GSN standards. One of those losses was to James Holzhauer of subsequent Jeopardy fame. After James hit it big on Alex's quizzer, GSN even ran a recap of his Chase episode with color commentary by (who else?) Ken Jennings.

BuzzerBlog has a good record of spotting casting calls public and private, so I assume the linked story is correct. Also, ABC has been rebooting every game show format in the known universe, so a Chase rewind would hardly be all that unexpected from the Alphabet Net. Still, there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, so I wouldn't guarantee that The Chase will arrive on ABC any time soon, especially with the lockdowns.

But it sure would be nice to see the format turn up on a broadcast network. By the way, ABC exec Robert Mills had some interesting comments when the Jeopardy G.O.A.T. tourney was tearing up the ratings...

"Whether it's something with Jeopardy or not, certainly I would argue these three guys are the biggest stars in prime time right now. Is there a different game? I don't know," Mills said of a possible followup program headlined by Jennings, Rutter and Holzhauer.

An ABC version of The Chase with all or some of these guys as resident chasers would be a nice followup. GSN has already more or less followed up its own version of The Chase with the very successful Master Minds.

Another way to watch GSN stuff

GSN originals are showing up all over the place lately.

This Screen Rant story praises a couple of GSN shows that are now playing on Netflix, Emogenius and Idiotest. Both are challenging puzzle games. In fact, Emogenius might have been a little too challenging for its own good. It was so hard to play that hardly anybody ever won the top prize.

It was still an interesting concept, though. Figuring out what the emojis meant was a quirky pastime. Hunter March hosted acceptably, and there was some humor along the way as contestants flailed at the symbols.

Too bad the show did little business and expired after one season of forty eps. But GSN is dusting off its massive library of originals to generate some money from all that inventory. So Hunter and friends are riding again on various streaming services.

Idiotest enjoyed a much more successful run on GSN, of course. The network has more than two hundred eps on the shelf to pass around the streamers. It's one of the best GSN originals ever, even if Ben Gleib's sardonic hosting style can sometimes turn a little bitter. Not to mention that the puzzles often make me feel like...well, you know.

Trotting with James Holzhauer

You could put what I know about harness racing into a thimble, and you'd have...an empty thimble.

But a harness racing fan has come up with an unusual idea to liven up the sport. A game show with Jeopardy's James Holzhauer. Okay, it's really just a gag, but the guy goes on and on about the idea as if it were a real brainstorm.

After all, James is a professional sports bettor. So they'd give him a crash course in wagering on the ponies, and then build a game show around him challenging civvies to out-bet him on a set of races.

Don't bet (sorry) on such a show becoming a reality any time soon. James is too busy betting on other sports - and investing his Jeopardy winnings - to bother with a fringe pastime like harness racing. But maybe one of these days a Vegas entrepreneur will put James on some kind of show where he matches wits with other bettors. That might be a fun thing to watch.