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As you probably know if you've brushed up against the game show Interwebs lately, Classic Concentration has come to Buzzr. There's no question that Concentration , in all its many versions, is one of the top game shows ever. I ranked it #18 on my latest top fifty list, and others would no doubt place it even higher. But I'll admit that it's never been a personal favorite. The show is just a little too slow, quiet and cerebral for my taste. Too much concentrating, you know. Buzzr has put the first half of Classic Concentration's first episode on their Facebook site. So I decided to review it as if it was a new show I'd never seen before. Sure enough, I thought the gameplay was a little too erudite and not very brisk. Of course, maybe I was just grumpy because I couldn't guess the rebus until they revealed all but four squares. The eventual winning contestant took even longer, which soothed my ego a little. She had to see the entire rebus before she nailed

Vicki Lawrence gave an interview to a TV site to plug her new sitcom on Fox. After the obligatory advertising for the sitcom, Vicki chatted a little about Win, Lose or Draw . I assume they asked about the show because of Burt Reynolds' recent death. Vicki had nothing but nice things to say about Burt and the show, which isn't surprising because Vicki usually has nice things to say about everybody. She did admit that she was terrible at drawing, so it's a good thing she was the host and not a contestant. She recalled some of the odder drawings, like a contestant who got "Baked Alaska" and drew a map of the U.S. with a cake on North Dakota. Geography, like math, is tough. Vicki asked: "What happened to Canada?" Before the format became a TV show, Vicki originally played the game with Burt and his then-girlfriend Sally Field at the house of Hollywood producer Snuff Garrett. That's when Vicki discovered she was a hopeless putz at drawing. We can't a

Sometimes you just gotta smile. Google News is full of items about a marriage proposal on Jeopardy . At least the proposal livened up the occasionally awkward contestant interviews. Michael Pascuzzi came in second on the episode, but he did get a yes to the proposal from his girlfriend Maria Shafer. She even phrased it in the form of a question, which now clean-shaven host Alex Trebek no doubt appreciated. Even though Alex wanted to go to a commercial before her answer, just to build the suspense. Speaking of clean shaves, Alex's facial hair went away at the command of his wife. So Mr. Pascuzzi will soon find out the realities of married existence. If the wife says away with the beard, it's away with the beard . I didn't see this episode but Jboard.tv tells me that Michael put up a good fight on the show but got nailed on an easy Final Jeopardy clue. (One poster on the thread is kind of grumpy about the marriage proposal, by the way.) All the contestants knew the answer,

Rambling through the game show Interwebs, I came across this interestingly named thread on Buy a Vowel , the WoF board. Forced Bonus Round Losses . As the original poster points out, the title shouldn't be taken literally. We're not going back to the bad old days of rigged game shows. Unfortunately, the o.p. goes on to quote a supposed story about Harry Friedman, Wheel's current showrunner. Except a later poster shows that the story was "borrowed" from a previously published book, and it referred to George Vosburgh, not Harry. The thread wanders though a lot of other twists and turns, including some difficult personal experiences from a poster who I think I've seen on Game Show Paradise . A number of posters give examples of bonus rounds that weren't actually forced losses but were still very difficult for even the best contestant to solve. I dunno, all the puzzles are pretty tough for me, but I don't claim to be a Wheel wizard. The bottom line seem

I mentioned this a while ago in the faux tweets, but a couple of enterprising young persons have come up with an interesting live knockoff of our little genre. David Sauer and Kevin Letens operate the Game Show Battle Rooms in Minneapolis. Groups of up to twelve (or more on weekdays) can book the Battle Rooms to play game shows like Friendly Feud , Wheel of Phrases and Name That Price . You can probably figure out which shows are getting knocked off here. The Minneapolis location is doing decent business, so the pair is opening another location in Milwaukee in November. The new location will have a beer license, which would make sense for Milwaukee, no doubt. I have visions of franchises across the country, but we haven't come to that yet. The linked story intones: Game Show Battle Rooms tries to make the experience unique and personalized with name tags, a game show host and technical features like audio, lights and a score board to track battle points. We're not messing

New seasons of syndie game shows bumped up most of their ratings. There was one notable exception, and it made things really tight among the top three. TV News Check has the largely happy household ratings for the week of September 10-16... Family Feud 6.0 - flat, which was the exception Wheel of Fortune 5.7 - up four ticks for the new season Jeopardy 5.7 - up six ticks to make it a tight race at the top Millionaire 1.6 - up a couple ticks to share in the fun Funny You Should Ask 0.5 - flat, as almost always More of the same for GSN. 377K/262K viewers prime time/total day for the week of September 17-23. The network ranked 38th and 30th in the windows. Pretty similar to the last couple weeks.

By now you've probably heard about Jeopardy's new stunt: the team tournament scheduled for February and March of next year. But if you're gonna have teams, you gotta have a draft. We're into sports here, folks. So Jeopardy went on Facebook, and the six team captains drafted their squads from a pool of twelve past champs. Much to my surprise Roger Craig didn't go #1 overall. That honor went to Alex Jacob, who will play on Buzzy Cohen's team. Roger didn't have to wait long, though. Austin Rogers snapped him up at #2 overall. Mr. Craig wasn't going to fall too far down the list. The last draft pick was Jennifer Giles. So she'll probably do better than any of the higher picks. Isn't that the way it often happens with sports drafts?

Not much is happening in game shows on the weekend, so I looked far and wide on Google. And I came up with something I should have found a while back. Last year the then-GM of Buzzr, Ron Garfield, appeared at an industry confabulation on diginets. A lot of water has washed over the dam since that meeting, and Ron is no longer working for Buzzr. But his comments are still interesting. It turns out that Buzzr's general strategic approach was in the making for a while. Ron started by telling people just what Buzzr is. He noted the Goodson-Todman library and highlighted Buzzr's original reason for existence: make money off those 40,000 eps of old G-T shows. Ron really caught my attention when he said that Buzzr has bought an "entry-level" package of ratings from Nielsen. So those precious numbers are out there, except none of them are published. Gawd, I'd like to know just how many eyeballs are staring at the diginet. Another key point was that daytime, and not prime

A faux tweet noted that GSN will drop Card Sharks and 25K Pyramid on October 1 in favor of three hours of Match Game each weekday. I'm happy that the greatest game show of all time can still hold its own in the rough and tumble of commercial TV. But I knew the reaction on the oldies boards would be less than favorable. Sure enough, the thread on the subject at Game Show Forum started out by proving my remark that the "online game show community" is often clueless about the real world. A couple posters actually wrote... I know when most of us heard that BUZZR scored Classic Concentration , most of us were saying something to the effect of “GSN should throw in the towel, BUZZR has won!" In all honesty, one of my first thoughts when Buzzr scored CC was, "maybe, perhaps, NBC decided to sell it lock-stock-barrel to Fremantle". I wouldn't know if that *was* the case, but nonetheless, that was a heck of a scoop on Buzzr's part. Now if Buzzr lands &quo

As I've written in comments and blog entries, I think there's a real debate at Fremantle on what to do with Buzzr. The exec shakeup is one symptom of the dispute. The stall in TV distribution is another sign that Fremantle is looking at all possibilities. As far as I can see, there are three genuine options for the future of the game show oldies diginet... 1) Shut it down completely. Nobody's watching it and it's not making a dime. This is what Fremantle did with the original Buzzr YouTube channel. It's not out of the question for the current diginet. Among other things, the careless mistiming of the commercial breaks on the channel tells me that nobody much cares even about basic technical operations. 2) Keep running the diginet for a small group of Internet oldies fans. This seems to be the current plan, and it's the most likely option for the near future, in my opinion. Sure, the combined membership of Game Show Forum and Game Show Paradise isn't huge

Readers of this blog know that I usually focus on U.S. game shows. Expanding to other countries is tricky because the news on the English Internet tends to come disproportionately from, you guessed it, the Anglosphere. So if I really wanted to cover game shows around the world, I'd have to wear out Google Translate as I rambled though a couple hundred different languages. Which is something I'd rather not do. But I'll break my usual rule for a bit of news about Game TV, the closest thing to GSN in Canada. This is an oddball network that runs an astonishing mix of real and trash sports, old and new game shows, reality TV, movies, and pretty much anything else they feel like running. An idea of the variety of their programming comes from the screenshot, which is the new header for their Facebook site. You might notice Mr. Harvey, who will bring Celebrity Family Feud to the network in prime time, beginning October 12. Game TV is obviously over the moon about the acquisition.

There are some new graphics wrinkles in our little genre this season. They've gotten a bit of notice, so I'll join in. Millionaire has done the biggest makeover. The long- standing question graphics have given way to, let's say, a blue parallelogram look. See the screenshot for a sample. There are other graphics tweaks, which give the show a little less traditional look. It's really not a big deal, but that's why this entry has "small" in the title. Meanwhile, Wheel of Fortune has started displaying letters onscreen as they are called. The screenshot shows a contestant calling a "T". If a hapless player calls an unused letter, a slash appears across the graphic. The slash rather oddly reminds me of no-smoking signs. Graphics packages have never been a big deal for me in game shows. Jeopardy was just fine with cardboard clues on a manually operated board. But time moves on and the small details change.

Maybe I should retitle this blog Facial Hair Follies . Having set off Internet alarums and excursions with his full beard, Jeopardy's Alex Trebek has now pared the fuzz down to a goatee and then to a mustache. There's video evidence for this stunning transformation. Not to mention a flock of stories in Google News and a bigger flock of fan reactions on social media. Have to admit, I'm a little impressed by how much free publicity the show has garnered for a few whiskers here and there. After all those decades it's hard to get much vibe about our venerable and much-awarded quizzer. The only bigger splash (literally) would be Alex dyeing his hair. I don't think we have to worry about that calamitous event. But you never know. UNRELATED UPDATE: A commenter got on me for not mentioning Wink Martindale's Facebook version of Tic Tac Dough . Sorry I missed the ginormous story, but some of the video is here. The video quality is not the best, but Wink looks to be in

The last week before season debuts was a blah one for syndie game shows. Most lost a little ground and nobody gained. TV News Check has the dreary household ratings for the week of September 3-9... Family Feud 6.0 - down a tick Wheel of Fortune 5.3 - flat, which was okay for this week Jeopardy 5.1 - down a tick Millionaire 1.4 - down a tick to an unusually low number Funny You Should Ask 0.5 - flat, as usual Match Game wrapped up its season with the best numbers in a while. 4.31M viewers and a 0.8 18-49 rating. I haven't heard any definite news about a renewal. But any summer show that can get four million viewers has a chance nowadays. GSN got 364K/265K viewers prime time/total day for the week of September 10-16. The network ranked 39th and 28th in the windows. Pretty much the same as the previous week, though GSN returned to the top 30 in total day. I wonder if the network will try America Says in prime time for the second season. Might perk up the numbers a little.

Readers of this blog know about my sour attitude toward show biz self-congratulation. But if you win one of the show biz self-awards, you might as well throw a party. So that's what The Price is Right did for its season debut to celebrate its Daytime Emmy win as best game show. Everybody dressed up in formal wear like it was What's My Line (not the color version). And Drew Carey prominently brandished the Emmy statuette. The linked story tells me that TPiR has now taken home the Daytime Emmy for best game show eight times. This trails only Jeopardy and Pyramid in number of wins, and that makes three of the game shows on anybody's top ten list. Nothing lasts forever but The Price is Right is showing ominous signs. It's hard to think of any calamity that could knock the show off the air. As long as there's merchandise to give away, TPiR will probably endure.

A commenter has been spamming various entries with an insistence that Card Sharks is the greatest game show ever. We all know that Match Game's 1973-82 version really holds that title. But what the hey, a difference of opinion makes a horse race. Anyway, the commenter (and others) might be interested in a thread on the game show Reddit board that discusses a possible Card Sharks reboot. Some of the comments are sour and gloomy, but you never know. In fact, none other than Fremantle CEO Jennifer Mullin has talked vaguely about a possible return of the acey-deucey fest. Buzzr even tried a live version of Card Sharks on their Facebook page, which didn't seem to impress too many viewers. The most recent TV revival of the format was, of course, the Pat Bullard version in 2001. It died a quick and unlamented death. Card Sharks is hardly a personal favorite of mine, but the show has always had a vocal fanbase on the Interwebs. GSN and Buzzr both run old eps of the show, so may

I've mentioned before that myths and legends grow like Topsy on the game show Interwebs. One of the more persistent myths was that evil forces at NBC were depriving the world of Classic Concentration reruns because that's just what evil forces would do. I've pointed out that probably few people at NBC nowadays can even remember Classic Concentration , much less organize an evil plot to keep gazillions of panting fans from seeing it. In fact, plenty of the show has always been available on YouTube. Classic Concentration is coming to Buzzr next month, so maybe that myth will go into remission for a while. Other myths swirl around the famous "skipped episodes" on Match Game . Certain weeks of the best game show ever haven't been seen in a while, so Interweb posters form all sorts of ingenious conspiracy theories to explain why. With so many eps of the show bouncing around GSN and Buzzr every week and zillions of eps always available on YouTube, I couldn't c

Usually I reserve full-entry obits for major figures in our little genre. But when I did a faux tweet on the recently deceased actress Beverly Bentley, a model on several 1950s game shows, I started googling a little deeper. (Deep googling sounds creepy, I know.) For some obscure reason I recalled Beverly as one of the many wives of brawling novelist Norman Mailer. She wasn't the wife he stabbed, but her relationship with him was almost as contentious. They married in 1963 and finally divorced - on less than amiable terms - in 1980. Beverly's acting career wasn't a huge success, but she did have a sort of star moment as a screaming banshee in Mailer's goofball 1971 movie Maidstone . See the screenshot for a typical glimpse. This review describes her part in the film's infamous fight scene. Beverly's time in game shows was a lot more dignified. She even made the July 26, 1958 issue of TV Guide for her work as a model on The Price is Right . I used TV Guide&#

Buzzr has finally released the entire schedule for the October 1-7 week, with the changes I've blogged about. Besides the already discussed new block of color shows on weekday afternoons, including Classic Concentration , there's also a switch at 7:00 PM. Dawson Feud is in and Combs Feud is out. Richard is still a big deal at Buzzr. By the way, Classic Concentration gets a long marathon on Saturday. At least we won't have to listen to the game show Interwebs whining about that skein, as they always do about Harvey Feud on GSN. There's still a black and white block on weekday mornings. Beat the Clock , Name's the Same and I've Got a Secret . They're the 40-minute ad-stuffed versions that we all know and love. The B&W eps of What's My Line , To Tell the Truth and Password vacate the premises. Instead, Larry Blyden brings in color WML episodes with interesting efforts like the screenshot. (Would any game show try this today? Doubt it.) All these

The final few weeks before the season debuts are usually a quiet time for syndie game shows. The week of August 27-September 2 was no exception. Only one show moved at all, and it wasn't too dramatic. TV News Check has the same old same old household ratings... Family Feud 6.1 - flat Wheel of Fortune 5.3 - up a tick, the big mover for the week Jeopardy 5.2 - flat Millionaire 1.5 - flat Funny You Should Ask 0.5 - flat, get the idea? GSN had its worst week in a while for September 3-9. 375K/263K viewers prime time/total day. The network ranked 37th and 32nd in the windows. Not awful by historical standards, but below recent months.

I could try to ignore the biggest story in game shows today, but why fight the incoming tide? Yes, it's the beard. Alex Trebek unveiled his full facial hair on Jeopardy's season debut yesterday, and the reaction was immediate and vociferous. In fact, the beard was hardly a secret. Alex had displayed it in a Twitter message a few days ago. And even further back, he had shown off the whiskers at a Junior ROTC event. (I blogged about it months ago.) But yesterday was the coming-out party for the oddly 19th-century looking facial hair on Jeopardy itself. As I rather gloomily speculated in the old blog post, the show is making a big deal about it. They've even got a Twitter vote on the whiskers. I voted "no" just to be contrarian, but I'm getting outvoted heavily. So the beard may remain for the foreseeable future.

Rummaging around the Sitcoms Online game show board, I came across this thread about GSN "mistakes." For the most part you can guess what the oldies board complains about. There's endless Harvey-hate and lots of pining for old shows. (No need to say it but I'll say it anyway, Harvey Feud is hardly a mistake with the people who literally count at the Nielsen Company.) But one odd note from the thread really caught my eye. The original poster actually thinks GSN made a mistake in pulling Late Night Liars . For those who have mercifully forgotten, this 2010 puppet show was a misbegotten effort by GSN to appeal to...well, I'm not sure who. GSN execs thought that paying gazillions to the Henson organization for foul-mouthed puppets was a swell idea. I panned the show and so did just about everybody else. Ratings were beyond horrendous and the show died a quick and ugly death. But "LaBestia" at Sitcoms Online thinks GSN should have given the show more of a

Actor Bill Daily, best known in game shows for his semi-regular role on Match Game , has died at age 91. In his acting career Daily achieved his greatest success as a supporting player on classic sitcoms I Dream of Genie and The Bob Newhart Show . He was never exactly a star, but he knew how to make the stars look better. The knack for a supporting role was also important on Match Game . He did hundreds of episodes and even occupied the front-and-center Dawson seat for a while after Richard Dawson, well, vacated the premises. For my taste he was a little too needy for the audience's approval. But he was amiable and witty, and he helped the show along, which is what a supporting player is supposed to do. He certainly knew how to operate on an ensemble show that depended on input from all the celebs. So many of Match Game's notable panelists are gone now. The classic 1973-82 version is my pick for the best game show of all time, as readers of this blog know well. The show has h

Remember the tease about something BIG coming to Jeopardy this season? It's apparently the show's first team tournament, arriving in February and March of 2019. There will be six teams, each captained by one of the usual suspects: Colby Burnett, Buzzy Cohen, Julia Collins, Ken Jennings, Austin Rogers and Brad Rutter. They'll draft their teams from a pool of past champs in a Facebook Live event on September 22. Fans can also put together their own fantasy teams for the tournament. This sports analogy may be getting out of hand. The basic format of the competition... All 3 members of each team will play during each match, but not at the same time. Teams will decide who will play each game in Jeopardy!, Double Jeopardy!, and Final Jeopardy! No details yet on just how the winners will be decided over the ten-ep stunt. Alex Trebek will host, though. Some things never change (maybe). UPDATE: Alex also has a lot more facial hair. But I blogged about this a while back.

Hadn't stopped by Game Show Forum for a while. I landed on this weird thread about Buzzr's acquisition of Classic Concentration . Apparently the original poster intended a parody of some wrestler's comments from long, long ago. Nobody got the reference, which was understandable. But I noticed another goof in the original post... Ron Garfield, whether he mortgaged his house one time, maybe two times, maybe three times, came up with the right figure for NBC to air Classic Concentration on his network. Uh, no. Ron Garfield doesn't work for Buzzr any more. Check his LinkedIn page if you don't believe me. The new general manager of Buzzr is Mark Deetjen, who also plays a little poker in his spare time. Maybe the poker skills came in handy in the Classic Concentration deal. There was an exec shakeup at Buzzr earlier this year, which seems to have strongly affected the diginet's direction. I commented before when oldies fans at Game Show Paradise didn't know

I've posted about how Buzzr seems to be switching to an online approach instead of the linear TV channel. There are good programming reasons for such a move. After all, the sub-niche for old game shows is not huge, and an online approach enables better targeting. GSN is already a top thirty cable net, so another game show TV channel of any kind, much less an oldies outlet, will always face an uphill climb. But there are also harsh economic realities looming behind this online emphasis. Buzzr and all oldies diginets recently got a reminder of the dangers when Decades TV lost many of its key stations. The replacement is another diginet called Start TV with shows that are, no surprise, much newer than the lineup on Decades. Decades still seems to be in operation, but it's hard to tell if the diginet will survive at all. This message on the network's web site sounds almost forlorn... As of Monday, Sep. 3, the Decades network has a number of different affiliates in cities acros

It was a humdrum summer week for most syndies, and game shows were no exception. Pat and Vanna had a special reason to dislike the results. TV News Check has the less than stellar household ratings for the week of August 20-26... Family Feud 6.1 - flat Wheel of Fortune 5.2 - down a tick to a season low Jeopardy 5.2 - flat in a tie with the soulmate Millionaire 1.5 - down a tick Funny You Should Ask 0.5 - flat as usual For the latest run Beat Shazam got its usual numbers, a little over two million viewers and a 0.7 in 18-49. Not great but enough for a third season. Love Connection looks iffy for a renewal, though. TV Newser didn't post a full cable chart for the week of August 27-September 2. Don't know if this is a one-time lapse or the start of an ominous trend. Oh well, for the month of August GSN got 425K/277K viewers. The network ranked 34th and 29th in the windows.

A press release in my inbox this morning reminds me how time flies. The latest run of Family Feud is 20 years old. Broadway World publishes the same release, with the same burbling quotes from Steve Harvey. He's careful to praise showrunner Gabi Johnston, since it never hurts for the host and the showrunner to get along. Remember Richard Dawson and Howard Felsher? Harvey is up for his ninth season on the show, and he's closing in on Dawson's longevity record. The release notes that Feud is now number one in Nielsen's syndie ratings, though that comes with a large unmentioned caveat. (I won't state the caveat because it seems to irritate some readers, but you know what I'm talking about.) The game show Interwebs are unremittingly hostile to Harvey's version of Feud , which really bothers him. (Chuckle, chuckle.) As long as the beancounters approve, Steve is a contented man. He shows off his happiness with new eps starting September 10.

Why not make it four posts in a row about Buzzr? It's a relief to have something new to write about the oldies diginet. Except I'm starting to wonder how long the diginet will really be, well, a diginet. Buzzr seems a lot more interested in their online outlets than in the TV channel. It's always tempting to read tea leaves. But the e-mail I got today about Classic Concentration prominently mentioned the Buzzr Twitch channel, the Amazon Prime outlet, and the live feed on the Buzzr web site. They even gave a link to the live online feed. Sad to say, Buzzr execs like Ron Glankler and Mark Deetjen don't phone me daily with their strategy ideas. But the March, 2018 press release on the exec shakeup at Buzzr seemed to hint at a mostly online plan for the oldies channel. In addition, Glankler will oversee and provide strategic insight into FMNA's [Fremantle North America] vintage game show and digital multicast network, BUZZR, as well as the company's overall digita

This makes three posts in a row about Buzzr, just when I was lamenting a dearth of news. As an update to a previous post noted, Buzzr has announced on Twitter and Facebook that Classic Concentration will arrive on the diginet October 1. They came up with a cute rebus for the news. I assume it's the Alex Trebek 1987-91 show and not some other version of Concentration . Alex's mustache will be back on the air, and that's a major game show happening in itself. This may be one of the "non-Fremantle" shows that GM Mark Deetjen was talking about. Concentration began as a Barry-Enright project, of course, and was then owned by NBC, though the Goodson bunch took over production duties for the 1987-91 version. It's complicated. See Wikipedia for the gory details. As I sourly note in a comment on a previous post, this sounds like news that will thrill the game show Interwebs but do little to expand Buzzr's audience beyond the oldie hardcores. I don't see TV

Yesterday I was whining that I didn't have anything to write about Buzzr. To be honest, I still don't have anything about the diginet, but I'll sort of make something up. An older-is-better poster on the game show Reddit board plods through the usual complaint about GSN running too much - stop me if you've heard this before - Harvey Feud . But she continues the whine with slams on too much Cash Cab , too much syndie Millionaire , too much Sherriwed, and too much of just about any other show with less than fifteen years of dust on it. Somebody in the cable industry patiently explains to her that ratings dictate what goes onto any commercial TV network. This is true, of course, and it will do absolutely no good with the older-is-better true believer. So how do I get to Buzzr from this? Today Buzzr happens to be grinding through its own marathons. Nine eps of Match Game followed by four eps of Supermarket Sweep followed by six eps of Password Plus / Super Password . I d

It struck me that I've hardly written anything about Buzzr lately. Which seems a little strange. After all, the diginet is one of only two TV outlets in the entire country devoted exclusively to game shows. But when I look at Google News for Buzzr items, I come up with a lot of nothing. In the past few weeks there's been just one mention of the diginet, a passing glance in an article about a new gadget from Amazon. I'm not the only one who's noticed the dearth of new developments on the oldies network. (Yeah, I realize that it's easy to make jokes about "new" stuff on such a dusty channel.) A poster on the Buzzr Facebook page has a similar complaint... I know it has been the summer but there have been no promotions or special marathons or anything special at all! There have not been any commercials letting us know of anything special coming up in the fall or any changes coming up. There have been hardly any new episodes of almost anything lately. It ju