savoy031

Game shows have been doing Halloween specials since there have been game shows. There's something about such a goofy holiday that fits with our goofy little genre. The Halloween stunts can get cloying but sometimes there are touches of real humor. Like when The Price is Right transforms Rat Race into Bat Race. Okay, maybe it's not a laugh riot, but it's a cute and silly bit. A couple days ago I got a press release in my inbox about CBS's Halloween plans for The Price is Right and Let's Make a Deal . I cleverly deleted the e-mail before I could use it for this entry. Luckily, the promos for the special eps are available here and here. Drew looks a little weird in the costume, but he's a good sport about it. We're supposed to get rain today, so I don't know how many kids will be out trick or treating. We'll hand out the usual candy to whoever shows up, though. UNRELATED UPDATE: Another e-mail dropped into my inbox today. It asked for input on wheth

The top three syndies didn't leap ahead in the latest week. But they all made season highs for the still young 2018-19 year. TV News Check has the happy October 15-21 household ratings for the genre's leaders... Family Feud 6.3 - up a tick to the first of three season highs Jeopardy 6.1 - up a couple ticks to, yes, a season high Wheel of Fortune 6.0 - up a tick to the third season high Millionaire 1.6 - flat as almost always Funny You Should Ask 0.5 - flat, what a surprise In an odd bit of game show ratings news, we got a rare look at the graveyard shift. In the dead of night - the 3:00 AM hour, to be exact - GSN's Emogenius and Snap Decision drew 137K and 132K viewers. You don't expect big numbers at such an hour, but they both beat truTV's Paid Off . Okay, that's not a huge accomplishment. Another note about GSN. The network continues to fall short of full distribution. In today's cord cutting world, 85-90 million households seems to be the range

For a long time now Joey Fatone has been imploring audiences to give it up for Steve Harvey on GSN's Family Feud reruns. Now Joey is getting his own show on our little game show network. It's called Common Knowledge , and it debuts January 14. The quizzer "asks practical, everyday questions that everyone should know, such as what should you do when you have a fever? Or how can you tell if a watermelon is ripe?" What if a ripe watermelon has a fever? I guess that's uncommon knowledge and won't be tested. The linked story doesn't offer many more details about the show, like the time slot that GSN will give it. Prime time is probably not a possibility, unless network execs are super sure of the show's success. America Says had to endure a test in late afternoon before GSN deigned to give it a slot in the peak viewing hours. After a lot of unscripted TV, Joey seems like a natural to host a game show. He helmed The Singing Bee, which died a quick deat

You expect an Internet board devoted to a single game show to get into the smallest details. And believe me, the details can get pretty minute. Rambling around the net I found this example on Golden Road , the board for all things about The Price is Right ... Most of the seasons I've done the recap, no prize descriptions usually mentioned the gigahertz the computer produces or the computer chip in the television. All season 47 so far, both have been mentioned with regularity. Which got me thinking that if TPiR went through everything about a computer, they might spend ten minutes on the item. If I check "Devices and Printers" on my computer's control panel, I could read off more copy than George Gray plows through in an entire episode (slight exaggeration). Another poster on the thread agrees that Standards & Practices might want a little more info on computers given to contestants... The prices of computers vary greatly depending on the processor manufactur

Once upon a time there was Ed McMahon. Now there's Wayne Brady. Sure, the odds are 999 bazillion to one. But you could win the big prize from Publishers Clearing House. Wayne Brady of Let's Make a Deal - somehow that's appropriate - will front a new advertising campaign for the venerable giveaway. The new ads start October 29, according to the linked story. An agency out of Columbus, OH has designed the campaign. The story even gives the names of everybody at the agency who worked on the ads. The main guys were Ron Foth, Jr. and David Henthorne, if you want to know. Wayne Brady will be bearded and smiling in the campaign. He even jumps up and down a little. He also does some goofy imitations of lucky winners. Wayne seems to be picking up every job in show business lately. He's now on a soap opera along with LMAD. Maybe he'll do the evening news one of these days.

With a slow news weekend upon us, I did some tidying up around the blog. Once in a while I check every item on the blogroll in the sidebar to see if any of the links have gone dead, or even suspiciously quiet. I did notice that The Blog is Right has slackened off its pace recently, with the latest full-fledged blog entry, a post about some Buzzr programming, almost a month old. But there have been a few Facebook and Twitter entries since then, so I'll keep The Blog is Right on the blogroll for now. By the way, TBiR (couldn't resist the acronym reference to TPiR) gave a grumpy review to America Says . The site only graded it at 6.6 on a 1 to 10 scale. According to TBiR's standards, this means: A game show that needs to be improved in multiple areas. Expected to run for at least one season. We know that America Says was a hit with GSN's audience and got a whopping renewal order of 95 episodes. So a lot of viewers disagreed with The Blog is Right's churlishness. Me

Family Feud is coming to Chicago for contestant auditions. Not just anybody can walk onto the show and start figuring out the surveys. First, you've got to fill out an online survey and get an appointment for the audition. Don't just show up at the cattle call and expect to get in. In fact, the published stories don't even say where the audition is. By the way, a Game Show Forum member must have written the linked story. It takes a swipe at Harvey Feud's "childish sexual innuendos." Then there are those pesky rules and regulations. You can't be running for political office, you can't have been on more than two game shows in the past year, you can't one of Steve Harvey's kids, etc. Finally, there are the helpful hints for passing the audition, once you finally get invited and meet all the eligibility requirements... Smile, clap, high-five, cheer for each other, say "Good Answer!" and have FUN! So it helps to capitalize the FUN! Go

You probably know the guy in the picture. After decades of hosting one of our most pungent pieces of TV trash, Jerry Springer is going straight. Well, sort of straight. He's negotiating to be the judge on a TV court show. Yeah, we're talking about Judge Judy Jerry. Sadly, I bet there are lots of people who can't wait to have their cases heard by Your Honor, Judge Gerald Norman Springer. In a more respectable side of his career, Jerry's got an extensive background in our little genre. Most notably, his Baggage reruns still bounce around GSN on weekends, and he does many installments of The Price is Right's ever-touring live show. I even remember him trying his best on Celebrity Name Game , except he couldn't quite get the hang of it. The best thing you can say about Jerry is that he can no longer be in it for the money. Unless he's the worst financial manager this side of the federal government, he must be a zillionaire many times over. The genuine exp

They've given away so many BRAND NEW CARS that they decided to give away a house. A press release dropped into my inbox (and apparently a bunch of other inboxes) and said that Wheel of Fortune will give away a house in one of Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville communities. As you might expect from Wheel's viewer demos, those communities are for people 55 and older. Like me, for instance. One lucky viewer will win the house in a sweepstakes during the week of October 29-November 2. If you don't want the house, you can have a townhome in another community or $150,000. Other winners will get $500 gift cards, which seems kind of picayune compared to the house. Maybe Wheel figures that if they can't give away the million dollar prize any more, they can still give away the house. As long as it's not Vanna's residence.

Family Feud took back the number one rank among syndie game shows in the latest week. Everything else was pretty quiet in the genre. TV News Check has all the household ratings for the week of October 8-14... Family Feud 6.2 - up three ticks to take the lead with a season high Wheel of Fortune 5.9 - flat Jeopardy 5.9 - flat Millionaire 1.6 - flat, get the idea? Funny You Should Ask 0.5 - flat, what else? GSN's Cover Story returned with so-so numbers at best. 272K viewers and a 0.04 18-49 rating. Overall GSN had a good week of October 15-21. 427K/289K viewers prime time/total day. The network ranked 28th and 25th in the windows.

A little while ago I wrote a post on Bob Barker's latest health scare. There's been a recurrence. This time there are pictures of Mr. Barker being transported to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles for what is called a "non-life-threatening" back issue. His back was the problem in the earlier incident, so at least the stories seem consistent. But as I said in the earlier post, it's obviously difficult to know the truth in these situations. The Price is Right's iconic host was said to be "awake and alert" and "resting and going through evaluations," according to his manager. At age 94 the evaluations will be very thorough. They used an ambulance to transport Mr. Barker to the hospital because a private car might have caused unnecessary pain to him. And that's about all the available information right now. We'll see what happens. UPDATE: Mr. Barker has returned home. His business manager says: "He's home, he's resting,

As a faux tweet noted, GSN has been touting the second season of America Says , coming in November. GSN ordered a whopping 95 eps for the second run, and I wrote that they might use the show in prime time. Looks like that's correct, based on this blurb at GSN TV Nation (free but tedious registration required)... The new season [of America Says] will debut in November in Prime, replacing an episode of Family Feud. I'm doing some Kremlinology here, but the wording is suggestive. GSN wants us to know that they're cutting back on Steve Harvey's Family Feud . It's ironic that America Says is a Feud knockoff, though the clock moves things along a lot faster. Pyramid vs. Password , you know. GSN has already sliced a lot of Feud off the schedule, though the oldies boards continue the endless whines about the network's use of the show. (See here and here for a couple of recent complaints among many others.) Beyond Business 101 reasons for avoiding overreliance on

I've said on this blog, only half-jokingly, that every model on The Price is Right should get one free lawsuit as a fringe benefit. Well, they've got a new recipient for the possible freebie. His name is Devin Goda, and he will be the second male model in the current cast. For those who are counting, the show now has five regular models: Rachel Reynolds, Amber Lancaster, Manuela Arbelaez, James O'Halloran and the new guy. They're all such pretty people that I feel like a garden gnome when I see them. In fact, I would look like a garden gnome if I stood next to them. Last I checked, Drew and George are still the host and announcer. Nowadays the models get to talk a little on TPiR, which reminds me of when Wheel of Fortune finally let Vanna speak. Both shows have survived the extra chichat. Devin Goda was a college football player. He did make it to the NFL for three games and a hamstring injury. He probably doesn't have to worry about the hammy on The Price is Ri

Once upon a time there was a terrific blog called Game Show Kingdom . It offered detailed recaps of just about every game show episode you could want to recap. Then the blog went poof for reasons that I don't understand. Although I didn't know it until a couple days ago, blog writer Bobby McBride continued the recaps at another site. He called the new blog bobbymgsk , which doesn't seem like the best blog title but who cares? (Yeah, I know the title decodes to "Bobby M Game Show Kingdom," but it's pretty obscure.) The blog still offers detailed recaps of all sorts of game shows. Not just the top-of-the-line titles, but lesser shows like Funny You Should Ask and Paid Off . I've added a link to the new blog in the sidebar. By the way, in the comments on bobbymgsk there's an obscene and anti-Semitic rant from a reader, not Bobby, about why Game Show Kingdom went kaput. (Needless to say but I'll say it anyway, the obscenity and anti-Semitism are

Every day brings a new batch of game show contestant stories to the web. This one about Vanessa Lambert on Wheel of Fortune got me wandering through some arcane info on the net. To get the game show details out of the way, Vanessa ended up second on Wheel with $10,550. Which isn't bad, though she was bummed that she missed on the prize puzzle, and that wiped out her chance at the bonus round. Vanessa comes from Simsbury, CT, and the town turns out to have a long and colorful history. Founded as the state's 21st town in 1670 - I wasn't there to see it, no matter what people say - Simsbury burned to the ground in its early years. The town still had less than 5,000 people as late as 1950. Strong growth over the next three decades helped bring the population to its current 24,000. From the Wikipedia entry, Simsbury seems like an affluent enclave of white-collar types. The average household income sits at a lofty $120,000. But I'm sure Vanessa can use her Wheel money. H

A couple of business stories vaguely related to our little genre cropped up in Google News. First, CBS has sold Television City to a LA real estate investment firm. Stories regularly refer to the property as "iconic" because people like Jack Benny used to work there. Fremantle still produces The Price is Right at the location, and other game shows have come and gone over the years. CBS will occupy the property as a tenant for a while, but I assume TPiR and the other shows produced at the site will eventually move elsewhere. Or maybe not. It's no big deal to me, but I've seen some comments on the game show Interwebs about the impending sale. In other business news, GSN has made a deal with Comcast Technology Solutions for "video workflow management, publication, distribution and monetization services." I really don't know what all that means, but it's a bunch of big words. The linked story also mentions some servers for GSN's high definition br

Back when Screener TV was TV by the Numbers - and back when the site was a lot more interesting - there was plenty of talk about the cancellation bear. When a hungry bear is running after you and another guy, you don't have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun the other guy. In TV terms this means your show just has to do okay compared to other offerings on your network, not beat some arbitrary standard for all shows. That's why the cancellation bear didn't devour truTV quizzer Paid Off , though the show has really stunk up the Nielsen numbers. The latest run drew 105K viewers, which a test pattern could get on a broadcast network. On GSN Paid Off would have expired after the first season. On a broadcast network it might have died after the first ten minutes. But truTV is a tiny cable outlet with a 131K total day viewer average for the latest week. So Paid Off's numbers don't look utterly horrendous by comparison, and the show got a sixteen-ep renewal.

TV News Check is having fun with syndie game show ratings lately. The week of October 1-7 produced "an extremely rare event." No, Millionaire didn't suddenly leap to the top of the charts. But there was a three-way collision at the top. The site has all the household ratings... Family Feud 5.9 - up a tick Wheel of Fortune 5.9 - flat, and wait for it... Jeopardy 5.9 - up a tick to a season high and a three-way tie (hey, that rhymes) Millionaire 1.6 - flat at the familiar number Funny You Should Ask 0.5 - flat at the familiar number Not exactly game show news, but Match Game's Alec Baldwin bombed with his new talk show. 2.07M viewers and a 0.3 18-49 rating. Don't expect the chatter to last too long. GSN perked up a little for the week of October 8-14. 416K/283K viewers prime time/total day. The network ranked 31st and 27th in the windows.

With too much time on my hands over the weekend, I did some bingeing on Cash Cab . GSN makes this easy to do, with ten-episode marathons of the show every Saturday and Sunday. As I watched for hours, I got to thinking. Dangerous, I know... 1) The NYC street scenery was such an important part of the show. Usually game show sets don't mean much to me, but this "set" was a big winner. Everything from pleasant neighborhoods to industrial strength grunge was on display through the cab windows. 2) Ben Bailey found the gig of his life. He was perfect as the friendly but not too syrupy cabbie. Quick with a quip and/or a facial expression, he never missed a beat behind the wheel. 3) Too bad the recent Discovery reboot of the show flopped. Was it the celebs? Or had the show just run its course? Maybe GSN should have tried the rewind. The ratings demands would have been less severe, anyway. 4) The louder the contestants, the worse they seemed to do. I know the screamers helped make

Game Show Garbage hands out a Patrick Wayne award now and then. It's for a show that's not really all that bad but which GSG has to pretend is worthy of a Nuremberg war crimes tribunal. The site's readers vote among five nominations for the coveted honor. This time around, the vote was rigged. Okay, the site didn't really mess with the vote count (I think) but the nominations left only one real choice. Of the five noms, two weren't even game shows: Survivor and a Jeopardy video game. Two others were shows that few people have seen: Just Like Mom and Dad and the Ohio Lottery's Cash Explosion . Unless you live in Ohio or watch virtually unknown cable nets, you may well have never even heard of these two. Which left one game show that some people actually knew about: Candy Crush . In fact, this show was hardly a terrible stunt show. There was no play-along value, but that's typical of stunt game shows. And the stunts were moderately interesting antics on a

A poster on the Sitcoms Online game show board wonders why Louie Anderson got the boot as the host of Family Feud . Another poster suggests the obvious explanation: ratings. I wish I could verify the suggestion, but Louie's 1999-2002 run on Feud came before the proliferation of ratings data on the Internet. Funny thing, whatever Louie's numbers were, they probably wouldn't look too bad compared to today's shriveled ratings in the 888 zillion channel universe. Louie regularly turns up dead last on Feud host rankings. Buzzr tried some of his eps a while back, and they did nothing to elevate my opinion of his unenthusiastic stint on the show. A poster on the Sitcoms Online thread wishes that Buzzr would try the Karn and O'Hurley episodes of Feud . In fact, Buzzr gave flannel Feud - Interwebs speak for the Karn version - a shot as part of their "modern" Friday night experiment. It didn't last. As you would expect from an oldies board, the thread ends

Hadn't dropped by Game Show Forum in a while, but I wasn't surprised to see that a long thread has developed about Classic Concentration . After all, Fremantle is programming Buzzr for the combined membership of Game Show Forum and Game Show Paradise . So it's not amazing that the boards spend endless time analyzing every "new" show on the diginet's schedule. The GSF thread delves into the tiniest details of Classic Concentration's gameplay. For instance, one poster harrumphs that the interrupted game rule was a "turd." Another poster demurs that the rule was reasonable because Classic Concentration "was never quite able to hash out the timing of the show to match the flow of the game." Which is a polite way of saying that the gameplay plodded along way too freaking slowly for the show's own good. But I can't expect GSF to be quite so blunt about a beloved classic. There's another comment that Alex may have let slip a f

Some of the showrunners involved in the CNBC Deal or No Deal reboot talked about the tweaks they've given to the original format. The biggest change is that contestants will be able to make counteroffers if they think the producers, er, the banker is being too stingy. (The banker is just a human prop, of course. All the offers come from the showrunners.) Contestants can also haggle over merchandise, like a BRAND NEW CAR , that might be a part of some games. In the p.c. department, the reboot will have a female banker. Except she will still just be a human prop, so who cares? Most importantly, as the showrunners concede, Howie will return. It's odd how the show is almost unthinkable without him. The guy's signature role will be as a game show host. And he almost turned down the job all those many years ago. The models will also apparently get to do some more talking. They chatted plenty on the original, mostly to assure contestants that everybody really wanted them to win

Not all news stories are created equal. Sometimes you have to add up a bunch of stories and divide by some sort of number to get a hint of the truth. Yesterday there was a medical event of some kind at the home of The Price is Right legend Bob Barker. If you credit the story in Radar Online (a sister outlet of the National Enquirer ) then Mr. Barker suffered a "horrifying" medical emergency that required a swarm of ambulances. And by the way, Bob's health is declining rapidly and he's close to death's door. More sober stories said that Bob had a "non-emergency" back issue that did result in a fire department visit. But the TPiR icon is now resting at his home with no serious problems. So what exactly is the truth? At age 94 any health scare is serious, but I have no clue which version of the event is true, or if the truth is wobbling somewhere between the different reports. One other thing. The comment sections on the linked stories are mostly embarra

Readers of this blog know that I've often whined about the Nielsen Company's add-'em-up method of syndie ratings. This bashes Wheel of Fortune with its single daily run and rewards Family Feud with its (often) quadruple daily runs. Wouldn't you know, in the latest week Wheel beat the beancounters. TV News Check sounds very surprised by this. In a major upset, usual game show leader Family Feud was beaten by rival Wheel of Fortune in the session ending Sept. 30. Feud had been all alone at the top of the games for the prior 27 weeks, but this time Wheel rose 7% from the previous round to a 5.9 live-plus-same-day national Nielsen rating, while Feud fell 5% to a 5.8, landing in a tie for the runner-up spot in the genre with Jeopardy, which added 4% to a 5.8. The full household ratings for the week of September 24-30... Wheel of Fortune 5.9 - up four ticks to its notable win, despite Nielsen's best efforts Family Feud 5.8 - down three ticks, maybe they should try

Hadn't stopped by Game Show Paradise in a while, and I noticed an issue that seems to be one of the board's obsessions. Or at least it seems to be an obsession with a few posters on the board. It's the dreaded "film look," which for reasons unknown is supposed to be infecting TV broadcasts of old game shows. To be honest, I had never heard of this awful "look" before Game Show Paradise posters began complaining about it. Best as I can tell from Wikipedia, the "film look" is the art of making a taped TV show look like a theatrical movie. Thing is, I've never seen an old game show on any channel that looked like anything close to a movie. Apparently not too many other people have seen such a thing, either, which is why nobody except a few GSP posters ever talks about it. The opposite of the "film look" seems to be the "fluid look," and I really have no clue what that is. All I can say is that old game shows on Buzzr or

The Reddit game show board isn't the busiest site on the web, but it's good for an item or two on a slow weekend. This thread refers to a BuzzerBlog review of Millionaire's new graphics. I did an entry about the graphics a while back and more or less waved them off as unimportant. If a game show wants to refresh their graphics package, it's no big deal to me. Turns out it is a big deal to BuzzerBlog , though they admit the entire subject is "petty." Well, if you're gonna be petty, then petty is what you'll be. (I'm thinking deep thoughts today.) Truth be told, it's pretty funny to watch BuzzerBlog spend so much time denouncing blue parallelograms. Maybe Alex Davis had some bad experiences with high school geometry. The Reddit thread itself grumbles that Millionaire has become "unwatchable." This adjective always sounds silly to me. The assertion is obviously false. Millionaire usually draws a 1.6 household rating, which transl

Wheel of Fortune is about as squeaky clean as it gets. Pat Sajak once reminded a contestant of that fact when he tried an, er, unusual solve. But sometimes even the squeakiest clean show can get a little gamy. The Interwebs are chortling over a recent (and spectacular) flub by Wheel contestant Melanie Sinany. She named a certain kind of shower instead of the much less cringeworthy "cold shower" (see screenshot). Pat just went on with the show as if nothing embarrassing had happened for many a day. This is where I normally go into my usual routine about how tough it is for contestants under the lights and the pressure. But I'll skip the disclaimer for once and just join in the laughs. It was a really, really funny moment, even if showrunner Harry Friedman might have winced. Now if Jeopardy tries a "Shower" category...

Wandering around Google News for game show items can be a learning experience. Often you learn obscure things nobody should care about.  But I do care because I need stuff to fill the blog. I even care about a now defunct Disney park attraction, which may be taking my interest in game shows to an unhealthy extreme. Once upon a time Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was a national broadcast sensation, and not just a blah-rated syndie in the afternoon. So Disney decided to take advantage of their ABC hit by running live versions of the show at a couple of their theme parks. A fellow named Cole Geryak likes to write about such now extinct Disney shows. So he typed a long blog entry about the live versions of Millionaire at Disney's Hollywood Studios and California Adventure. The shows began in 2001 and lasted until 2004 at the first park and 2006 at the second. The gameplay was pretty much the same as the classic format, except the prizes were naturally a lot less valuable. Audience me

Finally got around to watching an episode of Brake Room , Discovery's new game show for gearheads. Okay, I watched the first segment of an ep on the network's web site. That was plenty enough to give me the idea. A couple of motor sports guys - who I had never heard of, but they've never heard of me, so we're even - watched videos of people trying really stupid stunts with cars, trucks and motorcycles. The videos stopped just before the stupid stunts were complete. Then the motor sports guys guessed whether the stunt nuts finished the attempts successfully. In the videos I saw, everybody wiped out. So it would seem logical to guess "wipe out" every time. But logic doesn't have much to do with this show, which is all about videos of people doing stupid things. It's sort of the gearhead answer to GSN's Caroline & Friends . One of the gearhead contestants on the episode was wearing overalls with no shirt underneath (see screenshot). This was not

GSN has been running promos for the return of Cover Story on October 21. The now-and-then series begins with a look at notable winners on various shows, like the pictured Caitlyn Burke on Wheel of Fortune . She came up with the one-letter solve that still gets a lot of views on YouTube. Other winners on the ep include Ken Jennings - you probably know about him - and Kathy Cox from 5th Grader . Next on October 28 and November 4 are episodes about Newlywed Game and Wheel of Fortune . Trish Suhr from Daily Draw will host, and we'll probably get lots of the usual clips and interviews. Then Cover Story runs a couple of non-game-show efforts about casino winners. Slot machines get a look on November 18, and the MIT blackjack crew features on December 2. My guess is that these eps won't do well with GSN's audience, though they may actually offer more original material.

Maybe he should stick to game shows. Jeopardy icon Alex Trebek moderated a Pennsylvania governor's debate last night, and by all accounts it didn't go so well. The audience booed him, the critics panned him, and Alex himself conceded that his performance left a lot to be desired. It was a learning experience for me. And I think I was too naive going into this. I thought a conversation would work a lot better. It didn't. To be honest, not much worked for Alex during the debate. He did seem to know some Pennsylvania issues. But he also stumbled into embarrassing moments, like his goofball joke about the Catholic church and then a long personal story that didn't make things better. Who knows, maybe they'll get Pat Sajak for the next debate. Or Vanna White. She can say "bye" when time is up.

For the week of September 17-23, the biggest move among syndie game shows was a tumble by Wheel of Fortune . It wasn't a major fall, though. And Wheel always suffers from unfair competition for a reason you know too well. The household ratings from TV News Check ... Family Feud 6.1 - up a tick for all its daily runs (couldn't resist pointing that out) Jeopardy 5.6 - down a tick Wheel of Fortune 5.5 - down a couple ticks to fall behind the soulmate Millionaire 1.6 - flat at its usual number Funny You Should Ask 0.5 - flat for the perennial cellar dweller Quizney , the mini-quizzer (and HQ knockoff) about Disney trivia, suddenly jumped to 960K viewers on Friday. Must have been the later time slot. For third quarter 2018 GSN got 415K/276K viewers prime time/total day. The network ranked 35th and 28th in the windows. America Says did its bit for these numbers. John Michael Higgins has become one of the faces of GSN's promos.

So I settled in to watch some Match Game this morning on GSN. Even if the eps were from deep in Richard Dawson's grump period - he was really a jerk on these particular shows - the greatest game show ever is always worth a watch. And what do I see but the new GSN logo, which had previously surfaced on the network's YouTube site. The initials are gone and it's plain "Game Show Network" now. I guess they got tired of using both the initials and the full name. The colors are slightly reminiscent of the ancient Winnie figure from GSN's really old days. Maybe they're consciously going retro, or maybe it's just happenstance. But the network has been wall-to-wall traditional game shows forever now, so a sly reference to the old days might have been intended. I'll keep calling the network GSN, though. I'm too lazy to type the full name.