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Post by Flowgli on May 31, 2019 12:00:08 GMT -5
Hello, you crazy kids looking for love in all the wrong places! This is Flo, and welcome to this week’s edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. There are some forms of gameplay in game shows played by adults that don’t work in game shows played by kids. Gameplay similar to that of The Newlywed Game is one of them, and I pointed this out when I covered I’m Telling! back in year one. It’s really stupid to have brothers and sisters argue with each other over mismatched answers on game shows. Another one, which I’m gonna share here for the very first time, is gameplay similar to that of The Dating Game. Yeah, there’s a game show like that, especially with it played by kids. Kids who aren’t old enough to go on dates or even think about going on dates! To make things even more out of place, this show was hosted by the same person who hosted Sex Wars with Jennifer Cole—which I also already covered back in year one— Fun House, and season one of Masters Of The Maze. Yeah, it’s JD Roth. And this show that I’m covering today is the rarest game show that JD Roth ever hosted, as it only lasted seven episodes! Yeah, seven episodes! From what I got about this show, it seems to be really bad! So, now, I will go into detail as to why I think this show is bad. Get ready, now, boys and girls, as I cover this game show called Double Up. Double Up aired Saturday mornings on NBC from September 5, 1992 to October 17 on that same year. Not only was JD Roth the host of this show, but he was also one of the two executive producers of this show, with the other one being Kurt Brendlinger, who was also the producer of this show. This show was also announced by some guy only known as “DJ Disco”, produced by Slam Dunk Productions—JD Roth’s production company—and NBC Productions, and taped at NBC Studios in Burbank, California. The game is played by a pair of siblings, one brother and one sister, both of which try to find dates for each other. Each kid is introduced to three kids of the same gender, who are possible daters for that kid’s sibling. The possible daters go by nicknames such as “Smooth-Talkin’ Scott”, “Gorgeous Greg”, “Jammin’ Jason”, “Dude-Lovin’ Dara”, “Valentine Valentino”, and “Sassy Sam”. Each possible dater is seated on a collapsible chair above a large trash can. As each possible dater is introduced, they give a brief explanation as to why they go by that nickname that they have. During the show, the siblings are each seated facing away from the possible daters for them so they can’t see them but their siblings can. The siblings and the possible daters play two rounds of questioning. In each round, each sibling asks three questions to the possible daters of the same gender—one question for each of those possible daters—with the sister interrogating the girls first and the brother interrogating the boys after that. The questions that the siblings ask are on cards given to them. After two rounds of questions, the possible daters each explain why they should be chosen for the sibling of the opposite gender. Then, the members of the studio audience each cast votes by writing down which girl they think the brother should go on a date with and which boy they think the sister should go on a date with, and then stuff their votes in rubber balls referred to as “squeeze meters” and throw the “squeeze meters” on stage. The siblings each make their choice of possible dater for their sibling during the commercial break, and after that commercial break, each sibling reveals which two possible daters they have not chosen for their sibling and why for each one of them. After each explanation of why a possible dater is not chosen, the sibling “dumps” that unchosen possible dater by pulling a lever, causing that unchosen possible dater to fall into a large trash can below them. The brother does this to the two boys he has not chosen for his sister first, and the sister does this to the two girls she has not chosen for her brother after that. The results of the votes from the studio audience are sent to JD by DJ Disco shooting them from what seems to be a Nerf bow. JD reads the name of the possible dater that has gotten the highest vote from the studio audience for each sibling. Both siblings each get a date with the possible dater chosen for them by their sibling, with both dates being chaperoned by a limo service. If one sibling’s choice of possible dater for the other sibling matches the one who has gotten the highest vote from the studio audience, the two siblings each receive $100 for their date. But if both siblings’ choices of possible daters for each other match the ones who have gotten the highest votes from the studio audience, they and their chosen daters get to go out on a larger date, referred to as the “Ultimate Double-Up Night Out”, which can include a limo ride down Sunset Strip, $500 worth of CDs from Tower Records retail stores, dinner at Johnny Rockets, and tickets to a WWF—now WWE—wrestling event. So, that’s Double Up. Now, you see why I think this show is bad? It’s basically The Dating Game for kids, with brothers and sisters choosing dates for each other and going on dates with daters chosen for them. The “Ultimate Double-Up Night Out” isn’t that great of a grand prize date. I mean, dinner at a fast food restaurant? Tickets to a wrestling event? I mean, I know that this is a kids’ game show and all this is something that kids like, but this is a relationship game show where siblings choose people for each other to go out on dates with. A game show like this would’ve been fine if everyone on the show is at least college-age, you know, like at least eighteen years old. But everyone on the show seems to be middle school-age or high school-age. A relationship game show, especially one like this, is not something that should be made for kids. Also, the entire show definitely didn’t hide the fact that it’s from the early 1990s. Everything in the show blatantly shows it, from the opening sequence, the use of rap, the fashion, the set looking more like a ‘90s hangout with graffiti on it than an actual game show set, the DJ as the announcer, and the lingo. All this definitely dates this show, and people who watched this show as kids back then—and there aren’t that many of them—would probably be looking back at this show and laughing at how dated this show is. No wonder this show had gotten the axe after seven episodes! Well, folks, I’ve had enough of Double Up. It’s not worth my time. It’s not worth your time. It’s not worth anyone’s time. A full episode of this show can be found on YouTube, but I think it’s best that you don’t even bother with this show at all. Next week, I’ll be covering a kids’ game show that’s much better than this. I’ll tell you all about it then. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Jun 7, 2019 12:00:16 GMT -5
Hey, there, you artistic teens! This is Flo, your neighbor, inviting you to my driveway and welcoming you to this week’s edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Well, June is here. You know what that means! School is out, and summer is coming! It also means that this year of Game Show Corner is coming very close to an end. And this series is ending as a weekly series. But I’ll explain that part in the year five finale, which is coming up in three weeks. But right now, grab your mother’s lawn chair and drag it on over. It’s time that I cover Teen Win, Lose Or Draw! Teen Win, Lose Or Draw is a children’s spin-off of Win, Lose Or Draw. It aired on Disney Channel, lasting three seasons in two separate runs. The first run lasted one season, airing 39 episodes on Saturdays and Sundays, from April 29, 1989 to September 9 on that same year, with reruns airing until October 28, 1990. The second run lasted two seasons, airing 26 episodes on Saturdays only, from November 3, 1990 to April 27, 1991, with reruns airing until September 26, 1992. The show was hosted by Skippy Handleman from Family Ties, aka Marc Price. The first run had Brandy Brown, Chase Hampton, and Tiffini Hale rotating announcing duties, was produced by Jay Wolpert Productions, and was taped at Disney-MGM Studios—now Disney’s Hollywood Studios—in Orlando, Florida. The second run was announced entirely by Mark L. Walberg, produced by Stone Stanley Productions—now Stone & Company Entertainment—and taped at Hollywood Center Studios in Los Angeles, California. Both runs of this show were produced by Burt & Bert Productions like all runs of its adult counterpart and distributed by Buena Vista Television—now Disney-ABC Domestic Television. The game is played by two teams, each one consisting of of three teenagers. Just like in Win, Lose Or Draw, the game is played in a battle of the sexes, and each team consists of two contestants and one celebrity. However, unlike Win, Lose Or Draw, the set is made to look like a driveway instead of a living room, and each correct answer is worth points instead of money, with the team with the most points at the end of the game winning a grand prize package for the contestants on that team. The game is played in three rounds, each of which is played differently, but they all involve each team drawing and guessing answers within a time limit. Drawings are done on an easel in front of an open garage with markers, and team members doing the drawing are shown what to draw on cards held by Marc. Round one is the Clue Round. In this round, each team draws and guesses clues to two subjects, with the teams taking turns drawing and guessing clues to subjects, starting with the team that has won a coin toss before the show. At each turn, one member of the team in turn draws a series of clues to a subject, and their teammates have to guess as many of the clues as possible. That team can pass on a clue if they are stuck and move on to the next clue. Each turn in clue-drawing lasts 60 seconds. After time runs out, Marc recaps all the clues guessed correctly, and the team in turn has to guess the subject based on those clues. Correctly guessing the subject scores that team 200 points, while failing to do so allows the opposing team to guess the subject and score the points. Round two is the Phrase Round. In this round, each team draws and guesses two phrases, with the teams taking turns drawing and guessing phrases, starting with the team in the lead—or the team that has gone first in the previous round in case of a tie. At each turn, one member of the team in turn draws a series of pictures that make up a phrase for their teammates to guess. All the words in that phrase have to be guessed correctly, and given in the correct order, in order for that team to score. That team has 60 seconds to draw and guess the phrase, but after the first 30 seconds have passed, a horn sounds, and at that point, the team member drawing has the option to keep drawing or hand the marker off to one of their teammates. Each phrase is worth 200 points, but each time a marker hand-off occurs, the point value of that phrase drops to 100 points. If the team in turn correctly guesses the phrase before time runs out, they score the points. But if that team runs out of time before a correct guess is made, the opposing team gets to guess the phrase and score those points. Round three is the Speed Round. In this round, each team has only one turn instead of two, this time, with the team in the lead—or the team that has won the coin toss before the show in case of a tie—going first. At each turn, one member of the team in turn draws as many answers as possible for their teammates to guess within 90 seconds. Every answer in this round is a single word or a short phrase. Each answer guessed correctly is worth 100 points. The team can pass on an answer if they get stuck on it, but they can only pass twice. After the two passes, the team in turn is committed to drawing and guessing every answer from that point on until time runs out. After three rounds, the team with the most points wins the game. If the game ends in a tie, each team gets another 20 seconds to draw and guess as many answers as possible. The team that has gone second in the third round plays first in the tiebreaker, and after both teams have played the tiebreaker, the team that has guessed the most correct answers wins the game. If the tiebreaker ends in a tie, a second tiebreaker is played. In the second tiebreaker, each team chooses one answer by letter—“A”, “B”, or “C”—to draw for their teammates for up to 60 seconds, with the team that has gone second in the first tiebreaker playing first and choosing from the three answers, and the other team playing afterwards and choosing from the remaining two answers. Whichever team correctly guesses their answer in the fastest time wins the game. If the team going first fails to correctly guess their answer within 60 seconds, the team going second just needs to guess their answer within the same time limit in order to win. If the team going first correctly guesses their answer before time runs out, the team going second must guess their answer within the same amount of time it has taken for the team that has gone first to guess their answer in order to win. The contestants on the winning team receive the grand prize package, while the contestants on the losing team receive a consolation prize. All contestants receive copies of the Win, Lose Or Draw Junior board game. So, that’s Teen Win, Lose Or Draw. This show is very faithful to its adult counterpart. The last two rounds are played like the rounds in its adult counterpart, and the first round is very good enough to make this show its own thing. And even though teams score points in this game instead of cash, the scoring is still the same as in its adult counterpart. For the last two rounds. The scoring in the first round is still good and fair for the teams. The scoring in this game overall is fair, which is more than I can say for the end of the daytime run and the final season of the syndicated run of this show’s adult counterpart. About the first round in this show, opening drawings were played like that in a special “Family Week” in the syndicated run of its adult counterpart in 1989, with Marc having appeared on that show that week as a guest star with his father, Borscht Belt comedian Al Bernie. Even though the original set of this show’s adult counterpart was modeled after Burt Reynolds’s living room, the set of this show made to look like a driveway made more sense, as teens don’t keep themselves confined in a living room space when they get together to hang out and have some fun, but they usually would get together to hang out and have some fun in a driveway or anywhere in a yard. This show does have other things that its adult counterpart have that makes it work, such as caricature drawings of Marc and the celebrity guests shown on the easel during the opening of the show, the answers being drawn shown to the home viewers, team members who are drawing writing down part of an answer being drawn when that part of that answer is correctly guessed by their teammates, and the teams playing in a battle of the sexes. Yes, as much as I’m against “battle of the sexes” game shows, this is one of those game shows that is actually good. It’s a drawing game show, and the competition between the teams playing against each other is friendly and appropriate enough. The prizes are good, too, such as a trip to space camp for a grand prize and cameras for a consolation prize. There’s just a bit too much in the tiebreaker. The first one is not needed, but the second one works just fine. I just have one thing to ask about the second tiebreaker, though. It’s about each team choosing their own answer by letter to draw. Why doesn’t that rule apply to all the answers for teams to draw in each round in the game itself? Another kids’ spin-off of Win, Lose Or Draw premiered on Disney Channel in 2014. It’s called Disney’s Win, Lose Or Draw, and it’s played a lot differently from all other versions of Win, Lose Or Draw. Speaking of other versions of Win, Lose Or Draw, Teen Win, Lose Or Draw had a short-lived UK version, which aired on GMTV’s original weekend lineup in 1993. It was hosted by Darren Day. Well, that’s all I have to say about Teen Win, Lose Or Draw. Next week, I’ll be covering a hidden camera game show that aired on Nickelodeon and was hosted by the same guy who hosted Nick Arcade. Yeah, we’re gonna get unsuspecting people to do some unusual tasks for us before we can get ready for summer vacation. So, have those hidden cameras ready by then. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Jun 14, 2019 12:00:07 GMT -5
Hey, Nickelodeon game show fans! Flo here, and welcome to this week’s edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. In the past, I covered Nickelodeon game shows and hidden camera game shows. So, this week, how about I cover a game show that is both of those? Some of you might say I can’t, but I say I can! How about you guys? Can you do it? You’re On! You’re On! was the second game show hosted by Phil Moore, with the first one he hosted being Nick Arcade. Phil was accompanied by field hosts Vivianne Collins and Travis White. This show aired on Nickelodeon from August 3, 1998 to an unknown date in 1999. It was announced by Andie Karvelis, produced by Nickelodeon Productions and Marjesam Productions, distributed by MTV Networks International, and taped at Nickelodeon Studios at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. In each episode, three games are played. On each game, two kids are given a set of three tasks, all with one thing in common, to make unsuspecting people do within ten minutes, such as having toilet paper wrapped in specific ways, trying on jewelry with encased bugs on them, and playing “The Blue Danube” in crazy ways. All this takes place on a remote location. After the kids are told about the tasks that they need to have done by either Vivianne or Travis, they are given a bit of time to discuss with each other about their strategy to have their tasks done. Then, the kids’ time to get the three tasks done starts when they are told that “you’re on!” A pair of kids’ game is abridged to properly fit a segment in that show’s episode. On each game, the pair of kids can get anyone to do the first task, but for safety reasons, the second and third tasks can only be done by adults. Also, after the game ends by either all three tasks being done or time running out, Vivianne or Travis lets the unsuspecting people know that they are on camera. If all three tasks are done before time runs out, the kids win a grand prize, such as a football arcade game, a Nintendo 64, or a camping package. But if time runs out before all three tasks are done, the kids win a smaller prize, such as a $100 gift certificate at Kids Foot Locker. On the second and third games, an audience game called “Runaround” is played. On each game of “Runaround”, six members of the studio audience are called on stage. The studio audience is split into three sections; one section is blue, another section is green, and one more section is red. So, two members are called from each section. All the studio audience members called for “Runaround” on the second game are kids, while for “Runaround” on the third game, three of the studio audience members called are kids and, the other three are accompanying adults. On each game of “Runaround”, each individual studio audience member on stage have to physically make a prediction of how many of the three tasks in the current game that they think will end up getting done by running to one of three numbered sections on stage, with each number corresponding to a studio audience member’s guess. At the end of each of these games, each studio audience member in the section with the correct prediction on it wins a prize. After the third game, the show ends with a losing adult from that game’s “Runaround” and the accompanying kid at center stage, with Phil and the kid performing something messy on the adult, with that thing being done usually one of the tasks that have been failed to be done in that episode. That’s the show, but before I give my thoughts on this show, I have to talk about what happened in the show’s final episode. At the end of that episode, Vivianne and Travis got Phil to suffer the same fate a losing “Runaround” adult does. They got him restrained on a chair in a kiddie pool, and his son, David, came in and dumped and squirted him with a variety of substances, with Vivianne and Travis helping David out on that. Now, I can give my thoughts on this show. It’s just not impressive whatsoever. It’s just another hidden camera game show, and judging by what I said when I covered hidden camera game shows here before, game shows with this format are the weakest ones. Though, at least with You’re On!, contestants actually go out and get unsuspecting people to do tasks; they don’t make predictions of the outcome of each game. That’s left to the studio audience. Also, the tasks are lame and not worth anyone’s time to do or get anyone to do. The prizes are not worth getting excited about, either. Much of the prizes are just plain cheap or not valuable enough. The set looks a bit too crazy, even for a kids’ game show, with random pictures all over the set, and the three sections of the studio audience are too large for a game show like this. Phil can be kind of grating with his antics on this show, but he isn’t as grating in this show as he was in Nick Arcade. He is one of those hosts in kids’ game shows who keeps making the mistake of trying to act hip for the kids. And I don’t know if it was his idea or the producers’ idea or anyone else’s idea to have a losing adult from the second “Runaround” game messed up by the accompanying kid and Phil at the end of each episode, since that was messed up, in more ways than one, but it was good to see that happen to Phil at the end of the final episode. After putting adults through all that childish torture, he sure got what was coming to him in the end. That’s karma. A decade after the run of You’re On! ended, another hidden camera game show played a lot like this called Game Show In My Head premiered. That show only lasted one month in 2009. And you know what? This show has been out of production long enough for me to cover it. So, I’ll be covering Game Show In My Head next week. Is that show any better than You’re On!? Join me next week to find out what I think about it. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Jun 21, 2019 12:00:12 GMT -5
Hey, people! This is Flo, that little voice inside your head, and welcome to this week’s edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Last week, I covered a Nickelodeon hidden camera game show called You’re On! At the end of that edition, I mentioned that another hidden camera game show played a lot like You’re On! premiered a decade after the run of that show ended. This week, I’ll be covering that other show. So, here it is. It’s Game Show In My Head. Game Show In My Head aired on CBS from January 3, 2009 to 24 on that same month on that same year, with two episodes airing back-to-back every Saturday night. It was hosted by original Fear Factor host Joe Rogan, though, back in 2007, there was a pilot episode originally planned to be shot with Saturday Night Live cast member Chris Kattan as the host, but CBS decided to have the pilot reshot with Joe as the host. This show was produced by Hat Trick Productions, Fox 21 Television Studios, and Katalyst Media, with the latter being a company founded by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg, two of the show’s executive producers. The game is played by one contestant, who is out in a public location, while their family and friends, the studio audience, and Joe are in the studio, watching what the contestant is doing on a large screen on the set. For the entire game, the contestant wears an earpiece from which they listen to Joe tell them about the challenges that need to be done by unsuspecting people. Such challenges include a wife taking pictures of her family with the contestant in them, people wearing cucumbers and face cream made that is really ranch dressing and eating them, at least ten people getting in line at the bottom of a stairway and keeping them in line for three minutes, and a man marrying the contestant. There are six challenges in the game. For the first five challenges each, the contestant has five minutes to get that challenge done, with each challenge successfully done winning the contestant $5,000. For the sixth and final challenge, the contestant has ten minutes to get that challenge done, with that challenge successfully done doubling the contestant’s winnings. So, successfully getting all six challenges done will win the contestant the maximum cash prize of $50,000. After the six challenges, the contestant returns to the studio with a person involved in the final challenge. Joe asks each person about their experience in the final challenge, the contestant walks away with all the money that they have won up to that point, and the show ends. And that’s Game Show In My Head. While this show is just another hidden camera game show and just not impressive, it is much better than You’re On! and all the other hidden camera game shows that I already covered here. The set looks nice, even though there is not much to it. The challenges that a contestant must get unsuspecting people to do are not that great, but they are not as lame as those on You’re On! The cash prizes are generously high for getting little, not-so-spectacular challenges done, though having each of the first five challenges worth $5,000 and the final challenge double all the money won up to that point, with a maximum payoff of $50,000, is something to be expected, considering that this is not only a game show from 2009, but also a game show that aired on CBS, one of the major television networks in the US. There’s also no predictions of the outcomes of the challenges. Not by any members of the studio audience, and obviously not by the contestant. While hidden camera game shows are weak and have little to nothing going for them, out of all the hidden camera game shows that I covered here so far, Game Show In My Head is the best one, especially with a competent host in Joe Rogan. With a weak format, though, it shouldn’t come to anyone as a surprise that this show lasted only one month, especially considering that Saturday night is the night of the week in which people watch TV the least. We are now one edition away from ending year five of Game Show Corner. Not only will next week’s edition be the year five finale of this series, but it will also be the 200th edition of this series and the final edition of this series as a weekly series. The game show that I will be covering next week will have to do with traveling, which is one of the things commonly done in the summer. So, let’s all start packing before the day comes. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Jun 28, 2019 12:00:14 GMT -5
Hello, travelers! Flo here, all packed up for my vacation and welcoming you to the year five finale, 200th edition, and final weekly edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Well, it’s been a great five years of putting together editions for this series and releasing them every Friday for forty weeks each year. Though, it has been getting more difficult for me as this series continues on. So, after I finish up year five with this edition, I will have this series go from a weekly series to a monthly series. But enough about that for now. Let’s finish up year five of Game Show Corner with a game show that can give us a well-deserved vacation...particularly me. This show is The Great Getaway Game. The Great Getaway Game aired on Travel Channel, with the word “travel” in the name of that channel now disenvoweled, from June 1, 1990 to July 25 on that same year, with reruns airing until somewhere in April 1991. It was hosted by veteran game show host Wink Martindale, with the pilot episode in 1989, coincidentally, hosted by Jim Caldwell, Wink’s replacement as the host of the first syndicated run of Tic Tac Dough. Also coincidentally, this show aired less than two months before the second syndicated run of Tic Tac Dough hosted by Patrick Wayne premiered, with reruns airing while that show aired. Rick Sommers was the announcer of the show. This show was also produced by Brockway Television and Wink Martindale Enterprises, distributed by Travel Channel, and taped at Times Square Studios in New York City, New York. The theme music for this show was “The Winning Plan”, composed by Graham Preskett, which was also the music for the Hoyts Polygram Video logo—albeit with a different pitch—and is very similar to the theme song for Punky Brewster. The game is played by two contestants, one of which is usually a returning champion. The contestants face a 5x6 game board consisting of thirty numbered trilon spaces, each of which has a letter behind it. In each round, there is one word spelled from the hidden letters on the board, and the contestants have to find the letters that spell the word and guess what the word is. The word is either four, five, or six letters long, and all the letters that spell the word are always found in the order they spell the word, either up, down, forwards, or backwards, but never diagonally. Wink gives a clue to the word, such as “on top” and reveals that the word has at least one of a particular letter, always a vowel, such as at least one O. Then, each contestant chooses two of the numbered spaces, and the letters behind those four chosen spaces in total are revealed. The contestants are then asked questions related to world geography and traveling. Each time a contestant buzzes in with the correct answer to a question, they score points and choose one of the remaining spaces on the board. Then, that contestant gets a shot at guessing the hidden word. But if that contestant buzzes in with an incorrect answer to a question, they lose points, and the other contestant gets to answer that question, with an incorrect answer still resulting in a penalty. If both contestants answer a question incorrectly or don’t buzz in at all, two more letters are revealed on the board at random, and neither contestant scores points or gets a shot at guessing the word at that point. A round ends when a contestant correctly guesses the hidden word. That contestant scores ten times the point value of a single question in that round and wins a prize for correctly guessing the hidden word in that round. In round one, each question is worth 10 points, and the hidden word is worth 100 points. In each round thereafter, the point values for each question and the hidden word increase by 10 and 100, respectively. Also, in each round, some of the spaces on the board are “Double Pick” spaces, and if a contestant chooses one of those spaces, they get to choose another space. Most of the questions asked are multiple-choice. Some of the questions have images accompanying them, with the images on some of the questions starting out pixelated and clearing up as time goes on. Also, contestants can buzz in as early as they like as a question is being asked, but if a contestant buzzes in with an incorrect answer before that question is asked in its entirety, the other contestant gets to hear the rest of the question. After a hidden word is correctly guessed, the rest of the letters in that word are revealed if that hasn’t happened, and the home viewers are shown exactly where on the board that word is. The contestants play as many rounds as time permits. When time runs out during a round, no more questions are asked, and the rest of the letters on the board are revealed, one at a time, in numerical order, with the contestant who buzzes in and correctly guesses the hidden word at that point scoring the point value of that word in that round, winning the prize played for in that round, and winning that round and ending the game. After the game is over, the contestant with the most points wins the game. If the contestant who has won the game is the returning champion, that contestant keeps their championship. The winning contestant advances to the bonus round for a shot at a trip. In the bonus round, the winning contestant stands at Wink’s podium, which has a telestrator on it that shows a 7x7 word search grid. Hidden in the grid are five words for the contestant to find, all of which fit in a theme. The contestant is given the theme and the five words in it, and they have to find the words and circle them using an electronic pen. The contestant has 30 seconds to find and circle all five words in the grid; succeeding to do so wins them a trip, while running out of time before doing so wins them nothing extra. The contestant returns to the show and plays the game again against a new challenger. A contestant retires from the show undefeated after winning a maximum of five games. That’s The Great Getaway Game. Before I can share my thoughts on this show, I have to talk about the pilot episode. The game in the pilot episode is played exactly the same as that in the series, but with some differences. The point values are one point for each question and ten points for the hidden word in round one, and the point values for each question and the hidden word increase by one and ten points, respectively, in each round thereafter. The contestants don’t choose any of the numbered spaces to reveal any letters at the start of each round, only one letter is revealed on the board at random each time a question is not answered correctly at all, and a prize is hidden behind one of the numbered spaces. Also, if a contestant buzzes in and answers a question incorrectly, the other contestant is asked if they have a guess on an answer to that question. The pilot episode also has a different logo, and the set there has a different color scheme. For some reason, one side of the set has a column of slots, but they have never been used for anything there. Okay, I can now share my thoughts on this show. It’s a good trivia and word game about world geography and traveling. The way words have to be guessed is good, and with how many letters are revealed at the start of each round and after each question not answered correctly at all does give more time for more rounds. This is good, considering that there are thirty spaces on the game board. I also like how contestants win prizes on top of scoring the big points for correctly guessing hidden words, as that guarantees the contestants something good from the game, even if one wins the game and not win the trip in the bonus round, as there’s no consolation prize awarded for not winning that round. I do have a problem with contestants still being made to answer a question that’s missed by the other contestant and being penalized for an incorrect answer to that question. I don’t think that’s fair. Why can’t that particular contestant be allowed to answer a missed question without penalty for an incorrect answer, just like a team in that situation on Triple Threat, which I already covered back in year two? Or better yet, why can’t they have that contestant be required to buzz in to answer or be asked if they have a guess or not, just like in the pilot episode? The bonus round is played pretty much like the Solo Round in Now You See It, except the time limit and the number of correct words needed to win the game are both cut in half, all the hidden words don’t only read from left to right, and all the words to find and the theme that all those words are in are told to the winning contestant at the start of the round. This makes the bonus round too easy to win, especially with a trip being played for there, since trips are always valued at thousands of dollars. In two of the episodes of the series that I found on YouTube, each winning contestant has found and circled all five words in just ten seconds. It’s cool that contestants have a chance to win up to five trips. I just wished that they were allowed to choose for themselves which places in the world they want to go to rather than have places chosen for them. All right. I’m now done with the subject of the 200th edition of Game Show Corner. I’d like to rap this up with what I have to say about how this year on Game Show Corner has been for me. It has been a struggle for me. With every edition I work on, it gets even harder for me. Throughout the entire year, everytime I work on an edition, I end up having it finished on the day it was scheduled to be released or the day before that. The more editions I work on for this series, the more I’m convinced that a week is not enough time for me to get an edition ready to be released, especially considering that I have other things that I have and want to do. So, starting in year six, this series will be a monthly series. I will still be releasing editions on Fridays, but I will only be releasing an edition on the final Friday of each month from September to June every year. That means there will be only ten editions a year rather than forty editions each year. So, hopefully, this new change in the series will work out very well for me. Until then, I’m gonna go take a well-deserved break. I’m gonna go on vacation, and when fall comes, I’m gonna be refreshed, and I’m gonna be ready to work on more editions for this series. So, take care, now. I know I will. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great summer.
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Post by Flowgli on Sept 27, 2019 12:00:06 GMT -5
Hello, everybody! I’m Flo, and welcome to the year six premiere and first monthly edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. This summer, Press Your Luck was revived. It’s the same game as it was in the original run that aired back in the 1980s, except that the amounts of cash are higher, the prizes are more valuable, and a bonus round is added to the game. Of course, the runtime of this run of the show had to be extended from a half hour to a full hour in order for the bonus round to be accommodated. Now, because Press Your Luck is currently in production, it’s obvious that I’m not gonna be covering that show. But what I will be covering is its predecessor, Second Chance. Second Chance aired on ABC from March 7, 1977 to July 15 on that same year. It was hosted by Jim Peck, announced by Jay Stewart and Jack Clark—not both at the same time, of course—produced by Bill Carruthers and Jan McCormack in a company called The Carruthers Company in association with Warner Bros. Television, and taped at ABC Television Center in Hollywood, California. The game is played by three contestants. Just like in Press Your Luck, there are two question rounds and two Big Board rounds. However, unlike Press Your Luck, the contestants don’t buzz in to answer questions in the question rounds, the game board opens up like a book when a Big Board round comes into play and closes when a question round comes into play, the spaces on the game board are stationary, and the enemies in the game are not Whammies. The game is started off with a question round. In this round, the contestants are asked three questions. On each question, the contestants each write down an answer on a card and place it in front of them. After all three contestants have their answers written down and placed in front of them, Jim reveals to them how many of them have answered correctly or incorrectly and gives them three multiple-choice answers. The contestants then each have the option to keep their answer if they think it’s correct or change it if they think it’s incorrect. Each contestant changing their answer writes a different answer—one of the given multiple-choice answers—on a separate card and places it in front of their original answers. Then, the correct answer to that question is revealed. Each contestant who has the correct answer written down scores three points if it’s their original answer or one point if it’s their “second chance” answer. After the three questions, the set is altered for a Big Board round. In a Big Board round, the contestants face a game board with eighteen spaces on it. Nine of the spaces have amounts of cash—with the top cash amount being originally $2,500 and later $1,000—another six have gift boxes that represent prizes—with each prize worth typically under $1,000—and three more have Devils. The contestants’ points from the question round are converted to “spins” for them to use to accumulate cash and prizes. On each spin, a randomizer, indicated by a light border, moves from one space to another in a random pattern in a very much faster pace than the randomizer in Press Your Luck. As this happens, the spaces don’t change like those in Press Your Luck. When the contestant taking that spin thinks the time is right, they stop the randomizer by hitting their buzzer, with this action usually accompanied with them shouting “Stop!” At that point, the randomizer ends up stopped on one of the spaces on the game board. If the space landed on is a cash amount, that amount is added to the contestant’s bank. If the space landed on is a gift box, a prize is revealed, that prize is added to the contestant’s bank, and the value of that prize counts toward the contestant’s score. If the space landed on is a Devil, the contestant loses all the cash and prizes they have in their bank up to that point. However, unlike the Whammies in Press Your Luck, there are no animations for the Devils played when a Devil space is landed on. A contestant keeps taking their spins until they use them all up or choose to pass their remaining spins to one of their opponents if they think they have accumulated enough cash and prizes or don’t want to risk landing on a Devil space on the next spin. If the contestant in turn chooses to pass their remaining spins, those spins go to the opposing contestant with the higher score, and that opposing contestant will be forced to take all the spins passed to them. However, if that opposing contestant lands on a Devil space and still has any passed spins at that point, those spins become earned spins, and they can choose to take them or pass them. Also, if both opposing contestants are tied, the contestant passing their spins chooses who they want to pass their remaining spins to. The contestants play the Big Board round in order according to the number of spins that they have earned in the question round, with the contestant with the fewest spins playing first, the contestant with more spins than one contestant and less spins than the other playing second, and the contestant with the most spins playing last. If there’s a tie in terms of number of spins, the contestant closest to Jim plays first. After all the spins have been used up, the Big Board round is over. Then, the set is altered back for another question round. The second question round is played exactly the same way as the first question round. After the second question round is played. The set is altered again for another Big Board round. The second Big Board round is played exactly the same way as the first Big Board round, but with the cash amounts higher—with the top cash amount being originally always $5,000 and later shuffling from $1,000 to $5,000 in increments of $1,000 when the top cash space in this round has an eggcrate display on it and giving a free spin—and the prizes are more valuable, with each prize worth typically over $1,000. Like in the first Big Board round, the contestants play in order from fewest spins to most spins, unlike Press Your Luck, where in the second Big Board round, the contestants play in order from lowest score to highest score. If, in either Big Board round, a contestant accumulates a total of four Devils, that contestant is out of the game. After the second Big Board round is over, the game is over, and the contestant with the most money in cash and prizes in their bank wins the game and keeps their cash and prizes. Originally, winning contestants return on the show to play the game again against new challengers. Later, the returning champions rule is dropped, and three new contestants appear on each episode, with the exception being that if all three contestants end up with nothing, each of those contestants who end up with less than four Devils returns on the next episode of the show to play again. And that’s Second Chance. It’s a good start to the classic game show that we all know and love. Everything that was featured in this show and wasn’t featured in Press Your Luck, though, I’m glad that those things were changed when Press Your Luck was created. I’m not really fond of the way the question rounds were done here or the fact that the spaces on the game board didn’t change and the randomizer moved from one space to another way too fast while a spin is taken. This show lasted only four months, though, while the original Press Your Luck lasted three years, so I really can’t complain much about this show. When Second Chance premiered, it replaced a short-lived variety series starring Don Ho, which in turn replaced another game show hosted by Jim Peck called Hot Seat—a game show that I already covered back in year four—on October 25, 1976. It aired in the noon timeslot, which almost immediately caused it to face problems, as that’s the timeslot in which local newscasts and other programming were aired and watched more by viewers. During this show’s run, the soap opera The Young And The Restless aired in the noon timeslot on CBS, and that show was starting to become a ratings success in its fourth season. That not only caused problems for Second Chance, but also for two game shows that were airing on NBC in that timeslot. Those game shows were Name That Tune and Shoot For The Stars, the latter of which I already covered back in year four. After the run of Second Chance ended due to not being able to compete with The Young And The Restless, it got replaced by a game show called The Better Sex—a game show that I already covered back in year two—which was put on hiatus almost six months after it premiered in order for soap operas General Hospital and One Life To Live to expand to one hour each, and then be cancelled outright. Of course, Second Chance was later retooled, and it became Press Your Luck, which aired on CBS from 1983 to 1986, with Peter Tomarken hosting and Rod Roddy announcing. Press Your Luck later got revived on Game Show Network as Whammy! The All-New Press Your Luck, which aired for two seasons from 2002 to 2003, with Todd Newton hosting—except on April Fools Day in 2003 when hosting duties were taken over by Graham Elwood, who, at the time, was hosting another show on Game Show Network called Cram, a game show that I already covered back in year three—and Gary Kroeger announcing. This June, the show got another revival, once again as Press Your Luck, with Elizabeth Banks hosting and Neil Ross announcing. Press Your Luck also has international adaptations, merchandise, and references and parodies in pop culture. There’s also a documentary called Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal, which focused on contestant Michael Larson, who won $110,237 in cash and prizes in 1984 by memorizing the patterns on the game board. And since I just mentioned international adaptations, I have to mention, right now, that Second Chance had an Australian adaptation, which aired on Network Ten in 1977, and was hosted by Earle Bailey and Christine Broadway and produced by Reg Grundy. We wouldn’t have any of this, though, had it not been for Second Chance, the show that started it all. With Press Your Luck being a well-known game show, having been one, and forever continuing to be one, it would seem that it won’t be reverted back to Second Chance at all, and that’s definitely a good thing. Press Your Luck is currently in production. Actually, it’s on hiatus, right now, and it’s possible that the show will be renewed for another season. But whether or not it will still be in production years later, it’ll still continue to be a memorable, impactful game show to many people, particularly game show fans, and there will never be a second chance for Second Chance. Now, I just have to talk about the episode status of Second Chance. Out of the show’s 95 episodes, only three of them still exist, with one of them being the series finale—albeit in audio form only—and the other two having aired on May 31 and June 27. There were also three pilot episodes taped, all announced by Joe Seiter, who sub-announced in some episodes of the series, but only the third pilot episode still exists. There’s also an opening sequence from one of the episodes of the series announced by Jack Clark, though it’s only in audio form. Okay, now, I’ve said all there is to be said about Second Chance. Now, as I covered this show, I brought up The Better Sex. Well, for next month’s edition, I will be covering another game show that is played in a battle of the sexes. Join me next month when I cover The Smarter Sex. Yeah, we’re going from “better” to “smarter”. We’ll find out if this show is actually any better than any of the game shows played in a battle of the sexes that I already covered here. So, that does it for this month’s edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Oct 25, 2019 12:00:43 GMT -5
Hello, boys and girls! Flo here, and welcome to this month’s edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. I have covered a great number of game shows that are played in a battle of the sexes in this series. I don’t find the “battle of the sexes” mechanic to be a good one. That’s not to say that all game shows with this mechanic are bad, though. I have covered good game shows like that, such as Bruce Forsyth’s Hot Streak, Scattergories, and Teen Win, Lose Or Draw. This one game show with this mechanic, however, isn’t a good one. In fact, this show must’ve been a very bad one, because it only had a test run in certain cities of the US that lasted only two weeks! That’s not the shortest run a game show has ever had, but it’s still very short nonetheless. It doesn’t even have a single full episode uploaded anywhere on the Internet; just a clip of one of the episodes uploaded on YouTube. It’s probably that rare, but it’s also probably that bad. This is The Smarter Sex. The Smarter Sex aired on syndication in a small number of cities in the US, including Atlanta, Georgia and San Diego, California, from December 18 to 29 on that same month on that same year. It was hosted by David Hirsch, produced by Paramount Television, and distributed by New World Entertainment. The game is played by two teams of three, one team consisting of men, and the other team consisting of women. The contestants are chosen from the studio audience, which is split in two sections, with fifty men in one section and fifty women in the other section. The two teams play four rounds of questions that determine which sex knows more about the other. In round one, one member in each team plays at a time. Each contestant in each pair is asked a personal question about their opponent. If a contestant answers a question correctly, they score a point for their team. Afterwards, the contestant is asked how many of the studio audience members of the opposite sex has given a specific answer to that question, and their opponent also gets to make a guess on that afterwards. Whoever comes closest to the correct number scores a point for their team. In round two, a series of statements are read, each one pertaining to one of the members of one of the teams. On each statement, the members of one team have to choose which member of the other team has said that statement about themselves. The two teams take turns choosing who on the opposing team has said a statement about themselves. Each correct guess in this round is worth one point. In round three, a series of questions that ask which sex does more of any particular things are asked, with the three members on each team playing, one at a time. On each question, the individual contestant asked it answers with “men” or “women”. Each correct answer in this round is worth three points, while each incorrect answer in this round scores the opposing team one point. Round four is the final round in the entire show. In this round, each team chooses one question for the other team to answer, based on what they think every man or woman should know. If a team answers their question correctly, their entire score is doubled; but if they answer it incorrectly, they lose all their points. After four rounds, the team with the most points wins the game and is declared the smarter sex, while the losing team gives the winning team crowns as they admit defeat. So, that’s The Smarter Sex, and boy, was it a complete mess! Really, the format is all over the place, even more than Sex Wars, another “battle of the sexes” game show that I already covered here back in year one. While Sex Wars was a bad game show, I was still able to follow its format. Frankly, I’d prefer Sex Wars over The Smarter Sex. At least Sex Wars had a nice-looking set, a pair of hosts who knew what they were doing, a more straightforward format—even though each round was a rip-off of a round of a game show that did it even better—and cash prizes awarded to winning teams—even though the cash prizes are always low and often not divisible of three. Come to think of it, The Smarter Sex may have been an inspiration for Sex Wars. Both shows have three members on each team, four rounds for the two teams to play, the third round having all the questions being answered with “men” or “women”, and the fourth round having each team choose a question for the other team to answer. Another reason why I prefer Sex Wars over The Smarter Sex is that the fourth round on that show is more fair than the fourth round on this show. In Sex Wars, the teams get to choose how much of their scores they want to wager, with the minimum wagers being half their scores. But in The Smarter Sex, the teams have no choice but to go double-or-nothing. What kind of final round for a game show is that? I’m telling you, the scoring in The Smarter Sex is just messed up. And crowns for the winners are not that great for a prize for winning the game. I don’t care how good or bad they look. That’s still not good enough for a grand prize on a game show. And if a game show is going to be called The Smarter Sex, then it should’ve had the two teams answer general-knowledge questions, not questions that ask how much each team knows about the opposite sex. It would’ve made more sense if they have done that. Now, do you see why this show only lasted a two-week test run? It’s a cheap game show with a bad format. In fact, this game show is so bad that it deserves to be called a game show turkey. But it’s still October, and turkey month, which is November, is next month. Oh, no matter. I have a game show planned for that month. This year’s game show turkey will be a panel game show that is a rip-off of Match Game and was hosted by someone who was best known for hosting The Dating Game. See you on the Friday after Thanksgiving. So, that does it for this month's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Nov 29, 2019 13:00:27 GMT -5
Hey, everybody! This is Flo, hoping that you had a very Happy Thanksgiving and welcoming you to this month’s edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. This is the month in which I will be covering a game show that is bad enough to be considered a turkey. Now, I’ve never presented any video clips here on Game Show Corner, so I thought I should start by starting off this edition with this clip from Family Fortunes, where a contestant answers “turkey” on three questions in the Big Money round. Okay, I got that out of the way. I will, of course, be doing this on this month every year. For this year’s turkey month here on Game Show Corner, I will be covering The Hollywood Connection. The Hollywood Connection aired daily in syndication from September 5, 1977 to March 3, 1978. It was hosted by Jim Lange, announced originally by Johnny Gilbert and later by Jay Stewart, produced by Barry & Enright Productions in association with Golden West Broadcasters—a Gene Autry-owned company, KTLA 5 in Los Angeles, California—and distributed by Colbert Television Sales and Sony Pictures Television—known at the time as Columbia Pictures Television. The game is played by two contestants, who face a panel of six celebrities, three on the top row, and three on the bottom row. The contestants play three rounds, and in each round, each contestant plays with a different set of three celebrities and is asked a personal question about those three celebrities. Each question has a set of answers to choose from, and each celebrity involved in that question writes down an answer. Then, the contestant playing that question must match the celebrities involved in it by correctly guessing how each one of those celebrities has individually answered that question. Matching the celebrities in this game is referred to as “making connections”. Each time a contestant correctly makes a connection, they score points. In round one, the contestant who has won a coin toss before the show chooses to play with either the celebrities on the top row or the celebrities on the bottom row. After that contestant makes that choice, the question for the chosen celebrities is asked, and two answers to choose from are revealed on a game board that is split into three horizontal flip panels. The involved celebrities write down their answers, and the contestant in turn chooses which answer each one of those celebrities has individually written down, one at a time. After each guess, the celebrity who is attempted to be matched reveals the answer that they have written down. For each connection the contestant successfully makes, they score one point. After that contestant’s turn is over, the other contestant plays the another question and set of two possible answers with the remaining three celebrities in the same manner. Round two is played the same way as round one, except the contestant who hasn’t gone first in the previous round chooses to play with either the male celebrities or the female celebrities, each question has three possible answers, and each connection made is worth two points. Round three is played the same way as rounds one and two, with the contestant with the lower score choosing to play with either the celebrities on the top row or the celebrities on the bottom row. If the score is tied going into this round, the contestant who hasn’t gone first in the previous round makes the choice. Once again, each question has three possible answers. This time, each connection made is worth three points. After the contestant in the lead going into this round scores enough points to take the lead back, or if the contestant who is trailing going into this round is still trailing after their turn in this round, the round ends right there. After three rounds, the contestant with the most points wins the game. If the game ends in a tie, a tiebreaker question involving one of the celebrities is asked. The tiebreaker question has a numerical answer, and each contestant guesses a number that they think is the correct answer. The contestant who guesses the correct number or comes closest to it wins the game. The winner receives a prize and advances to the bonus round for a chance to win money and a trip. The bonus round has two formats, with the first format having lasted only one week. Both formats involve an image, the celebrities and the winning contestant writing down keywords for that image—three from the contestant, and one from each celebrity—and the contestant winning money and a trip by making connections with the celebrities. In the first format of the bonus round, the contestant and the celebrities are shown an image of a person, place, or thing, the celebrities each write down a keyword associated with that image, and the contestant writes down three keywords of their own, with each keyword placed next to an amount of money depending on how good they feel about that keyword being most likely written down by the panel; the more likely the contestant thinks an answer will have been written down by the panel, the more money the contestant thinks that answer will be worth. The amounts of money are $300, $200, and $100. Then, the contestant chooses the celebrities, one at a time, in any order that they like. After a contestant chooses a celebrity, that celebrity reveals the keyword that they have written down. If the celebrity’s keyword matches one of the keywords written down by the contestant, the contestant wins the amount of money attached to that keyword. This continues until all six celebrities’ written keywords are revealed. Afterwards, if the contestant has accumulated $1,000 or more, they win $2,000 and a trip. In the second format of the bonus round, the celebrities still each write down a keyword associated with an image, and the contestant still writes down three keywords of their own, but there are no amounts of money for the contestant to assign their keywords to. The contestant still chooses one celebrity at a time and wins money each time a celebrity’s written keyword matches one of the contestant’s written keywords. Each of the first three correct matches is worth $250, and if the contestant makes those three correct matches, not only do they win a total of $750, but they also win a trip, and they have the option to make a fourth match if any celebrities remain at that point or stop playing and take the money. If the contestant chooses to go for their fourth match and is successful, their cash total is doubled to $1,500, and they have the option to make a fifth and final match if any celebrities remain at that point or stop playing and take the money. If the contestant chooses to go for their fifth and final match and is successful, their cash total is doubled to $3,000. However, if the contestant is unsuccessful in their attempt to make a fourth match or a fifth match, they lose all their money. Regardless of what happens after the trip is won, however, the contestant keeps the trip. That’s The Hollywood Connection, and after I explained the show, you probably can easily tell why I considered it a turkey. This show is pretty much a rip-off of Match Game. It’s got a panel of six celebrities on one side of the set and two contestants on the other side. It’s got celebrities sitting in two rows of three, with a female celebrity sitting between two male celebrities in the top row, and a male celebrity sitting between two female celebrities in the bottom row. It’s got each round having one contestant making a choice and the other contestant taking what they’re left with, except the choices made here are for sets of celebrities instead of questions. Each contestant gets their own question to work with, and the celebrities write down answers, except the questions are personal questions instead of fill-in-the-blank questions. And on each question, the contestant playing it has to match what the celebrities have written down, except instead of coming up with one answer and hoping to match as many of the celebrities as possible with that answer, that contestant has to choose a possible answer for each individual celebrity in a chosen set of three celebrities. Yeah, definitely a rip-off of Match Game. The bonus round, regardless of the format, is pretty much different from that in Match Game, though, as it has an image, the winning contestant writing down keywords to that image, all six celebrities writing down keywords, and the winning contestant choosing celebrities in any order they like to hear from, winning money for each correct match, risking money won in the second format, and winning a trip after accumulating enough money in the first format and making enough correct matches in the second format. I find it hard to believe that this game show was produced by Jack Barry and Dan Enright, the same people who produced classics like Tic Tac Dough, The Joker’s Wild, and Twenty-One. Why would they go on to produce a game show that’s a rip-off of a game show that was produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman? I don’t know if Dan Enright was the one who came up with this game show or not, but I don’t think it’s right to be so quick to throw the blame on him for this game show, even though he was blamed for the 1950s quiz show scandals, and those were all his fault. I don’t even know if Mark Goodson and Bill Todman were aware of this show and have sued Jack Barry and Dan Enright for producing a show that’s a rip-off of Match Game, but I’d be surprised if they haven’t. The Hollywood Connection did have a theme music that was used in another game show that Jack Barry worked on. The theme music for this show, which was “Virgo” by Robert Ascot, was also the theme music for Hollywood’s Talking, which I already covered back in year one. It had a slightly different arrangement, though. Also, the music cue used when the celebrities and the contestant write down keywords to an image in the bonus round is “Gentleman Jim” by Berk Kaempfert. In conclusion, The Hollywood Connection is an unimpressive, shameless rip-off of Match Game, and Jack Barry and Dan Enright should’ve known better than to produce a game show that is a rip-off of a game show produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, especially one of the more popular ones. That’s why I chose this show as this year’s game show turkey right here on Game Show Corner. Next month, we will be ready for Christmas. Not only that, but we will also start preparing for New Year’s Day, as we once again look into a game show hosted by D ick Clark. Well, this game show actually has two short runs, the second of which was hosted by D ick Clark. Enjoy the holidays! So, that does it for this month’s edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Dec 27, 2019 13:00:20 GMT -5
Hello to all you good boys and girls! This is Flo, hoping that you had a very Merry Christmas and welcoming you to this month’s edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. I had a very Merry Christmas myself, and I had a special gift prepared for you to enjoy between after Christmas and before New Year’s Day. How appropriate, though, since this show involves D ick Clark, the host of the many different runs of Pyramid and an annual television special titled Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. So, we’re gonna get closer to ending not just the year, but also the decade, with a short-lived game show called It Takes Two. It Takes Two had two short runs. The original run aired on NBC from March 31, 1969 to July 31, 1970, and the revival aired on The Family Channel—known today as Freeform—from March 10, 1997 to May 30 on that same year. The original run was hosted by Vin Scully, announced and assisted on camera by John Harlan, and created and produced by Ralph Andrews in his production company Ralph Andrews Productions. The revival was hosted by D ick Clark, announced by Burton Richardson, and produced by Mark Phillips Philms & Telephision and MTM Enterprises. The game is played by three teams of two, with the teams in the original run being celebrity couples, and the teams in the revival being civilian contestants. In both runs, the teams are shown acts or demonstrations performed by celebrity guests, and they are asked questions with numerical answers associated with those acts or demonstrations. On each question, the two members of each team have their backs facing each other, and each member of that team writes down a number and places it in a slot in front of them. The two numbers written down by the two members of that team are averaged, and that average becomes that team’s guess on that question. At the end of each question, the correct number on that question is revealed. In the original run, four questions are asked, an a member of the studio audience in one of NBC’s affiliates is called down to a telephone on each question. What a studio audience member has to do on the phone is choose which celebrity couple they think has a guess that’s closest to the actual correct number to the question in play. If the studio audience member chooses the correct celebrity couple, they win $100. In later episodes of this version, a studio audience member stays on the phone until they correctly choose a celebrity couple on all four questions, or until they incorrectly choose a celebrity couple on one question, with each correct choice of celebrity couple winning them a prize, and one incorrect choice of celebrity couple ending the game for them and having another member of the studio audience be called down. A member of the studio audience gets to keep all the prizes they have won, but if that studio audience member chooses correctly on all four questions, the fourth and final prize won by them is a car. In the revival, five questions are asked to the teams worth $100, $200, $300, $400, and $1,000, in that order, plus a sixth question called the “Brain Teaser” to the winning team. On each of the first five questions, the team whose guess is closest to the correct number wins the full dollar value of that question, the team whose guess is second closest wins half the dollar value—$50, $100, $150, and $200, and in that order, except on the first question in later episodes, which is worth $75 to that team, and on the fifth question in all episodes, which is worth nothing to that team—and the team whose guess is furthest from it wins no money. If there’s a two-way tie, either the two teams tied for being the closest both win the first-place dollar value or the two teams tied for being the second closest both win the second-place dollar value. If there’s a three-way tie, all three teams win the first-place dollar value. If a team’s guess is the actual correct number on the nose, a train whistle sounds, and that team wins a prize on top of the first-place dollar value. After the first five questions, the team with the most money wins the game and plays the “Brain Teaser” question for the grand prize. All three teams keep their money. The “Brain Teaser” question is related to one of the questions asked earlier in the game. Unlike in the previous questions, each member of the winning team gives an answer verbally rather than write it down. If the average of those two numbers are within a specified range—usually either 20% or 25%—they win the grand prize. If not, they win a consolation prize. If there’s a tie going into the “Brain Teaser” question, the teams tied for the lead all play it, with each one winning it receiving the grand prize. And that’s It Takes Two. The idea of both members of each team writing down numbers separately and having those numbers averaged to make their guess on each question is a good one, and both runs have good formats. I like the format in the original run better. It reminds me of the format in the first season of Winsanity, as it has members of a studio audience being called to play the game, one at a time, with the studio audience member playing the game winning a prize for each portion of the game they succeed on and having to go back to the studio audience if they fail once, having another studio audience member called to play the next portion of the game. Oh, and let’s not forget that it has cars won for playing a perfect game. I just don’t know why the studio audience has to be in a place that’s separate from where the game is played. The format in the revival is good, too, as it has civilians as the teams making guesses on numbers, with the one who comes closest to the correct number winning the higher amount of cash and the one who comes second closest to it winning the lower amount of cash. I also like that a team wins a prize on top of the higher amount of cash by getting the exact correct number right on the nose. The “Brain Teaser” question is good, too; I like how on that question, each team that gets to play it is made to give numbers verbally and have their guess within a specified range in order to win the grand prize. I do have a couple of problems with the revival, and they both have to do with the amounts of cash in the fifth question. One is that no money is awarded to the second-place team on that question. There are some sources that say that the second-place team on that question is awarded $500, but I’ve found a couple of episodes of this version of the show, and as I watched them, I got nothing from them about that. This was never said or shown. Another is that the $1,000 awarded to the first-place team on that question is enough for that team to win the game and play the “Brain Teaser” question. No matter which team wins which amount of money on the first four questions, the team who comes in first place on the fifth question is always the one who wins the game. This renders the first four questions pointless. The prizes played for in each version are good for the time. I mean, who wouldn’t want a Yamaha WaveRunner, that is, unless they live near the water or know how to ride a personal watercraft? When the original run premiered, it replaced the Ed McMahon-hosted game show Snap Judgment. During that run, the show ran against reruns of sitcoms on CBS. Many of NBC’s affiliates either delayed taping of the show or preempted the show in favor of local homemaker’s shows or syndicated programming, even though it ran for over a year due to its popularity. After it’s run ended, it got replaced the following Monday by a talk/variety/homemaker’s show hosted by Dinah Shore called Dinah’s Place. Episodes of this run are believed to have been destroyed due to the practice of wiping, which was common at the time, but the status of this run is unknown. Right now, one episode of the series exists, and it has been uploaded to YouTube by two different people. That episode and another one are held by private collectors, while the pilot episode is held by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. On March 12, 1974, an unsold pilot for a revival of the show for CBS was taped. It wasn’t until 1997 when a revival actually came through, and it aired on The Family Channel. It has been mentioned in a couple of sources that the host of the revival, D ick Clark, appeared on an episode of the original run with his wife at the time, Loretta Martin. A great number of celebrity guests on the revival are very well-known, or at least most of them were that time and before that. Some of these celebrity guests in the revival appeared in game shows before, during, and after this show as hosts, announcers, panelists, and models. These celebrities include Vicki Lawrence, Christina Ferrare, Michael Burger, Rod Roddy, Janice Pennington, Betty White, Ruta Lee, Ed McMahon, Ron Pearson, and Jon “Bowzer” Bauman. This show had a board game based on it. It was released in 1970 as a joint venture between Hasbro and NBC as part of their “bookshelf” series of games. This board game is the only game in the “bookshelf” series that’s based on a game show. Strangely enough, the board game has no reference to the show whatsoever. That is strange, because this board game, as well as all the other board games in the “bookshelf” series, has the NBC logo on it. Well, that’s everything I have not just for this month, but also for this year and for this decade. Yeah, this is the final edition for the 2010s. Next month, we’ll be in the 2020s. I have the perfect game show to cover in next month, and that’s just the perfect time for me to cover that game show. What will that game show be? Well, you might want to keep in mind that the next year has double the number that’s part of not only the title of that game show, but also the name of an electronic game that this show is based on, and that electronic game is based on a spoken parlor game. See you in the new decade! So, that does it for this month's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Jan 31, 2020 13:00:11 GMT -5
Hello, everybody! This is Baby New Year Flo. Happy New Year! Happy New Decade! And welcome to this month’s edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Yes, people, we are now in the 2020s. We are now in the year 2020. Twenty...twenty! And as promised, it’s only fitting that I cover this game show in this month’s edition called 20Q. 20Q aired on Saturday nights on a very short-lived block on GSN called Big Saturday Night from June 13, 2009 to August 15 on that same year. It was based on an electronic game invented by Robin Burgener, which in turn was based on a spoken parlor game called twenty questions. It was hosted by So You Think You Can Dance host Cat Deeley and produced by Endemol USA, and it featured a machine called “Mr. Q.”, whose voice was provided by Treasure Mall host Hal Sparks. The game is played by six contestants, three at a time, all of whom are from the studio audience and have earned the right to play against Mr. Q. In order for a member of the studio audience to earn the right to play the game as a contestant, the row that they sit in has to be selected—and it’s done so at random—and they have to buzz in and correctly identify a subject in a category provided by Mr. Q. On each category, clues to the correct subject in that category are given, one at a time. The studio audience member in the randomly-selected row who buzzes in and correctly guesses the subject gets to come down onstage, and they introduce themselves and get a cheeky comment about them from Mr. Q. This process repeats until three contestants have been determined. In the game itself, the three contestants playing are given a category and shown a series of twenty yes-or-no questions, with those questions appearing on the game board in pairs. After the first pair of questions appear, the contestant in control chooses one of the questions in that pair, and Mr. Q. answers that question with either “yes” or “no”. If the answer to that question is “yes”, that contestant keeps control and has the option to choose another question or guess the subject under the category. But if the answer to that question is “no”, control passes over to the next contestant in sequence. After a question in the first pair is chosen, the contestant in control at that point has the option to choose the other question in that pair or see a new pair of questions. While there are pairs of questions that have one “yes” question and one “no” question, it’s possible that some pairs have questions that both have the same answer. The one question that remains in a pair will have to be chosen in order to find out. But if the contestant in control chooses to see a new pair, they must choose one of the questions in that pair. If the contestant in control has earned the right to guess the subject and is ready to do so, they must hit the button on their podium and make their guess. If they’re correct, they win the game; but if they’re incorrect, control passes over to the next contestant in sequence. The winner of the game receives $5,000 and advances to the semi-final round. After the first game is played, three more contestants are determined in the same way as before, and those three contestants play the second game, which is played the same way as before. The winners of the two games play against each other in the semi-final round, with the one who has won a coin toss playing first and the other one being sent offstage to a soundproof booth. The contestant playing first is given a category and a series of clues to the subject in that category, with the clues being revealed one at a time. What that contestant has to do is correctly identify the subject using as few clues as possible. After that contestant correctly guesses the subject, the other contestant is brought back on stage and given the same category and the same clues to the same subject. The contestant playing second must correctly guess the subject in fewer clues than the contestant who has played first has done. If they succeed, they win the match; but if they fail, the other contestant wins the match. The winner of the match receives a prize and advances to the final round. In the final round, the winning contestant is given to categories to choose from. After a category is chosen, the contestant is shown twenty questions to a subject in that category. This time, all twenty questions are shown on the board at once, and Mr. Q. has to guess the subject under the category, as well. After a handful of questions have been chosen, Mr. Q. goes into “sleep mode”, and the contestant takes that time to talk to Cat about what they think the correct subject can be. Afterwards, Mr. Q. wakes up from “sleep mode”, not knowing about what has happened in the talk that the contestant has had with Cat about the subject. Either the contestant or Mr. Q. can make a guess on the subject anytime they think they know what it is, with the contestant having to buzz in as soon as they think they know what it is. If either Mr. Q. makes a correct guess or the contestant buzzes in with an incorrect guess, the contestant loses the final round; but if Mr. Q. makes an incorrect guess, the contestant gets one chance to make a correct guess. If the contestant makes a correct guess after either they buzz in or Mr. Q. makes an incorrect guess, they win the final round. Winning the final round wins the contestant $20,000, while losing the final round wins them nothing extra. That’s 20Q, and I will say that the gameplay overall almost works. Almost. I like the idea of a game show version of 20Q having three contestants choosing yes-or-no questions, keeping control and earning the right to guess a subject under a category by choosing “yes” questions, passing control to the next contestant in sequence by choosing “no” questions or making an incorrect guess on a subject, and winning by making a correct guess on a subject. I like the idea of it having two contestants competing to guess a subject in as few clues as possible for the right to play the final round. And I like the idea of it having both the winning contestant and Mr. Q. having to make a correct guess on the subject in the final round. There are just a few problems I have with this show. One is that this is not the kind of game show that should have a full-hour runtime. With the way the game is played and the top cash prize being $20,000, I think the show would’ve been better with a half-hour runtime. If they take away the qualifying rounds and speed up the pacing of the show, then it would’ve worked better, because the pacing of the show is really slow. Another problem I have is the structure of the main game. The questions that the contestants choose appear on the game board in pairs, and because of this, when a contestant becomes obligated to choose a question from a particular pair, only one particular thing happens no matter which question in that pair is chosen, since both questions in some pairs have the same answer; either the contestant still keeps control if both questions in that pair are “yes” questions, or they end up having no choice but to lose control if both questions in that pair are “no” questions. Why couldn’t they just have all twenty questions at once, just like in the bonus round, with ten “yes” questions and ten “no” questions, and have the same three contestants play both games as rounds, as opposed to each of the two games being played by a different set of three contestants? Wouldn’t it have made more sense if they’ve done that? Also, they should have contestants score points for choosing “yes” questions and correctly guessing subjects, with the two contestants with the highest scores advancing to the semi-final round, and the qualifying round being played as a tiebreaker by contestants who are tied for last place. That would fix things right up. One more problem I have is that a contestant who correctly guesses a subject in the main game wins $5,000. For a game show whose grand prize is $20,000, especially considering the overall gameplay in it, $5,000 is too much for a contestant to receive just for winning the main game. And adding a prize to the $5,000 for winning the semi-final round seems more excessive. Along with everything else I suggested, I think the winner should receive $20,000 for winning the game or a prize valued at approximately $2,000 for failing to do so, while all the other contestants each receive a consolation prize valued at somewhere under $500. The pilot episode, which was taped on August 16, 2008, isn’t any better. It was hosted by Joey Lawrence, who is best known for starring in shows like Blossom and Brotherly Love—the latter with his two brothers, Matthew and Andy—and for voicing Oliver in the animated Disney film Oliver & Company. It also featured a machine referred to as “Debra-Q”, whose voice provider currently unknown. After the pilot was taped, Joey was replaced by Cat due to a conflict. Here are the differences in the pilot episode. Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings is featured as the “residential expert”, and what he does as the “residential expert” is pick out the categories. There’s only one main game instead of two, with the winner receiving $20,000 and the other two contestants each receiving $1,000. Also, each contestant has a computerized scribble pad that they use to write down their guess on the subject, with those written guesses shown to the studio audience, and they will buzz in with their final answer afterwards. Finally, in the final round, the winning contestant starts it off by picking out one of twenty-five balls, each one having a number concealed in it, with that contestant’s $20,000 multiplied by the number in that ball, for a possible $500,000, if they correctly guess the subject there. Now, I find the way the pilot episode is done to be a problem because having a “residential expert” doesn’t add to anything, and too much money is played for and won for a game show with this kind of gameplay. There’s also an episode in the series where the game is played in a battle of the sexes, with three women playing one game, three men playing another game, and the two winners playing the semi-final round to determine which sex will be the better one. Also, there’s an international adaptation in Argentina called Flor De Palabra, which lasted from August 8, 2009 to November 13 on that same year and starred actress and comedian Florencia Peña and Beauty And The Geek star—in season one only—Richard Rubin. 20Q was paired up with The Money List in the Big Saturday Night block. And you know what? I’ll be covering that show next month. So, join me then when I cover The Money List. So, that does it for this month’s edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Feb 28, 2020 13:00:19 GMT -5
Hello, people all over the world! Flo here, and welcome to this month’s edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. I started off the new year—and the new decade—by covering 20Q, one of the game shows that aired on a short-lived block on Game Show Network called Big Saturday Night. This month, I will be covering a game show that aired with it on that block. That game show is The Money List. The Money List is a revival of The Rich List, which in turn is an adaptation of a game show in the UK called Who Dares Wins, even though that show premiered a year after The Rich List did. The Rich List had six episodes, but only one episode aired, and it aired on Fox on November 1, 2006, while The Money List, just like 20Q, aired on Saturday nights on GSN as part of Big Saturday Night from June 13, 2009 to August 15 on that same year. The Rich List was hosted by Northern Irish journalist and broadcaster Eamonn Holmes, while The Money List was hosted by Fred Roggin, who, at the time, was one of the hosts of a block on GSN called GSN Live. Pilot episodes of The Money List we’re taped at the set for Who Dares Wins from August 27, 2008 to 30 on that same month on that same year. Both The Money List and The Rich List were produced by 12 Yard Productions—the same company behind the original UK version of Weakest Link, the US version of which I already covered back in year three—while The Rich List was also produced by Fox Broadcasting Company and distributed by ITV Studios. Now, in case you’re wondering, yes, I’m gonna be covering both game shows. They’re both exactly the same in terms of gameplay, after all, but they have different cash payouts, which I will get to later. The game is played by two teams, each one consisting of two strangers. One of the teams is a set of returning champions. Each team sits inside an isolation pod, which gets turned on and off by the host pressing a button corresponding to that pod on his podium. A team’s pod turns blue if it’s turned on and turns red if it’s turned off. Two categories are played, and on each category, the teams take turns making bids on how many correct answers they think they can give in that category without giving an incorrect answer. While a team is having their turn in making their bid, the other team’s pod is turned off so they can’t hear the bid being made. There are at least fifteen correct answers on each category, and the teams keep making bids until one of them challenges the other to fulfill their bid. The team challenged to fulfill their bid give answers, one at a time, and they are told whether or not each answer is correct. Each time the team gives a correct answer, it appears on the board. However, the board shows up to fifteen answers at a time, so if a bidding ends at higher than fifteen answers and the challenged team has given at least fifteen correct answers, each correct answer given thereafter removes the the oldest given answer remaining on the list from the board, making way for the newest given answer. The team keeps giving answers until they have successfully fulfilled their bid or until the give an answer that is incorrect. If they fulfill their bid, they win that category; but if they give an incorrect answer before they can fulfill their bid, the other team wins that category. The first team to win two categories wins the game, and they become or remain champions, depending on which team has won the game. If, after two categories, the game ends in a tie with each team having won one category, a tiebreaker category is played. In the tiebreaker category, the two teams simply take turns giving answers. The tiebreaker category is played in pairs. If the team playing first gives an incorrect answer, the other team can win by giving a correct answer, or the teams continue. But if the team playing first gives a correct answer, the other team must give a correct answer to stay in the game, or they lose. The bonus round is the titular Rich List/Money List, and in it, the winning team is given a category and has to give up to fifteen correct answers to win the top cash prize. Like before, the team gives their answers, one at a time. For every three correct answers the team gives, their cash winnings increase to the amount played for, and they have the option to stop and take the money or continue and give three more correct answers. If, at any point, they give an incorrect answer, the round ends immediately, and the team loses all their winnings. However, all money won in their previous trips to the bonus round, if any, is theirs to keep, no matter what happens. In The Rich List, the cash amounts are $10,000, $25,000, $75,000, $150,000, and $250,000. In The Money List, the cash amounts are $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $25,000, and $50,000. If the team either wins the top cash prize or chooses to stop and take whatever money is won up to that point in the bonus round, they keep the money. Also, after the bonus round, they get to play the game again against a new team of challengers. There’s no limit to how many games a team can play or how much money they can win. Each episode has two full games, beginning with the first playing of the main game and ending with the second playing of the bonus round. That’s both The Rich List and The Money List. The gameplay in both shows is pretty much the Challenge Round from Wipeout—which I already covered back in year one—or the main game of To Say The Least blown up to a big money game show, but it works. Having two strangers team up to come up with lists of correct answers to categories and win as much money as they can is good, especially for a Game Show Network original. In fact, The Money List is the very first Game Show Network original to have returning champions, and it wouldn’t be until ten years later when another Game Show Network original with returning champions in Best Ever Trivia Show—which will be renamed Master Minds for its second season—would premiere. There are a good number of game shows that have the bidding mechanic, some of which I already covered here, but The Rich List and The Money List are the only shows with this mechanic that have teams being kept from hearing each other’s bids. I don’t see the point in that, since as soon as a team makes their bid and has their pod turned off, the other team is told that bid by the host as soon as their pod gets turned on. Something else I don’t get is that teams can bid as high as they want, and yet up to fifteen answers can be shown on the game board at once. Why can’t there be a fifteen-answer bid maximum? Or if they’re gonna have teams bid as high as they want, they should figure out a way to have all the answers shown at once. While we’re on the subject of teams making bids, there are times when the bidding ends with a bid that’s higher than how many correct answers there actually are in the category that comes into play. That’s fine, as it’s cool for teams to figure out how many correct answers there are in a category as they make their bids. There is actually one time when the bidding ends with a bid that’s the exact number of correct answers that are in the category in play. That happened on the final aired episode of The Money List by Gary McCullers and Debbie Bernfeld, the category was “US States With An Ocean Coastline”, and there were 23 correct answers in that category. The tiebreaker is okay; I’m not surprised that it’s played like Sudden Death on Weakest Link, as all these shows were produced by the same company. The bonus round is the best part. It’s actually done very well. To be honest, despite being lower than in The Rich List, I think the cash payouts in The Money List are better; the cash payouts in The Rich List just have too big of a gap in a couple of areas, such as going from $25,000 to $75,000 rather than going from $25,000 to $50,000. Speaking of cash payouts, winning teams aren’t guaranteed any money. There have been times when teams end up with nothing after making a mistake in the bonus round and even left with nothing with no chances of making a return trip to the bonus round to actually win some money. Why can’t a team receive $1,000 for each game they win, whether it’s a flat $1,000 for winning a game or $500 for winning each category? It would be nice if a championship team is guaranteed to leave the show with some money in case they make a mistake in every trip to the bonus round they take. Because five of the episodes of The Rich List never aired, it remains unknown if the top cash prize of $250,000 was ever won on that show. It wasn’t won in the only aired episode, of course. However, all nine episodes of The Money List aired, and the top cash prize of $50,000 was won only once on that show. It was won by Robert Checkoway and Anastasia Travers, and that team left with a total of $55,000, making them the biggest winning team on that show. At one point during the existence of Big Saturday Night, reruns of Deal Or No Deal were added to the block. However, after weeks in the summer of 2009, the block was no more. There’s more to the block than it having 20Q, The Money List, and later Deal Or No Deal aired in it, but this is not the series that talks about defunct television blocks. The only thing left to say about The Rich List and The Money List is that there are many foreign adaptations of these shows and Who Dares Wins. There are foreign adaptations of these shows in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Greece, and Spain. As of the release of this edition, Who Dares Wins is the only version that’s still currently in production. Well, that’s it. I’ve said all there needs to be said about The Rich List and The Money List. Join me next month when I go back to talking about one game show. And you know what? Since I just mentioned To Say The Least, I’ll be covering that show in next month’s edition. Yeah, so, the subject of next month’s edition on Game Show Corner will be To Say The Least. So, that does it for this month's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Mar 27, 2020 12:00:20 GMT -5
Hello, guys and gals! Flo here and welcome to this month’s edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. I have covered game shows played in a battle of the sexes, such as Bruce Forsyth’s Hot Streak, Sex Wars, The Better Sex, The Smarter Sex, Scattergories, Strip Poker, Teen Win, Lose Or Draw, and Pictionary from 1989. I also have covered game shows where contestants or teams take turns making bids, such as Wipeout, Debt, Sex Wars—again?— Born Lucky, Picture This, Keep It In The Family, and, just last month, The Rich List and The Money List. And I have covered game shows hosted by Tom Kennedy, such as Big Game, Body Language, Wordplay, and 50 Grand Slam. In this month’s edition, I will be covering a game show that was hosted by Tom Kennedy, was played in a battle of the sexes, and, in a way, had teams making bids. The game show is called To Say The Least. To Say The Least was one of three short-lived game shows that Tom Kennedy hosted in a span of two years, with the other two being 50 Grand Slam and the daytime run of Name That Tune. This show premiered and ended on the exact same dates Knockout did—which I already covered back in year one—airing from October 3, 1977 to April 21, 1978 on NBC. Not only was this show hosted by Tom Kennedy, but it was also announced by Kenny Williams, produced by Heatter-Quigley Productions, and taped at NBC Studio 3 in Burbank, California. During its run, it initially faced in the Nielsen ratings against The Young And The Restless on CBS and The Better Sex on ABC—which I already covered back in year two—but then faced The $20,000 Pyramid in 1978 when that show replaced The Better Sex on ABC in the noon timeslot in Eastern time. This caused the ratings for To Say The Least to crunch and ultimately lead the show to be cancelled and replaced by reruns of Sanford And Son. The game is played by two teams, each one consisting of one contestant and two celebrities. One team consists of men, and the other team consists of women. Usually, the contestant on one of the teams is a returning champion. The two teams play up to three rounds. In each round, two members in each team go into isolation backstage, while the remaining member of each team are both shown a series of words ranging from six to ten that describe a subject. After the onstage team members are shown the words, they can guess the subject before it’s revealed, but nothing is gained from that. Then, they take turns choosing words to eliminate until one of them challenges the other’s teammates to guess the subject with the remaining words or until there’s only one word left; in the case of the latter, the teammates of the team member who has eliminated the second-to-last word are made to guess the subject. After the elimination of the words has been done, the isolated members of both teams return onstage, and the members of the team made to guess the subject discuss it with each other, and one of them makes their guess on it based on the remaining words. A correct guess on the subject wins their team the round, but an incorrect guess on it wins the other team the round. The first team to win two rounds wins the game. The contestant on the winning team receives a prize package and advances to the bonus round. The bonus round is called the All-Star Game, and the winning contestant plays it with all four celebrities. There’s a set of four numbered doors placed on stage, with each door having one of the celebrities placed at random behind it. While the celebrities are behind the doors, they can’t see or hear what’s going on outside them. Meanwhile, the contestant is shown one subject and a series of words that describe it, and they must choose which words in the description to eliminate, one at a time, until only three words remain. Afterwards, the celebrity behind door #1 comes out and steps up to a microphone, and they are shown the three remaining words in the description and must guess the subject using those words. If the celebrity correctly guesses the subject, the contestant wins $100. After the first celebrity has made their guess on the subject, whether they are correct or incorrect, the contestant chooses one more word to eliminate after a discussion on that with the first celebrity, and the celebrity behind door #2 comes out for their chance to guess the subject using the two remaining words, with a correct guess from that celebrity winning the contestant $200. Then, after a discussion with the first two celebrities, the contestant chooses one more word to eliminate, and the celebrities behind doors #3 and #4 come out, one at a time, in that order, for their chance each to guess the subject using the one remaining word. If either one of the last two celebrities correctly guesses the subject, the contestant wins a cash jackpot that starts at $2,000 and increases by another $1,000 each time it’s not won. After the bonus round, the contestant and the celebrities play the game again. A contestant gets to stay on the show until they have won seven games or have lost two games, whichever comes first, and a contestant who wins four games in a row wins a car. Because of the structure of the gameplay, this show has a rollover format. At least two full games are shown being played on each episode, and when time runs out for an episode, a series of bells will sound, and the game will continue exactly where it leaves off in the next episode. So, that’s To Say The Least. The idea of teams getting their teammates or opponents to guess subjects using as little information as possible is a good idea, an it’s done all right here, but the game is just too short. Maybe instead of having the game played in a best-two-out-of-three match, the two teams should play as many rounds as they can until time runs out, with the team who has won the most rounds winning the game. Either that, or the two teams should reach a goal by building a pot in each round, with each word eliminated adding money to the pot and all the money in the pot going to the contestant on the team who wins that round, with the first team to win enough money to reach the goal winning the game. And with two members of each team being isolated backstage, it would make more sense if those two members of the team that’s making a guess on a subject gets two guesses instead of one. You know, one guess per guessing team member. The bonus round is okay, but it could’ve been made in a way that correct guesses on the subject made by the celebrities behind doors #1 and #2 actually matter instead of in a way that a contestant can win the jackpot with just a correct guess on the subject from either one of the celebrities behind doors #3 and #4. Speaking of the jackpot, it’s too low; it should’ve started at $5,000 instead of just $2,000, but it can still increase by $1,000, or even better, it can increase by $2,500, either way, each time it’s not won. This is an NBC game show from the late 1970s, after all. The prize packages won for winning the main game are worth more than the starting amount of the jackpot of $2,000. Heck, some of these prize packages are worth almost $3,000, and from what I’ve seen in the episodes I found on YouTube, the jackpot doesn’t ever seem to grow so high. The jackpot seems to have been won every two or three playings of the bonus round, so the prize played for in the bonus round might as well not be a progressive jackpot; it might as well be a prize package and a flat $2,000 cash prize to go with it. The set does look cool, though part of it looks like the Connect Four board, and the addition of the doors between the two halves of the team area for the bonus round makes it look kind of tacky. The theme music, which was composed by Stan Worth, would later be used in another short-lived game show produced by Heatter-Quigley Productions called Bedtime Stories. I will be covering that show next month, but I won’t say that it is any better than To Say The Least. Join me in next month’s edition as I cover Bedtime Stories, and you’ll find out then why. So, that does it for this month’s edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Apr 24, 2020 12:00:23 GMT -5
Hey, you naughty couples in bed! I’m Flo, and welcome to this month’s edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Last month, I covered a game show that is a production of Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley called To Say The Least and mentioned that its theme music was later used after its cancellation in another game show produced by them. The game show in question will be the subject for this month’s edition. So, let’s get this one out of the way. It’s time that I cover Bedtime Stories. Bedtime Stories aired in syndication on a daily basis from June 18, 1979 to an unknown day in August on that same year. It was hosted by comedy duo and Los Angeles radio team Al Lohman and Roger Barkley, announced by Kenny Williams—with Johnny Gilbert substituting—produced by Heatter-Quigley Productions and Filmways, and taped at Metromedia Square in Hollywood, California. The game is played by two couples. At the start of the game, one of the couples is introduced, and a couple of videos of that couple being interviewed by one of the hosts in what is supposed to be their bedroom their bedroom are played. Afterwards, the other couple is introduced and asked two dual-choice questions about the first couple—one question for each half of that couple to answer about the half of that couple of the same sex—with each question answered correctly worth $500 in prizes. However, each time a question is answered incorrectly, the $500 in prizes is added to a prize package worth $2,000, which will go to the winning couple at the end of the game. After the questions about the first couple are played, a couple of videos of the second couple being interviewed are played, and the first couple is asked two questions about the second couple in the same manner. On these four questions, the correct answers to them are revealed in video clips of the couples revealing them. One more question is then asked, and it’s a survey question previously answered by many men and women with a percentage as the answer to it. Each couple writes down on a slate what percentage of the surveyed men and women have answered the question with a specific answer during the final commercial break. Then, the percentages written down by the couples are revealed, and the correct percentage is revealed after that. The couple whose guess is closest to the correct percentage wins the game and the prizes left up for grabs. That’s Bedtime Stories. Before I go over my thoughts on this show, I have to go over the pilot episode, which was taped on March 9, 1979. In the pilot episode, couples take turns answering dual-choice/multiple-choice poll questions answered by married couples before the show. Before each question, the couple in turn selects a point value at random by hitting a button in front of them. The point values are one, two, and three. A couple gets the points if they correctly guess which answer has been chosen the most by the polled couples, but if they make an incorrect guess, the points go to the other couple. After each question, the couple who has gotten the points from it chooses one of five prizes to mark those points on. Each prize has a set number of spaces representing the points needed to be marked on in order for a couple to bank that prize. The prizes played for in the pilot are as follows: Brass bed - 2 points Hot tub - 3 points Video recorder - 4 points Trip to Paris - 4 points Car - 5 points The points for each prize are marked on from left to right by the hosts using cards with X’s on them. After a prize has all its points marked on, the couple who has marked the last point for that prize banks it. The first couple to bank three prizes wins the game and keeps those prizes. Okay. Now, I can share my thoughts on this show. This isn’t a good game show. It just isn’t. A game show where each couple is asked questions about the other couple based on what they’ve heard in an interview on that couple actually can work if done right. However, this show isn’t done right. The interviews drag on for too long, the hosts’ comedic antics are annoying and unfunny, and there’s just not that much to the gameplay. Each couple is asked only two questions about the other couple before the final question, which itself has nothing to do with the couples themselves, and the questions that do have anything to do with the couples themselves are absolutely meaningless, as the final question is the only question that really matters. No matter how much in prizes each couple has won, all the prizes left up for grabs are won by a couple who wins the final question. The format used in the pilot is much better, as that involves scoring points by winning questions and marking those points on prizes in order to bank those prizes. Why couldn’t that format be carried over to the series? Maybe because the board that shows the prizes and the way the points for those prizes are marked on is so cheap that even one of the host has commented on it, saying that he did game shows before, and the boards on those game shows were functioned electronically. In fact, this is another big problem I have with this show. This show just looks cheap, from the couples’ benches that are built to look like beds to props on the set that get deliberately knocked down by the hosts. The entire presentation of the show looks cheap. This show looks like something from a much lesser-known company, not something from Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley! They know better than this! Why would they even stoop so low as to produce such a cheap, bad show that ended up lasting only two months? Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley produced one more game show together, and that was a revival of Gambit called Las Vegas Gambit. After the run of that show ended in 1981, Bob Quigley left the company and retired from television, leaving Merrill Heatter to produce game shows on his own. Bob died at age 77 on November 27, 1989. Bedtime Stories was the second game show that Al Lohman and Roger Barkley hosted together. The first game show that they hosted together was Lohman & Barkley’s Name Droppers, which was also produced by Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley. I’ll be covering that show in next month’s edition. So, that does it for this month's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on May 29, 2020 12:00:21 GMT -5
Hi, there, everybody! This is Flo, your name-dropper, and welcome to this month’s edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Last month, I covered a game show called Bedtime Stories, and I mentioned that it was the second game show hosted by comedy duo and Los Angeles radio team Al Lohman and Roger Barkley. So, what better to do in this month’s edition than to cover the first game show these guys hosted? Let’s get ready to, well, not laugh again. The show is Lohman & Barkley’s Name Droppers. Lohman & Barkley’s Name Droppers was a daytime game show that aired on NBC from September 29, 1969 to March 27, 1970. It was hosted by Al Lohman and Roger Barkley, announced by Kenny Williams, produced by Heatter-Quigley Productions and MGM Television, and taped at NBC Studio 3 in Burbank, California. The game is played by twenty contestants, all of whom are on the show for a week. The contestants are introduced to three celebrities and a “name dropper”, a person who has a connection to one of the celebrities. An example of this is a woman named Tina being the name dropper, and Bob Cummings, Ruth Buzzi, and Bob Newhart being the possible celebrities, with Bob Cummings claiming Tina to be his elephant giver, Ruth Buzzi claiming her to be her computer dog breeder, and Bob Newhart claiming her to be his kids’ nanny. Each celebrity asks the name dropper questions regarding the connection they have with each other until a bell sounds. After all three celebrities have interrogated the name dropper, the contestants each lock in a vote on which celebrity they think the name dropper truly has a connection to. Then, two of the contestants are chosen to each explain their reason behind their vote. Each of these two contestants has a prize chosen for them to play for. Afterwards, the votes for the celebrities from all twenty of the contestants are revealed, and the celebrity whom the name dropper truly has a connection to reveals the truth. Each contestant who has voted correctly on a celebrity wins $10, while the name dropper wins $10 for each incorrect vote. Meanwhile, each contestant chosen to speak their piece wins the prize chosen for them if they have voted correctly, while each of these two contestants surrenders that prize to the name dropper if they have voted incorrectly, but receives a gift certificate. At the end of the week, the contestant who has made the most correct votes wins a $1,000 cash bonus. If there’s a tie for most correct votes that week, all the contestants involved in the tie split the cash bonus equally. And that’s Lohman & Barkley’s Name Droppers. This show is obviously better than the other Heatter-Quigley-produced game show that Al Lohman and Roger Barkley hosted. The gameplay is better, but it’s not impressive. The prizes up for grabs are okay for the time, but some of these prizes are unacceptable to have played for in game shows today, such as a mink stole. The cash amounts are okay for 1969 and 1970, but they could’ve made sure that the bonus won at the end of each week was won by one contestant, and one contestant only. They could’ve awarded it to the contestant who has locked in with the most correct votes in the fastest time that week instead of having it divided by the contestants who are tied for most correct votes that week, that is, if a tie has occurred at that point. Al and Roger’s comedic antics in this show are not as grating as they are in Bedtime Stories, but they are still grating in this show nonetheless. Well, that’s it for Lohman & Barkley’s Name Droppers. Actually, that’s it for Al Lohman and Roger Barkley, and it’s not just because they didn’t host any more game shows than this and Bedtime Stories; it’s also because I’m tired of talking about these two. Now, next month’s edition of Game Show Corner is the year six finale, and since it will be summer at the time that edition will be released, the game show that I will be covering there will involve something many people like to do in the summer, and that is going to theme parks and riding roller coasters. Now, there probably won’t be so many people going to theme parks, right now, due to the coronavirus, but recently, there has been news about a theme park called Shanghai Disneyland reopening after it had been closed because of that, but there are safety measures that come with the reopening of that theme park, like the visitors having to wear face masks and stand apart from each other. This game show that I will be covering next week on the year six finale was set in Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, and it’s one of the live-action shows that is a Cartoon Network original. Yeah, a Cartoon Network game show, and it’s entirely in live-action. What do I really have to say about a game show like that? You’ll find out next week when I conclude year six of Game Show Corner with that show. So, that does it for this month’s edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Jun 26, 2020 12:00:15 GMT -5
Hello to all you people who just can’t wait to start going to theme parks again! This is Flo, and welcome to the year six finale of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. After Shanghai Disneyland reopened with new coronavirus safety measures to keep their visitors safe, theme parks seem to slowly but surely reopen, as well, following Shanghai Disneyland’s example. Even Knott’s Berry Farm seems to be doing that. But why the special mention of Knott’s Berry Farm, you ask? Because the game show that I’ll be covering today was taped there. So, get ready to go on roller coasters and get paid for answering questions as you enjoy the rides. I’m ending year six with BrainRush. BrainRush aired on a short-lived block on Cartoon Network called CN Real from June 20, 2009 to July 22 on that same year, lasting only six episodes. It was hosted by Lamorne Morris and Sarah Karges—even though they both have very different roles—produced by Super Delicious Productions, created and executive produced by Michael Krupat, and taped at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California. The game is played by three kid contestants, all of whom don’t know that they’re on a game show until each one takes a seat next to Lamorne on a roller coaster called the Boomerang. The contestants play round one called “Quick Quiz” on the Boomerang, one at a time. In round one, each contestant is asked a series of trivia questions during the ride. Some of the questions are dual-choice or true-or-false, with the latter actually referred to as “true or bogus”. Each time a contestant answers a question correctly, they win $25. In one episode, it has been revealed that the ride on the Boomerang lasts 1 minute and 45 seconds, so that’s how much time each contestant has to answer as many questions as possible. At the end of this round, the contestant with the lowest score is eliminated with all the money they have won. If there’s a tie for last place, the contestants involved in that tie are asked a question with a numerical answer about the Boomerang. Each contestant uses a marker and a board to write down their answer, and the contestants have ten seconds to have their answers written down. The contestant whose guess is closest to the correct number stays in the game. The contestant whose guess is furthest from the correct number is eliminated. Round two is played at another roller coaster called the Silver Bullet. In this round, the contestant with the lower score is shown two different-colored envelopes to choose from, each one having a name of a game inside. Whatever game is inside the chosen envelope, that contestant plays it, while the other contestant is left with the game in the remaining envelope to play later. The games played in this round vary from episode to episode. Regardless of what games are played in this round, each game has six parts, with each part done successfully worth $50, for a possible $300. The games played in this round are as follows: Streetwise - The contestant is told five letters during the ride, and they must remember those letters and call them out after the ride. Those letters spell out a slang word, and the contestant must figure out what the word is based on a clue in 30 seconds. Regurgitator - The contestant is told a short story on the slow ride up to the top of the Silver Bullet, and they are asked six questions about that story on the fast ride down. Represent - The contestant is told three words and shown three signs on the ground with images of familiar objects during the ride, and they must remember those words and images and call them out after the ride. Hurling Hangman - The contestant must look for three letters in the park during the ride, and they must remember those letters and call them out after the ride. Then, the contestants must use those three letters to spell up to three words within 10 seconds. After both contestants have played their games in this round, the contestant with the highest score advances to round three, while the other contestant is eliminated with all the money they have won. Round three called “Motor Mouth” is played at one more roller coaster called the Xcelerator. In a few episodes, prior to this round, the remaining contestant is offered something to eat, like a cheeseburger, for a $100 cash bonus. If the contestant chooses to eat the food offered to them, they must eat all of it in order to win the cash bonus. In the round itself, the contestant must choose a category to work with during the ride on the Xcelerator. The categories in this round are as follows: Zap-Pow - Superheroes & comic books Penalty Box - Sports Watch-Out - Television & Movies Know It All - General Knowledge After the contestant chooses a category, they take a seat on the Xcelerator and get themselves strapped in, and they are asked one question in the chosen category. The question has many correct answers, and the contestant must give as many answers as possible during the ride. The first correct answer given by the contestant is worth $50, and every correct answer given thereafter is worth $50 more than the previous correct answer given. After the ride, the contestant is given the option to take all the money they have won up to that point or try to double it by answering one more question. Lamorne sits next to the contestant on the Xcelerator as the contestant makes their decision. If the contestant chooses to double their money, they must answer the final question correctly in order for their money to be doubled. Answering the question correctly doubles the contestant’s money and causes the Xcelerator to take off immediately, while answering it incorrectly cuts their money in half—and rounds it down if the cash total going into the question ends with $25 or $75—though they are still offered by Lamorne one more ride on the Xcelerator. Regardless of the outcome of the final question, the $100 bonus won from eating the entire food item is not doubled or cut in half. So, that’s BrainRush. It’s a good game show where kids can win a lot of money by answering questions while riding on roller coasters. The biggest problem is that Cartoon Network is not the right channel for this show to be made for. I guess being a show made for Cartoon Network is one of the reasons, if not the reason, why this show got cancelled after only six episodes. Maybe this show could’ve been for Travel Channel, just like Scream! If You Know The Answer, the US adaptation of the UK game show of the same name, which premiered two years after this show. But then, Scream! If You Know The Answer had an even shorter run than this show. I’m guessing that game shows where contestants answer questions while riding on roller coasters really don’t have much of a chance, not even on Travel Channel. But about BrainRush itself, the rounds—or levels, as they call them—are well-structured, and no matter how far in the game a contestant makes it, they always have more money than a previously-eliminated contestant, even if the contestant who makes it to round three goes for the final question and answers it incorrectly. It’s also cool that round two has a variety of games, but since there are four of these in total for the entirety of the show’s run, there should be four envelopes to choose from on each episode instead of just two. I like that in round three, the remaining contestant gets to choose a category and be asked only one question, which has many correct answers; that allows the contestant to choose their own fate and win hundreds of dollars more, even $1,000 or $2,000 more. The final question is okay, but if half of the contestant’s money is going to be gambled should the contestant go for it, then it would help if the contestant was given the category for that question to help them decide whether or not to go for it. If not, they should’ve just have the contestant answer the final question without giving them the option to go for it or not, and simply do nothing to the contestant’s total winnings if the final question is answered incorrectly. Every contestant who has made it all the way up to that point has chosen to go for the final question anyway. Also, I think the dollar values of correct answers be doubled so that rounding a contestant’s cash total down after an incorrect answer to the final question would never be necessary, that is, if they had to keep the rule of cutting the contestant’s total winnings in half for an incorrect answer to that question. The $100 cash bonus for eating an entire food item is also a good thing, but not all episodes have this, and from what I understand, every contestant who has been offered something to eat in order to win the cash bonus has accepted the offer, and they all have successfully accomplished what they needed to do to win that cash bonus. Because of all this, I think every contestant who has made it that far in the game should just be given a food item and eat as much of it as they could within a specified time limit and be awarded a cash bonus depending on how much of it they ate within that time limit; the more of the food they eat, the more bonus money they win. It has been stated in the show’s opening that a contestant can win over $5,000. Well, that was achieved on the final episode. The contestant on that episode who has achieved this is Walter. He accumulated $2,625 during the game, answered his final question correctly—doubling it to $5,250—and earned a $100 cash bonus for eating an entire cheeseburger before round three begins. That makes Walter the biggest winner in the history of this show, with a grand total of $5,350. Nice job, Walter. Before the show premiered, it was originally going to be called Headrush. After the show’s run ended, Lamorne Morris went on to star in the hit sitcom on Fox called New Girl as Winston Bishop. In conclusion, BrainRush is a good game show where contestants can win a lot of money giving correct answers while riding on roller coasters, and it probably would’ve lasted longer had it been made for, and aired on, a channel other than Cartoon Network. That’s not to say, though, that Cartoon Network can’t have any original game shows of their own. It would’ve been fine if all the game shows made for Cartoon Network mainly focus on, you know, cartoons, since that’s the name of the channel, and cartoons are what the channel is best-known for. At least, that’s what people who watch this channel strongly believe. Live-action shows were added to the channel, all in a block dedicated to those shows, and that just defeats the purpose of the channel. Now, moving on. As you know, this is the first year finale of Game Show Corner as a monthly series. I’ll tell you, doing this on a monthly basis has been more convenient for me than doing it on a weekly basis. With me doing this on a monthly basis, not only did I have more time to get these editions prepared, by I also did get to use some time to do other things that I like to do. So, I’ll keep going at this pace when I start year seven this fall. Also, I have a spin-off series that will begin in October. It’s called Game Show Graveyard, and it will be about game shows that never made past the pilot stage. I’ll be working on editions for both series during the summer, and they’ll be ready for release when the time comes. And until the time comes, go have some fun. Enjoy your summer, but don’t get carried away. There’s still the coronavirus, so be careful, guys. Do all you must to keep yourselves and others safe. I know I will. So, that does it for this month's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great summer.
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