The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: danderson on August 16, 2019, 08:45:58 PM
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In canceling "Match Game" in 1969 for the soap "Somerset"? I know, i'm forgetting "Letters to Laugh-In" but...to me NBC really wanted to spin off the characters Sam and Lahoma Lucas, and Missy Matthews, from "Another World," and move them to a town about an hour's drive from Bay City, and in order to do so, canceled "MG" rather than lose "Bright Promise."
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In canceling "Match Game" in 1969 for the soap "Somerset"? I know, i'm forgetting "Letters to Laugh-In" but...to me NBC really wanted to spin off the characters Sam and Lahoma Lucas, and Missy Matthews, from "Another World," and move them to a town about an hour's drive from Bay City, and in order to do so, canceled "MG" rather than lose "Bright Promise."
Or did NBC do everyone, especially CBS, a favor by cancelling "The Match Game" because, without the cooling-off period for what had become a rather stale format at that point, the 1973 revival would have never happened...
In 1969, game shows in general were dead men walking..."Somerset" or not, the days were numbered for "The Match Game"...
JakeT
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Btw, why are you suggesting "The Match Game" was cancelled for "Somerset"?
"The Match Game" ended in September, 1969..."Somerset" didn't premiere until March, 1970...
In fact, wasn't "Bright Promise" MG's replacement, not "Somerset"?
JakeT
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I thought "Bright Promise" replaced "You Don't Say"?
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It did.
As for The Match Game, it was replaced by Letters To Laugh-In, then Namedroppers (moving from 12:30), then Somerset.
(Source: Game Shows '75 (https://web.archive.org/web/20160330065904/http://www.curtalliaume.com/nbc_day.html), via Internet Archive.)
In 1969, game shows in general were dead men walking...
Eh? 1969 saw NBC debut Sale of the Century, The Who What or Where Game, and (through syndication) It's Your Bet, all of which had long runs.
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In canceling "Match Game" in 1969 for the soap "Somerset"? I know, i'm forgetting "Letters to Laugh-In" but...to me NBC really wanted to spin off the characters Sam and Lahoma Lucas, and Missy Matthews, from "Another World," and move them to a town about an hour's drive from Bay City, and in order to do so, canceled "MG" rather than lose "Bright Promise."
Or did NBC do everyone, especially CBS, a favor by cancelling "The Match Game" because, without the cooling-off period for what had become a rather stale format at that point, the 1973 revival would have never happened...
In 1969, game shows in general were dead men walking..."Somerset" or not, the days were numbered for "The Match Game"...
JakeT
One of the reasons why MG was canceled, at least in part, was due to the popularity of "Dark Shadows," which it competed against at 4:00/3:00 CT. If anything, "Somerset" finally did in "DS" and ABC replaced it with- you guess it, "Password", which did cause ratings damage to "Somerset." Also, "Dark Shadows" was gaining in clearances at ABC-a lot of stations were realizing that DS was a big hit.
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Forgive my lack of knowledge on what was in which time slot (my recollection for that stuff is fuzzy at best)...I just knew that "Somerset" came months after the cancellation of TMG so I knew it wasn't the reason for its demise...
JakeT
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I'd always heard that DS did itself in, with the "Leviathan" plot in 1970, and the "1841 Parallel Time" story from the last two-months-and-change in 1971.
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I'd always heard that DS did itself in, with the "Leviathan" plot in 1970, and the "1841 Parallel Time" story from the last two-months-and-change in 1971.
I've heard the same thing. The 1897 storyline was what sent the ratings high; and to try to continue that high, they followed it up with the Leviathan storyline to which the ratings fell and never recovered.
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You could argue that a better question would be did NBC make a mistake cancelling Password Plus, Blockbusters, and Battlestars to try to save The Doctors and Texas? Both soaps were seriously flagging in the ratings by 1982 and the 3 games were holding their own by NBC standards. They did revive all 3 over the following years, to mixed results.
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YDS became quite popular, ranking among the top three game shows for five straight years, including #1 in the 1966-67 season. I believe that Another World(soap) was also popular, because my grandmom used to watch both back-to-back then. It amazes me then, that she watched Days of Our Lives, The Doctors, Another World, and You Don't Say in that order.
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At first, the two soaps were referred to as "Another World (in Bay City,)" and "Another World (in Somerset.)" Eventually, the latter was titled simply "Somerset."
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In 1969, game shows in general were dead men walking...
Eh? 1969 saw NBC debut Sale of the Century, The Who What or Where Game, and (through syndication) It's Your Bet, all of which had long runs.
During that same period of time, though, CBS had completely left the game show field, ABC cut its game show commitments in daytime down to the Deal/Dating/Newlywed trifecta and was starting to curtail its airing of prime-time game shows, and even NBC (which had been more committed to daytime game shows than the other two networks) went between the summers of 1969 and 1970 from airing nine game shows in daytime to five. The fact that a couple of the shows NBC did pick up ran for a while doesn't mean that the genre wasn't in trouble.
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You could argue that a better question would be did NBC make a mistake cancelling Password Plus, Blockbusters, and Battlestars to try to save The Doctors and Texas? Both soaps were seriously flagging in the ratings by 1982 and the 3 games were holding their own by NBC standards. They did revive all 3 over the following years, to mixed results.
I'd say they did, The Doctors and Texas did just as poorly as the game shows did. That gave NBC an idea: bring back game shows in the morning. That worked out fine in the end, didn't it? Over time, The Doctors was replaced by Sale of The Century, and Texas was replaced by Wheel(moving back to 11am) and Scrabble, both with long runs
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But would some have said NBC made a big mistake in 1968 when they let Monty Hall and Let's Make a Deal jump to ABC, which made them a better offer that included a guaranteed primetime run (1969-71)?
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That's the one that broke the camel's back, per see. Because ABC was able to then get All My Children which became one of their most successful soaps. And they had the advantage of being the only network to program 1:00EST/12:00CST at that time.
The Doctors spelled the end of Art Linkletter, much like Days of Our Lives would spell the end of Password.
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The Doctors spelled the end of Art Linkletter, much like Days of Our Lives would spell the end of Password.
I always thought The Newlywed Game finished off Password.
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I know I had read that too. Password got preempted for the news but for some reason NG was not preempted. So, NG got more exposure that day and gained new viewers.
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You could argue that a better question would be did NBC make a mistake cancelling Password Plus, Blockbusters, and Battlestars to try to save The Doctors and Texas? Both soaps were seriously flagging in the ratings by 1982 and the 3 games were holding their own by NBC standards. They did revive all 3 over the following years, to mixed results.
Wasn't P+ cancelled to open a slot for Search For Tomorrow? I don't think The Doctors was a priority for NBC once they moved it from the 2 PM hour to the 12 PM hour.
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Wasn't P+ cancelled to open a slot for Search For Tomorrow? I don't think The Doctors was a priority for NBC once they moved it from the 2 PM hour to the 12 PM hour.
Yep! P+ at that point had been airing at noon; when SFT moved over to NBC, it moved to the 12:30 slot it wanted that CBS wouldn't give back (formerly occupied by The Doctors), with The Doctors moving to noon where it died by the end of the year.
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You could argue that a better question would be did NBC make a mistake cancelling Password Plus, Blockbusters, and Battlestars to try to save The Doctors and Texas? Both soaps were seriously flagging in the ratings by 1982 and the 3 games were holding their own by NBC standards. They did revive all 3 over the following years, to mixed results.
The Doctors was getting a 1.6 in the ratings in 1982. That was very poor. With local news preempting in many markets, that would be expected. Texas was getting a 2.7. I wonder how Password Plus's ratings were in comparison to The Doctors.
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P+ had a 3.7/14 from Jan-Mar 1982 (its last 3 months on the air) at noon, The Doctors had 3.6/13 at 12:30.
Oct-Dec 1982 at noon The Doctors had 1.6/7 ratings.
I would say that NBC was highly motivated - CBS and ABC were neck-and-neck for first place in daytime, and NBC had 1/2 (or less) the audience of either.
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NBC was having a hard time in 80 anyway. About the only thing worth watching then was Wheel and the overlong Another World (which was 90 minutes at the time, because NBC couldn't find anything better to put on -- by their own admission!) and maybe Little House on The Prairie.
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I know I had read that too. Password got preempted for the news but for some reason NG was not preempted. So, NG got more exposure that day and gained new viewers.
Once Password left CBS, it went into syndication for a year or so (don't recall whether these were new shows or reruns), and at the start of 1969, the format at least was revived during the last three months of NBC's Snap Judgment, so it was only gone between April 1969 and 1971 when ABC brought it back.
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Once Password left CBS, it went into syndication for a year or so (don't recall whether these were new shows or reruns)
The latter, I believe. Didn't the success in syndication more or less lead to the ABC revival?
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Once Password left CBS, it went into syndication for a year or so (don't recall whether these were new shows or reruns),
The syndicated episodes were definitely reruns of earlier CBS daytime episodes...
JakeT
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You could argue that a better question would be did NBC make a mistake cancelling Password Plus, Blockbusters, and Battlestars to try to save The Doctors and Texas? Both soaps were seriously flagging in the ratings by 1982 and the 3 games were holding their own by NBC standards. They did revive all 3 over the following years, to mixed results.
If i was doing a mock schedule, i'd drop Texas, and keep The Doctors and Blockbusters. Now where does The Doctors go, without the noon news issue? Keep it at 12:30, or maybe move it to 11am? As far as BB, i'd keep it at 10:30 or pair it with The Doctors.( i know; putting a soap and a game back to back would be interesting scheduling by NBC, if it ever came to that). But if NBC is trying to save The Doctors, you really cant do it opposite the TPIR juggernaut.
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NBC was having a hard time in 80 anyway.
It didn't help any that it put quite a number of eggs in its 1980 Summer Olympics basket, only for President Carter to step on the eggs.
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And the remainder in the Letterman basket, which were pretty scrambled.
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As much as I love The Doctors (been watching the reruns on RetroTV), I'm not sure it could saved in any time slot by that point. They'd gone through producers and head writers in the last couple of years like some people change socks and had had some really outlandish storylines. Even bringing back one of their most popular characters (Elizabeth Hubbard as Dr. Althea Davis) didn't help.
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Hollywood Squares had the same issues where NBC shifted Squares to 10:30 in October 1976 to do battle with The Price Is Right. That battle was conceded two years later when Squares was shifted again to 1 p.m. (4 p.m. in some markets), and then back to 12:30 in 1979. Maybe NBC could have kept it at 11:30, till maybe 1979.
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Dan, has it occurred to you at any point that maybe this discussion is already over and you don't need to add to it?