The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: SuperMatch93 on July 21, 2021, 07:48:32 AM
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If you could attend a taping of any game show, past or present, which would you pick?
For me it's a toss-up between Cullen Price (particularly when they were at the 1,000+ seat Colonial Theater) and 70s Pyramid because the audiences seemed so energetic in episodes I've seen. Or What's My Line to experience a Johnny Olson warm-up.
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It would be Dawson Feud and Perry Card Sharks.
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It would absolutely be Garry Moore’s I’ve Got a Secret. It just seemed like everyone had a blast. The panel was hilarious. Garry was hilarious.
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I'da loved to have been in the audience for Stempel/Van Doren.
Actually, now that I think of it, I'm surprised there haven't been at least a couple first-person accounts like "I Saw Charles Van Doren 'Defeat' Herb Stempel, And I Knew Something Wasn't Right" in Salon or Vox or Buzzfeed or something. (Or if there have been such stories, I'd love to see them.)
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The original Press Your Luck (but I could go for the current revival as well), $ale of the Century, or Jeopardy!. :D
Being at a PYL taping feels electric, like a big football or baseball game, IMO.
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I guess TPIR is the obvious answer to me, since you could in normal circumstances end up on stage. Aside from that, I really wanted to see Jeopardy when I was in the LA area in March 2020 but we know how that went. For something further back, the energy of Name that Tune, Treasure Hunt, or PYL would have been a lot of fun,
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I'da loved to have been in the audience for Stempel/Van Doren.
If we're allowed to choose specific episodes, I've always wondered what the energy in the room was like during Michael Larson's Press Your Luck run. Not only as his total kept growing larger, but also during the stopdown when they had to change the tape as well as after the episode ended and it was time for everybody to leave.
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I'd pick 3 - a couple from left field I'd guess. Fandango, Face the Music, and Dawson's Family Feud.
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I'd definitely hit up the more now-obscure games of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. I'd also love to stop in on CBS Television Quiz, if only for the novelty.
For specific episodes, two big ones for me would be the New Price Is Right pilot (August 15, 1972) and the first Wheel of Fortune.
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I'da loved to have been in the audience for Stempel/Van Doren.
If we're allowed to choose specific episodes, I've always wondered what the energy in the room was like during Michael Larson's Press Your Luck run. Not only as his total kept growing larger, but also during the stopdown when they had to change the tape as well as after the episode ended and it was time for everybody to leave.
Believe it or not, they actually taped another episode shortly after Larson! But yeah, I think I would've been exhausted just being in the audience for that taping, much less being part of the production crew.
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Having been witness to five different tapings between 1984 and 2006. I'll just go by the decades prior to.....
1950's: Music Bingo
1960's: either Video Village or What's This Song
1970's: either Gambit or The Big Showdown
Cordially,
Tammy
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I'm not too picky, but any 70's Bill Cullen-hosted show that had Don Pardo announcing -- so likely a show at 30 Rockefeller Center to see two of the best.
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70s Pyramid. That NYC audience was electrified.
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It would have to be Perry's Card Sharks and the current PYL w/ Elizabeth Banks.
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For me, classic PYL (either the Larson game, or the Randy/Lori/Cathy episode, just to see how much of that one hit the cutting room floor).
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Believe it or not, they actually taped another episode shortly after Larson!
While I know the odds of having two savants in a row were slim, I'm surprised they would have risked taping another episode before tweaking the board.
To answer the question posed in this thread, I would have loved to have seen some Clark Pyramid episodes in person. The 1980s era of the show still ranks up there as one of my all-time favorites.
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Believe it or not, they actually taped another episode shortly after Larson!
While I know the odds of having two savants in a row were slim, I'm surprised they would have risked taping another episode before tweaking the board.
They taped 5 more shows the following day (as normal), THEN they went and tweaked the board with 5 different patterns and a slightly slower speed. CBS/Carruthers actually didn't overhaul the programming until 13 more weeks had passed, presumably to see if the ratings would hold up before spending the money to completely reconfigure the board.
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They taped 5 more shows the following day (as normal), THEN they went and tweaked the board with 5 different patterns and a slightly slower speed. CBS/Carruthers actually didn't overhaul the programming until 13 more weeks had passed, presumably to see if the ratings would hold up before spending the money to completely reconfigure the board.
I hadn't heard that before. Were they thinking they might be cancelled?
Just to give a timeline on the board patterns:
--Larson aired 6/8 and 6/11/84
--New slower patterns started 6/20/84
--Another group of 5, faster patterns started 7/31/84
--overhauled group of 30-odd patterns started 9/17/84, start of show's second year
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Two quickly come to mind - Keep Talking and Seven Keys.
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70s Pyramid. That NYC audience was electrified.
Agree 100%
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As I am partial to cozy looking sets, and also partial to Three on a Match, I would choose that show or Barry's "The Joker's Wild" from the CBS days.
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Not a great series by any means...but I would select The Diamond Head Game. I could cross Hawaii off the "All 50 States" list and simultaneously attend a game show taping.
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Every New York show of the 70s
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Dotto. To be a fly on the wall when Edward Hilgemeier confronted producer Ed Jurist upon discovering that Marie Winn had been fed answers.
Seven Keys
One of my favorite shows at age 8. I would love to have seen how the game board was controlled. There were a lot of slides to be made up and loaded into the board.
They spent a lot of air time describing prizes. Love the music cue when they turn the drum for the home-viewer game.
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A couple more:
-TPiR anywhere from the late-70s to the early-90s. That's not me being a fanboy or anything...it just seemed like the show had hit its stride by that point.
-MG from about 1975 to whenever Richard left.
I'd also like to add Marvin Shinkman's fifth episode of Split Second. Tom mentions Marvin got a standing ovation for his comeback, but the audience's reaction to him winning sounded like they'd just seen him score the game-winning TD in the Super Bowl.
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I hadn't heard that before. Were they thinking they might be cancelled?
To be clear, this is mainly my belief, but I figure since PYL wasn't a major hit, it wouldn't have taken much for the ratings to slip enough for them to just simply decide to end it. So CBS's finance dept. thought it would be best to just wait and see.
Just to give a timeline on the board patterns:
--New slower patterns started 6/20/84
--Another group of 5, faster patterns started 7/31/84
--overhauled group of 30-odd patterns started 9/17/84, start of show's second year
Exactly 63 shows later.
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Seven Keys was as loaded up with home game prizes as TPIR was. Figure the fee plugs must have really brought in the cash. Also enjoyed the prize description melody - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4fY636CFyc.
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A couple more:
-TPiR anywhere from the late-70s to the early-90s. That's not me being a fanboy or anything...it just seemed like the show had hit its stride by that point.
For the sheer experience of being in the audience, I'd narrow it down to the first two years of the hour format. I went on a binge a while back and I don't know what it was about that specific two years, but the audience is absolutely AMPED for the entire hour, and the roof comes off the studio for a thousand-dollar win on the wheel.
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A couple more:
-TPiR anywhere from the late-70s to the early-90s. That's not me being a fanboy or anything...it just seemed like the show had hit its stride by that point.
For the sheer experience of being in the audience, I'd narrow it down to the first two years of the hour format. I went on a binge a while back and I don't know what it was about that specific two years, but the audience is absolutely AMPED for the entire hour, and the roof comes off the studio for a thousand-dollar win on the wheel.
One thing I love from the Pluto episodes is how relatively quiet it is during a spin. Bob’s making small talk, but as it gets closer to $1.00 the audience gradually gets more and more excited.
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Seven Keys theme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knti87KeD4I (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knti87KeD4I)
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For a specific episode, I would've liked to be in the audience for the final episode of Rhyme & Reason.
With Pat Harrington & Charlie Brill allegedly heading up the set "break-down" committee, it sounded like much of the audience could have taken home a piece of the set!
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I've been fortunate to see about two dozen shows in person between living in NYC and going to L.A. in CA. So I'll pick shows I never saw in person. Dawson Feud, Ludden PP, Kennedy NTT. Back to before I was on Earth, I'll pick the classic G-T shows WML, IGAS and BTC. A present day show I would go to see is PYL with E. Banks. I've seen Strahan Pyramid and Baldwin MG since they tape in NYC.
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Oh, so many. But maybe the first taping of ABC Password?
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They taped 5 more shows the following day (as normal), THEN they went and tweaked the board with 5 different patterns and a slightly slower speed. CBS/Carruthers actually didn't overhaul the programming until 13 more weeks had passed, presumably to see if the ratings would hold up before spending the money to completely reconfigure the board.
I wonder whether the time required to design and make the changes to the electronics might have been a factor as well, so they waited for a time when there would be a longer than normal break at the end of the "season." I'm assuming from the presence of fixed patterns that everything was hard-wired rather than being driven by any kind of integrated circuit, so sextupling the number of patterns would have required replacing that entire part of the circuitry.
(Now this topic has me wondering about the internals of how the software that drives the 2019-present board determines what order to bounce around the board, and what level of complexity the system that drove the score displays had. Younger me, watching a few years later, assumed that it was doing the addition for them because it was too fast to be someone entering the result after calculating it, but older me thinks that's a big ask for a one-off custom electronics job.)
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1) The Downs / Clayton Concentration.
2) The original (NBC) Match Game.
3) The Cullen Price Is Right.
I would’ve had a field day at 30 Rock when I was a kid!
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As a Barkerphile, I'd settle for either Truth or Consequences or The Price Is Right during his tenure, though for Price I'd prefer the first decade or so of hour shows.
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My 8 year-old self would say Nick Arcade since the only time I was able to visit Nickelodeon Studios was just after their 1st season wrapped (the only set piece visible on the tour was the yellow and orange lightning floor graphics).
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The Downs / Clayton Concentration or Perry SOTC.
TJW(either Barry or Finn).
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The aforementioned Dotto episode. Would also be curious to be in the audience for The $64,000 Question to see how the audience excitement level compares with that of WWTBAM.
And two vaguely remembered shows from my childhood:
Make a Face (Bob Clayton's first hosting job)
Alumni Fun
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I would like attend the daytime $ale of the Century during the shopping endgame. I wanted to experience the atmosphere of seeing someone staying for more than five days, going for a six digit payoff, and taking HUGE risks to go for the payoff. I think what made $ale of the Century so different is that it was the first game show in daytime to have a episodes long story arc. There was long championship reigns for contestants in the past but there was never the added danger of losing it all (except for the original $ale of the Century but it wasn't as life changing as the 80s version was). In terms of producing compelling story arcs, NBC was the network for them in prime time and daytime game shows.
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A show I would have liked to see was either version of (The New) Treasure Hunt. Perhaps one episode in the audience and one episode behind the scenes.
Would have been fun to see how they scurried to set up the correct props and prizes/klunks once the contestant chose box number.
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I can attend a taping of the original series of "Concentration"? Okay, Devil here's my soul!