The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: SamJ93 on October 23, 2022, 05:31:50 AM
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Whether it's a show you thought would fizzle that wound up becoming a hit or vice versa, we've all had takes on game shows that ended up being completely wrong. What are yours?
I for one believed that TPiR would last just a few more seasons after Bob left. It's crazy to realize that Drew has now been hosting for nearly half as long as he did.
I also once thought that, for all the flak he got, Mike Richards would do a decent job as J!/WoF producer, especially considering that he was starting out under some pretty difficult circumstances. I clearly have a blindspot for manipulative people.
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I also once thought that, for all the flak he got, Mike Richards would do a decent job as J!/WoF producer, especially considering that he was starting out under some pretty difficult circumstances. I clearly have a blindspot for manipulative people.
He's a good producer from the perspective of teh show and a passable host. He's just awful in other ways that got him kicked to the curb.
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I for one believed that TPiR would last just a few more seasons after Bob left. It's crazy to realize that Drew has now been hosting for nearly half as long as he did.
I think if Roger had remained producer, it likely would've ended.
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I actually thought Temptation was a solid revival with a bright future during the first couple weeks. That same season I also thought Merv Griffin's Crosswords was on its way to being another classic for Merv's company...
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I thought that Richard Karn would spell the death knell for Family Feud, as the late Louie Anderson did.
I also thought that the removal of the winnings limit from Jeopardy would backfire and it really didn’t.
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Shortly after James Holzhauer finished his initial run on Jeopardy, someone immediately suggested a grudge match between him, Ken, and Brad. Since the All-Star tournament had just happened, I said this was a bad idea. Of course the GOAT Tournament wound up being one of the highlights of the show's history.
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My iPad wallpaper is a J! clue about the final play of SB 49, so I’m willing to give people a wide berth in terms of “I thought it had legs!” or thinking LMAD is awful with Wayne Brady starting at host and it is creeping up on a 15th anniversary.
This is a long way to say stakes are low for average casual viewers, and that’s fine by me.
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I really thought the YouTube Clip making era of Family Feud wouldn't last more than a few years, but Steve has been hosting for nearly 12 years now and that's schlonger than I expected.
I really thought modern audiences wouldn't care for Pyramid (so many one or two season reboots), but it's been running for 6 years now.
I thought for sure that the Millionaire reboot would do well enough for a third season. Maybe COVID and celebrities killed it, but it's been interesting to see international reboots spread like wildfire and the US reboot just whimper.
Ditto on Drew and Price.
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I thought for sure that the Millionaire reboot would do well enough for a third season. Maybe COVID and celebrities killed it, but it's been interesting to see international reboots spread like wildfire and the US reboot just whimper.
Same with the other ABC reboots that met their end within the past year--CS, MG, Supermarket Sweep. None of them exactly set the world on fire--and in MG's case, TPTB would have had to find a new host--but in terms of cheap-to-produce schedule-filler, I thought they had legs for at least one more season.
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Thought The Final Straw would be
a good concept. It worked on the Illinois Lottery Show.
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Back in 2009 (holy f*****' s***), on this very forum, (http://www.gameshowforum.org/index.php/topic,18602.msg223814.html#msg223814) I gave a lukewarm-at-best raspberry to The Cube S01E01, declaring it "not appointment viewing."
Rarely have I been so wrong. I'll hang up on myself now.
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I thought Rafferty's Blockbusters would be around longer than it was. It lasted 17 weeks.
Same with Chuck Henry's Now You See It. I thought the revised scoring and the computer graphics made the game better.
I'm a little surprised that Drew has stayed with TPIR as long as he has, considering he turned the job down when it was first offered to him. But no doubt CBS is happy they don't have to do auditions for a new host.
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I watched the first episode of Millionaire, and said, “Well, that’ll never last.”
(Not too long after, though, my reaction to the first episode of “Survivor” was, “This is not for me, but it’ll probably be a hit.”)
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I thought Deal or No Deal was only going to be a one-time curiosity (I actually posted here that I thought it would only get 5 episodes) since I didn't see much substance to the game...little did I know the show would get years on NBC and in syndication!
My biggest one was that Drew would only do Price for maybe 1-3 years and then either get bored and want to go back into comedy or do another sitcom, so the fact that he's still doing it after 15+ years is pretty impressive.
And, lastly, a more recent one: I thought the ABC revival of PYL, even though PYL is my favorite game show, would only get maybe 1-2 seasons at best because the nostalgia factor would wear off after a few weeks. Yet, it's still going strong and is one of the top game show performers for ABC.
Anthony
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I was on the "LeVar for Jeopardy" train for a long while...until actually seeing him host it.
Much further back, I thought I'd really dislike George Gray taking on Weakest Link. I greatly enjoyed his version much more than Anne's, and still think it's superior.
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I was on the "LeVar for Jeopardy" train for a long while...until actually seeing him host it.
Much further back, I thought I'd really dislike George Gray taking on Weakest Link. I greatly enjoyed his version much more than Anne's, and still think it's superior.
I think Extreme Gong gave a lot of us the wrong impression of George. I much preferred the daytime version over the one on NBC, and George was a huge reason. I enjoy him on TPiR but I do wish he’d get another hosting job on the side as well.
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"Nobody's ever gonna bother uploading whole episodes of game shows to YouTube."
/hey, when I'm wrong, I'm wrong big
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"Too many ownership issues for MG/HS to ever see the light of day in reruns."
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In the summer of 2008, I thought Wanna Bet was destined for a long run, and the "watered down Ninja Warrior ripoff" Wipeout would die a quick death.
Failed miserably on both counts. 😝
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As I mentioned years before, I thought the original Card Sharks would be another of NBC daytime's "13-week wonders;" I was glad to have been proven wrong.
I also believed the 1984 Name That Tune would be a blockbuster and the current Jeopardy would crash after one year. Turned out to be the other way around in both cases.
More of my case studies:
I thought "Who would watch a show titled Win Ben Stein's Money?"
I felt Second Honeymoon was destined to be a smash and MTV's Remote Control would "Bomb-A-Mundo." (Guess it's just me.)
Cordially,
Tammy
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The success of the show has nothing to do with me feeling this aged badly, but....
"The Richard Dawson comeback season of Feud was an abomination..."
Sure they cut back a lot within the show, the Bullseye/Bankroll still took up time, I missed the classic set, and well, the start of the downward spiral of Ray Combs. But it was more solid than I remembered it being. Richard wasn't in his prime, but I still liked his work and was glad he got to return to TV in his more mellowed out form, after leaving the original show amidst stories of ego and being a nightmare backstage. The jazzy theme worked for an updated/nighttime FF, and would probably fit in with the current version better.
On the same token I can say the same about Davidson PIR...yes it was a different format and different looking show, but quite nice for what it was too.
Oh! Seeing as I was partially responsible for the nickname...
"The time without most of the Goodson-Todman shows was GSN's 'dark period'..."
No. We now see we could and did have it a lot worse. Late 1997-98 at least gave us several Sony-owned shows we otherwise wouldn't see, and indeed in many cases have not for long time. Was it perfect? Nope, but given the circumstances I can say it worked.
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I was on the "LeVar for Jeopardy" train for a long while...until actually seeing him host it.
Much further back, I thought I'd really dislike George Gray taking on Weakest Link. I greatly enjoyed his version much more than Anne's, and still think it's superior.
You know, originally I thought of George Gray as being a flash in the pan after seeing his performance in Extreme Gong (and if you really want to see him before he was famous, YouTube up the movie "Dish Dogs"), but he redeemed himself on The Weakest Link, and he does a darn good job as the TPIR announcer.
I'd love to see George HOST a TPIR Live show or another game show down the road.
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Oh! Seeing as I was partially responsible for the nickname...
"The time without most of the Goodson-Todman shows was GSN's 'dark period'..."
No. We now see we could and did have it a lot worse. Late 1997-98 at least gave us several Sony-owned shows we otherwise wouldn't see, and indeed in many cases have not for long time. Was it perfect? Nope, but given the circumstances I can say it worked.
Certainly with hindsight the "Dark Period" was helpful in giving us the one complete pass at "Go!", plus what we got "Break The Bank" and most of 20K Pyramid for 1978. The sense of Darkness was if the Goodson library had disappeared from us forever before a lot of us, who'd taken it for granted, had a chance to get the whole runs of the classic shows preserved. Obviously our faith was rewarded on that point eventually and I am grateful for the fact that most of us did have the sense to tape the goodies that were unique to the "Dark Period" in full pretty much.
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I guess mine would be that networks kept copies of everything they ever aired in their warehouses, and that copies of every game show ever aired existed in those storage areas. This was quite a long time ago. At the time I never thought about the logistics of it, like how much space it would take. I just assumed that networks would want to keep copies of everything for historical purposes.
Needless to say, once I started finding out how much was gone and that we'd never see again, I was really shocked.
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I thought that following the name change to GSN they would end up mutating into a whole other network at some point ala TLC. Glad to have been wrong there.
Every few years since the mid 2000s I’ve said “there’s no way that Pat and Vanna renew this time”. Oh well. Guess I’ll be a broken clock on this one.
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Family Feud i thought the show would've been done when John O'hurley left.
The Price is Right i thought no matter who hosted the show the show was going to end after a few seasons. Drew in the beginning look like he was bored with the show. I think when Roger left and George became announcer it gave Drew more freedom to be Drew.
Bill Rafferty version of Card Sharks would be around longer than it was. I thought he did a better job hosting the show then Bob Eubanks.
I wasn't surprised Millionaire Reboot was short lived. I thought Kimmel wasn't the right fit to host the show and i wish the show returned to its roots with fastest finger and civilian contestants.
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I actually thought Temptation was a solid revival with a bright future during the first couple weeks. That same season I also thought Merv Griffin's Crosswords was on its way to being another classic for Merv's company...
I thought Rossi wasn't a bad host. I wasn't a fan of the format change they should've used the Australian format and the QVC segment didn't help.
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Rossi was a good host for Temptation. The problem was that there wasn't a lot to the game.
I could deal with the shop clock thing (I actually liked that), and the Fame Game format didn't really bother me. The problem was the structure of the show was not particularly good. Overly relying on speed rounds was a big distraction and of course the home shopping element was a stupid idea.
Back to topic, I also thought ESPN Trivial Pursuit was a worthwhile effort.
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Rossi was a decent host and I wouldn’t mind seeing him get another show. I think he’d fit in well on GSN. The show itself completely neutered what made the show work with Jim Perry and overseas.
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When I first saw the promos, I thought The Masked Singer would flop and be regarded as a colossal failure for FOX.