The Game Show Forum > The Big Board
Have Game Shows Jumped the Shark?
BrandonFG:
[quote name=\'Dan Sadro\' date=\'Oct 21 2003, 07:40 PM\'] I'll agree that there's a lot of crappy game show music out there right now, as well as monotonous sets. But, if we had the exact same conversation thirty years ago, we'd be complaining about the crappy synthesized theme to Concentration, the ugly set to Password, the annoying audience of The Price is Right, the gimmickry of The $10,000 Pyramid, and the format slaughtering of Match Game 73.
History repeats itself, doesn't it?
P.S. (Yes, I know that CS2k1 was terrible, with its single redeeming value of the pyramid of cards endgame -- in theory, it looked better than the old setup.) [/quote]
Interesting points, although I saw a "Bullseye I" clip from the first months of TPiR. When the doors opened to reveal a car, the audience ooh'd and gasped, but didn't half as crazy like they do now.
I also agree with the history repeating itself, as far as themes. But I had a thought...I'm sure Jeopardy! got complaints 20 years ago when they trotted out the synthesized theme, and how it didn't fit with a conventional quiz show.
Dan Sadro:
[quote name=\'chris319\' date=\'Oct 21 2003, 10:20 PM\']
--- Quote ---if we had the exact same conversation thirty years ago, we'd be complaining about the crappy synthesized theme to Concentration, the ugly set to Password, the annoying audience of The Price is Right, the gimmickry of The $10,000 Pyramid, and the format slaughtering of Match Game 73.
--- End quote ---
I was around 30 years ago and never heard any such complaints, other than from people who don't like anything about game shows to begin with. [/quote]
I maybe should have been more clear. Let's go back 30 years in time, just the people heavily involved in ATGS through today, at our current relative ages, experiences, and opinions.
Game shows have changed significantly yet our minor nitpicks about shows wouldn't. If we, as a group, had discussed The Match Game from day one of ATGS (which would have been founded in 1963), and then tuned in on the premiere of Match Game 73, there'd probably be a large number of people complaining that the show is thirteen weeks and gone. We'd be discussing the crappy new-fangled theme to Concentration -- why change the theme when the old one was a classic? And why does every game show have to have an orange-and-red set like Password?
Point is -- we'd just be complaining about the same things about different shows.
(What show were you referring to about the Radio Shack synthesizer bit?)
FeudDude:
I think game shows jumped the shark sometime between 1995 and 2000. One thing that bugs me is the music. Some might say that's just a minor thing, but modern game show music bugs me. Instead of catchy, hummable melodies, most game shows today have music that sounds like it belongs in either a horror movie or a rave. Also, the way music plays practically throughout the entire game rather than just for a few specific cues, is really annoying and it distracts the gameplay. I don't like the sets nowadays either...they're all dark and busy, with lights that could cause seizures, and just rely too much on technology. The graphics are also ridiculously overdone. I just can't help but think that such things make the game shows less fun to watch.
I blame all this on two things. First I blame it on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?". I don't think that WWTBAM in and of itself is terrible, but once every other game show tried to be like it, that was just it. Even "Wheel of Fortune" has become a noisy mess. The only game shows that haven't fallen into this trap are "Jeopardy!" and "The Price Is Right," and even those have gone downhill.
The other thing I blame it on is the fact that all these game shows are owned by big media conglomates like Sony and FremantleMedia. You just can't except this big studios to run shows the way Goodson-Todman, Merv Griffin, Reg Grundy, Barry & Enright, etc. did when they were independent.
And for the record, I'm 18. That's right, I'm in the 18-to-34 crowd and I'm sick of the way these producers try to make the shows appeal to us. That and the fact that "The Price Is Right" has changed very little since the current incarnation debuted in the '70s and is nevertheless viewed heavily by college students, ought to say something.
Speedy G:
Never Jumped.
I think we're just in a real bad lull between good ideas. What was the last really good new game show idea (at least on this side of the Atlantic Ocean)? Millionaire? Russian Roulette? Has there been any good idea since that isn't just reviving an older show? Even Survivor's settled down to its core audience as of late. (No, I'm not interested in opening up THAT can of worms here.)
For every 1 good idea, there are 10 decent ideas that are just missing something, and 50 that just couldn't see the forest for the money trees. One good ideas don't come along every other day.
It's just the way TV is, I think, and this is true for all genres. MG98 and others warmed people up a bit, IMO, for a megahit like Millionaire. We're seeing it again, I think, since most of the syndies are up in ratings, and the perennial megahit TPiR is on the upswing. I don't think it will be long before there will be another game show that really clicks, especially with reality TV cooling off and several marquee sitcoms and dramas going away in the near future.
Sure, practically every show in a studio has the Armageddon lighting these days, but that's not the fault of Millionaire. It's just producers who want to cash in on the mania it caused, without realizing that it's not just the dark lights and the big bucks, it's also the tension and everyman qualities that made Millionaire a hit. Atmosphere means everything to a game show, and Armageddon sets sap the atmosphere right out of most of the shows that try it. Like Pyramid, for starters.
It's not time to lock up, I don't think we're leaving anytime soon. We, just like TV, aren't patient. Do I even need to bring up the TPiR 30th anniversary special from two years ago to remind us how fickle that television, and as a result, its fans are? We all just need to calm down, enjoy what we have right now, and see what happens in the next year or two, when a bunch of marquee shows leave the television landscape.
TheInquisitiveOne:
This is a very good argument that I would like to give my two cents.
Chris the Moderator has made a good list of Jump the Shark candidates for the overall genre of game shows. However, there is one candidate that sorely needs to be stated: commercial time.
I believe that many formats of today's game shows (revived or otherwise) are altered to satisfy the fact that the shows themselves have been choked out due to excessive commercial ads. I have been frequenting jumptheshark.com for the last year and a half, and one post comes to mind whenever I read The Price is Right's thread. It said that of the hour that TPiR is on, only 32 minutes of that hour is devoted to game time. Think about it: Pyramid has the 6 in :20 rule. Before this season, Family Feud had only FOUR ROUNDS, with the last being tripled and no 300-point rule. The $5,000 round on Wheel of Fortune has been, more times than not, the Speed Round. Once, Hollywood Squares had only ONE ROUND of game play. If today's commercial standards were the same as 30 years ago, would any of these instances happen? Would any of these format changes take place?
The FCC should seriously consider this because the quality and charm of today's game shows have been severely compromised. Yes, we are ad driven. At the same time, however, I deserve some decent television!
I do agree with Speedy G's assessment, as well. Television can be fickle as well as cyclical. The (so-called) best sitcoms of the last decade are siging their swan songs, and I believe that it will be difficult to find another heavy hitter that can run as long as (gag) Friends or Frasier. The latest syndie numbers show that the game shows are on the up-and-up while the reality drudge is on the decline. Also, game shows in prime time is not an abnormality. With the success of The Price is Right's 30th Anniversary Special, 12 more primetime specials have cropped up within the last two years, with THREE more to follow. In time, the market will be right for more game shows (original or otherwise) to surface.
While I say that the game show genre has not jumped the shark yet (in fact, I think that it jumped back after the dead period of 1995-1998), the major part of the problem is the ownership of the properties. What was G-T, B&E, H-H, and the golden letters of RG, has become Sony and Fremantle, and the shows themselves suffer.
The Inquisitive One
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