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Have Game Shows Jumped the Shark?

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The Ol' Guy:
I'm with you when it comes to the "man vs. machine" concept. A good game board of some sort just adds more attraction. And the less computer-generated, the better! (Classic Concentration = yecch!)

There are some wonderful, thought-provoking replies here. I'm not sure games have gone past their peak - but they have lost some of their charm. Right about the end of the era of NBC daytime shows (Caesar's Challenge) sounds like a good time marker. The overstimulation we get from today's packages is just symptomatic of everything else today. I don't like to be shouted at, but the so-called "experts" say you have to scream to be heard above the clutter...so we're getting either good formats with a little extra slickness, or weak formats that producers hope we won't discover are bad because they're awash in flash and dazzle. Goodson-Todman's shows may have been in a rut, but they had a quality - and that's what I miss. We were treated intelligently. Today's shows just don't feel the same -  but it's a new generation of producers who grew up in an era of sizzle vs. substance, unlike Mark, Jack, and Bob. Class and restraint is the key. When someone strikes the right balance of quality and dazzle (MILLIONAIRE), I'm all for it. Treat me as intelligent, show me some class, and I'll watch.

Dbacksfan12:
[quote name=\'Adam Nedeff\' date=\'Oct 23 2003, 02:15 PM\'] Whammy! are fantastic shows, [/quote]
 Not really.....

That Don Guy:
[quote name=\'Dsmith\' date=\'Oct 21 2003, 07:44 PM\'] I think gameshows "jumped the shark" after NBC cancelled their last daytime effort; I believe Caesar's Challenge.  Then we went through a dead period of gameshows, and when they resurfaced in about 1998; we were left with what we have now. [/quote]
If they've jumped the shark at all, I'd have to agree that the sharp decline of network game shows was its cause - and, in my opinion, this started when networks started to realize that "talk is king".  (Group W learned this almost 20 years ago when San Francisco's CBS affiliate had TPIR pre-empted for at least two years because the station, owned by Group W, had to show the "Group W talk show of the moment", and heaven forbid that any of its soap operas get pre-empted because of it.  Seen the network morning schedules lately?  (Then again, wasn't there a time in the mid-1970s when ABC's national schedule started at 11:30 AM with a Brady Bunch repeat?)

The main reason the loss of network game shows caused the problem: syndicated and cable shows had lower budgets and, as a result, lower prizes.  (Case in point: any Wink Martindale episode of High Rollers, with the "one prize per column" rule.  On the NBC Trebek version, there could be up to five prizes per column - and at least twice, somebody won 15 prizes in a single game.  Also, on the NBC version of JackPot!, jackpots grew a lot faster as all riddle amounts went into the jackpot, even if the riddle was missed.)  Sure, Jeopardy and Wheel pay off reasonably big money (how many other shows are there where there's a chance of somebody winning $100,000 on every show (without having to risk $10,000 first)?), but after that, what's left?

-- Don

trainman:
[quote name=\'Jimmy Owen\' date=\'Oct 24 2003, 10:18 PM\'] Feeding old shows is not unprecedented for NBC though, up until the start of "Last Call," they were showing 15-20 year old reruns of SCTV. [/quote]
 Yep, I closed-captioned some of those.  As far as NBC was concerned, they were new episodes, because they'd never run on NBC in that form; they were the 30-minute syndicated reruns, edited to the extent that the original opening was replaced by a new one, featuring the dulcet tones of Rita Sever: "Tonight, 'Later' presents 'SCTV,' starring..."

starcade:
I think quiz shows have definitely jumped the shark.  I really think that we are in an era where you have to risk a lot to win a lot -- including life, limb, and maybe a lot more...

I mean, it's no longer sufficient to know everything the best -- now it's politics and voting people off and eating squid and drinking sea water, etc. etc. etc.

That's one of the reasons I want WWTBAM back on primetime, but only if it is with the phone game...

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