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Match Game 7x - did it naturally run its course?
calliaume:
The question content, which seemed so racy in 1974, had become old hat by 1978. (As Anne Beatts of the original Saturday Night Live said of that show, you can only be avant-garde for so long before you become garde.) The silliness between the stars and the content covered a really weak format.
The odd thing I've seen is many histories claim every question was salacious (one claimed every answer was either "boobs" or "tinkle"). There was usually one racy question per show on the CBS version; the daily syndicated version cut back on that, and there were rarely any racy questions on MG-HS.
As noted, Dawson's departure, the time shifts (4 PM was a terrible time slot because different parts of the country saw the show at different times), and general boredom contributed to the show's cancellation. And while 5-3/4 years doesn't seem like that long a run in the context of today's daytime warhorses, it's actually the fourth-longest game show run in CBS's history (behind The Price Is Right, Let's Make a Deal, and Password).
BrandonFG:
I think it's a little of everything mentioned above. Like Curt said, by 1978 TV wasn't as risque as it was a few years prior. It was still things you couldn't say that you can now, but "boobs" or "tinkle" was not as big of a deal.
To me, it's similar to some of Norman Lear's sitcoms. Shows like All in the Family and Good Times were groundbreaking and controversial in 1974. By the end of the decade, they were regular sitcoms with generic plot lines. The social commentary had subsided by that point.
Add to that the panel's chemistry wasn't as strong, and you have a show that became long in the tooth. Bill Daily and McLean Stevenson were suitable replacements for Richard, but it just wasn't the same.
chris319:
--- Quote ---Goodson loved to pad some of his shows in order to stretch his prize budget
--- End quote ---
No he didn't. The prize money was inconsequential. FWIW, the winnings on P+ were remarkably level at $22,000 per "week" (group of five shows).
When MG left CBS they started editing the think time. Ira would be on stage and time the think time for every question on his Seiko wristwatch which had a stopwatch function. They then adjusted the show's running time so it wouldn't come up short when the writing time was edited. This was done to pick up the pace of the show.
In 1980 Ira got a call from Jerry Chester. Jerry said he didn't think he could sell another year of syndicated MG as is, and what could be done about it? Some ideas were tossed around but nothing stuck.
Goodson had written a memo predicting the demise of MG. He didn't like a show he had seen somewhere. Maybe it was too "zany" for him. Who knows? He singled out Rayburn. I know I got tired of seeing Brett when she was totally wasted.
I don't know why they persisted in booking McLean Stevenson. He was usually in seat 5 and would milk his time on camera, running off at the mouth and not being funny. Arte Johnson and Richard Paul were much better in that seat. Gary Burghoff also added a lot.
On 1970's MG the civilian contestants were pretty staid and reserved. On the Fremantle version, the civilian contestants are just awful. They have "unemployed actor/waiter desperate for attention" written all over them. The are unnaturally "up" and it cmes across as way too forced. It's hard to like contestants like that. The problem is, their "up" attitude competes with the panel. The whole thing is just too giddy, like an overdose of sugar.
Eric Paddon:
McLean Stevenson was simply not that funny IMO. I really found it odd how he would try to basically assume the old Richard role of mocking contestants bad answers by referring to the "dumb-off" but the problem is that he wasn't that great a game player himself. Dawson could do it because he was always razor-sharp with the perfect answer in a round so if he knocked a bad answer, it was funny because he had underlying credibility.
It was also evident how they were trying to be cheap on the budget by (1) not giving a contestant $100 for winning a game and (2) there are a LOT of strike-outs at the audience match because they started getting tougher and more esoteric so there is a much higher percentage of games where there's no head-to-head match as opposed to the CBS years.
jjman920:
--- Quote from: chris319 on May 11, 2021, 02:02:20 AM ---
--- Quote ---Goodson loved to pad some of his shows in order to stretch his prize budget
--- End quote ---
No he didn't. The prize money was inconsequential. FWIW, the winnings on P+ were remarkably level at $22,000 per "week" (group of five shows).
--- End quote ---
Super Password could've fooled me. Compared to P+, the show felt like watching peanut butter pour out of the jar.
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