Budgeting Question on Luck-Based Shows

[calliaume]

There was also way more interaction with Lacey and Susannah on the CBS version than with any of the dealers on the NBC version. Not necessarily as a budget saver; Goodson noticed Wheel’s success with Vanna and probably said, “We can do that.”

Was the pushes-are-ties rule added as a result of having four straight threes in the Money Cards on the Perry version?

[Neumms]

I don't think the commercial load changed. Bob did get more chatty and they added things like the audience polling groups to eat up time.

I’ve also seen that Goodson wanted more comedy than Perry’s version had, along the lines of Bruce’s Play Your Cards Right.

[Adam Nedeff]

Somewhere soon into the run of CS '86, they had more commercials to limit the number of money cards rounds played per episode. The '78 version tried to jam pack the number of questions asked and move the show along. The '86 version ended up being a somewhat slower pace.

If the network added commercials to the show, it would have been something that they would have done anyway regardless of what show was in that time slot. You can easily control the number of times Money Cards is played by how the game is paced. Just tell your host to slow it down, chat with the contestants longer. Chat with the audience poll group longer. Go over the rules more slowly. Build a little suspense before flipping each card.

The perfect example of this: Watch how Bill Cullen paces Blockbusters for about ten episodes after Pat & Liz McCarthy have won $120,000. Bill moves the show really, REALLY slowly to space out the frequency of Gold Run for a while.