Let\'s play \"What if\".
What if Match Game didn\'t leave its 3:30 p.m. timeslot for 11:00 a.m.? How much longer do you think it would have gone on? Would it have still moved to daily Syndication anyways?
I picked up a bag of Nerds Jellybeans on National Discount Candy Day. (One of those floating holidays; in this case, every year, the Monday after Easter Sunday.) If you\'re the sort of person whose favorite part of the jellybean is the sugar coating, I recommend them.
Guys, I wanna know what do you think might have happened?
$100,000 bar you say? Mmmm. That\'s one of those luxuries I only seem to afford myself around Halloween for some reason, and I don\'t know why \'cuz it\'s one of my favorites as well.
(sigh) Fine. I\'ll bite.
Wasn\'t Family Feud putting a dent in Match Game\'s daytime ratings by 1977? Maybe the show was just losing steam, esp. after Richard left. The post-Richard episodes are still okay, but by 1980, Match Game was just getting long in the tooth. So to answer the question, I don\'t think it would\'ve gone on any longer than any of the syndicated versions did (up until 1982). Difference is, there wouldn\'t have been a syndicated daily run, just MGPM and the CBS version.
There. This really isn\'t an issue that can be speculated with any solid commentary because there\'s nothing pointing to one answer over another.
\"What if\" questions are difficult to answer. TPIR went from morning to afternoon to morning with little harm done. Maybe they thought it would work with MG. When MG moved back to afternoon, a good number of stations didn\'t clear it anymore.
If not then, at least by 1978.Wasn\'t Family Feud putting a dent in Match Game\'s daytime ratings by 1977?
I picked up a bag of Nerds Jellybeans on National Discount Candy Day. (One of those floating holidays; in this case, every year, the Monday after Easter Sunday.)
It floats? I thought it was always on February 15th.
Although, I do see how you can hurt the brand of National Discount Candy Day if you keep moving its timeslot.
some soap opera expanding to an hour probably would have knocked it off anyway, morning or afternoon
What the hell\'s the matter with you people? Are you from Mars or something? $100k bars are 85c at my friendly local, and that gets you two fun sized bits. Hardly a king\'s ransom.
When MG moved back to afternoon, a good number of stations didn\'t clear it anymore.
That\'s true. It moved from 3:30 to 11AM in Nov 1977. When CBS quickly decided it wasn\'t working in that time slot, they moved it back to the afternoons in Dec, but to 4 PM. Many stations aired syndicated programming at that time and tape-delayed the show until the next morning (the 9:30 time slot was a popular one for tape-delayed shows). Since Match Game was a hit with the after-school crowd, this audience was no longer available on those stations. Still, the show ran four and a half more years (a year and a half on CBS, plus three years syndicated).
I\'m not sure they could have got very much more out of it - it kind of ran its course by 1982.
Did they ever recycle or modify questions on the syndicated version?
Yes, they recycled questions quite a bit in the syndie version, something Roger commented was one thing that was killing the show. On the syndie version, one thing they eliminated were the questions leading to the answers \"tinkle\" and \"boobs\". While those types of questions weren\'t THAT frequent, I\'m sure the panel was tired of those sort of questions, much less the audience.
some soap opera expanding to an hour probably would have knocked it off anyway, morning or afternoon
Yes. The 3:30-4:00 timeslot, after MG, was occupied by reruns of \"All in the Family\", then \"M*A*S*H\", then \"One Day at a Time\", until Y&R expanded, then GL filled 3:00-4:00. It\'s possible \"Match Game \'80\" would have kept the slot until then, and then died a slow death after.