The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => Game Show Channels & Networks => Topic started by: tvmitch on June 28, 2023, 11:04:58 AM
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https://cordcuttersnews.com/pluto-tv-will-add-4-new-free-channels-in-july-hundreds-of-free-movies/
Two new channels of interest to us:
Hollywood Squares
Circle gets the square! Across, up and down, or diagonally, contestants try to get three in a row as hilarious celebrities give them the right (or wrong) answers.
More TV Game Shows
More fun, more prizes! There are more game shows and more ways to win than ever, here on More TV Game Shows.
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Since Cbs owns the Bergeron episodes, that would probably be what they are running
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Wow! Naturally the next question will be, which version of Squares is going to get Pluto's endless marathon treatment? Last I checked, I believe Marshall's version is currently owned by Amazon (for they acquired the MGM library sometime back, didn't they?) and the Bergeron version is owned by CBS. Knowing who owns and operates Pluto, my money is on the latter.
EDIT: I totally forgot about the 5th Grader channel whose reruns are owned by MGM (They added the reruns of the 1/2 hour syndicated version recently, too). I'm still going with Bergeron's version, but I won't be disappointed if Pluto surprises us with the zingers of Paul Lynde & friends instead.
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Double wow! I don't even care which version of Squares it is, I liked them all. Very excited to learn what exactly is encompassed in the "More" channel.
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I grew up with Marshall's version so that's what I would like. Bergeron's version is okay. Davidson's version was "gimmicky" but decent.
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Double wow! I don't even care which version of Squares it is, I liked them all. Very excited to learn what exactly is encompassed in the "More" channel.
Well, they might as well call the Pluto Game Shows channel they have right now The Supermarket Sweep Network for it seems like that's all they air. Maybe this "More" channel will consist of a "one from column A, one from column B" hodgepodge from all of their current game show channel lineup.
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Double wow! I don't even care which version of Squares it is, I liked them all. Very excited to learn what exactly is encompassed in the "More" channel.
Well, they might as well call the Pluto Game Shows channel they have right now The Supermarket Sweep Network for it seems like that's all they air. Maybe this "More" channel will consist of a "one from column A, one from column B" hodgepodge from all of their current game show channel lineup.
I’ve noticed Harvey Feud and 25 Words or Less turning up on some feeds of Game Show Central—though not Pluto’s—over the last few weeks. Considering the original Pluto Game Shows has served as something of an overflow for GSC when it’s not playing Sweep, my guess is that More Game Shows is going to serve as a landing spot for Steve & Meredith on Pluto.
But my faint hope is that this all means Amazon has signed a deal with Pluto to beef up the MGM content, and that we’re about to see Marshall/maybe Davidson on Squares, and High Rollers plus whatever else is still playable on More.
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Wow! Naturally the next question will be, which version of Squares is going to get Pluto's endless marathon treatment? Last I checked, I believe Marshall's version is currently owned by Amazon (for they acquired the MGM library sometime back, didn't they?) and the Bergeron version is owned by CBS. Knowing who owns and operates Pluto, my money is on the latter.
I believe John Davidson's HSq also falls under the MGM/Amazon ownership as well.
It would be kind of cool if they would get all the HSq incarnations, sans the MGHS version.
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Hollywood Squares is one of those shows that should be seen on Buzzr. No doubt they still run Match Game Hollywood Squares Hour because it allows them to say that they have some version of it on the schedule.
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"More game shows than ever before!"
-- Bryce Benson
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@TVMoJoe on Twitter (https://twitter.com/TVMoJoe/status/1674483705459642368) confirmed that the HS channel will be Bergeron episodes to start.
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Double the points is on Xumo. Who wants to draw first blood?
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So...where they at? I guess July 1 wasn't an official date from Pluto, rather one from the mind of a blogger?
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So...where they at? I guess July 1 wasn't an official date from Pluto, rather one from the mind of a blogger?
The press release simply said July, and Joe said he thought it might be July 1st. No date was confirmed, to my eye.
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@TVMoJoe reports that the HS Bergeron channel is going live today (July 11) in about an hour, at 1pm Eastern. I'm actually more curious about the other "More Game Shows" channel - we'll see what pops up!
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Looks like Hollywood Squares is already live, and we're in the post-Whoopi part of the run.
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March 2003, if you believe Lainie Kazan's IMDb.
And the 1P Eastern episode jumps to November 1, 2002.
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Squares is up, currently showing an episode from season 6 from Staff Appreciation Week. Really liked the last couple years of this run.
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Squares is up, currently showing an episode from season 6 from Staff Appreciation Week. Really liked the last couple years of this run.
It's like the Jeopardy! Channel of late: They bounce around a lot ‐‐ even during tournament weeks. Not sure if Wheel does the same, as I don't watch that channel.
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Maybe cameras were much more advanced in 2003, but the picture quality looks great for a 20-year-old show.
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CBS didn't update their cameras to support HD until ~2005. (Roughly the same time as the Sony lot). Exact timing varied studio to studio, and even when cameras were upgraded, the entire rest of the chain still had to be upgraded too and different shows had different needs (ie: not showing 84 year old Barker in 1080i).
One thing that definitely gets underestimated in footage from the late 90s and early 2000s is the difference between 480i (the broadcast standard at the time) and 480p. Go and spend literally any time on Youtube comparing the two and, genuinely, it might be the most underrated leap forward in video quality (because it was so rapidly subsumed by the 720/1080 and widescreen changes) in media history (at least since the change to color). And while the original transmissions would have been 480i, and while most GSN reruns back in the day at some point would have gone to 480i at some point before your eyeballs (where the choke point was changed over time), now you're seeing 480p tapes upscaled to Pluto's baseline 720p. So when you see Squares/Wheel/J! on Pluto, or other shows from that era, it's really the first time you're seeing the quality the episode was recorded and saved at - and why there seems to be an appreciable leap in video quality in reruns of many shows from the mid-late 90s onwards even when the broadcast standards hadn't changed.
(the difference that progressive scan makes over interlaced is one of the reasons 720p has held on for as long as it has vs. 1080i; but now that a lot of 1080i signals are flipping to at least 1080p, they're starting to be left behind or being put into a forced upgrade - to say nothing of 4K)
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Airing right now, there's an episode from the first Game Show Week sandwiched in between two consecutive episodes from a later week. I hope that means the other four Game Show Week episodes are sprinkled throughout the rotation.
The Friday episode of Game Show Week is labeled Show #5065 (season 5, episode 65). The guide on Pluto TV's website seems to show the next few episodes that are coming up, so that'll help anybody looking for specific episodes.
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I don't know if it was the same Game Show Week episode that aired today or not, but there was one on last night in the 8pm hour.
Not sure what episode number, but Tom said to "watch tomorrow" for something special, teasing that it was the episode that Peter Marshall would be hosting. I think that was the Thursday episode of the week with Peter hosting, so this may have been the Wednesday if I remember correctly.
I loved this post-Whoopi era of HS.
Wish it would have lasted longer than 2 Seasons.
Looking forward to Whoopi era episodes as well.
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Has anyone actually called that "viewer comment hotline" that Tom plugs on several episodes to see where it goes now? I'm kinda surprised they didn't edit that out or at least cover up the number...
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I don't know if it was the same Game Show Week episode that aired today or not, but there was one on last night in the 8pm hour.
The Tuesday ep. from that week aired at 8:30 PM last night.
What a treat this channel is, especially since my area only got the first ~16 weeks of the series in 1998.
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Has anyone actually called that "viewer comment hotline" that Tom plugs on several episodes to see where it goes now? I'm kinda surprised they didn't edit that out or at least cover up the number...
Per a Google search, it's now for a notary service in the Dallas area.
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Squares full rotation of episodes is now available on demand, and includes a total of 166 episodes (out of 180) from season 5, and 169 episodes from season 6 - including both Game Show Weeks in their entirety (shows #5061-5065 and #6041-6045). No particular pattern to which episodes are unavailable, with every panel of both seasons having at least three episodes present.
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I've been wondering whether the channel would skip any episodes as the result of a joke that would be deemed in poor taste in 2023. I haven't been watching too regularly, but so far, I haven't heard anything exceptionally offensive. And one way to hide random-seeming skips would be to run the episodes on the live channel wildly out of order. It's only a theory, but I like my theory.
Not only am I happy to see the entirety of both Game Show Weeks available, but the April Fools' episode (#5132) is also available on demand. And all five episodes of Staff Appreciation Week are at the end, so we can watch everybody's reactions to the known cancellation across the entire taping day.
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I've been wondering whether the channel would skip any episodes as the result of a joke that would be deemed in poor taste in 2023. I haven't been watching too regularly, but so far, I haven't heard anything exceptionally offensive. And one way to hide random-seeming skips would be to run the episodes on the live channel wildly out of order. It's only a theory, but I like my theory.
I've enjoyed watching the Pluto H² Channel ‐‐ especially since Northeast Ohio was denied this show for 5½ of it's 6 seasons (THANKS, WEWS). On a recent Pluto episode, I saw that Penn & Teller continued the YOU FOOL! tradition well beyond that infamous episode.
The only problem with the H² episodes on "shuffle mode" is the confusion of main game play and bonus round formats from episode to episode. I never knew they had tried the best 2 out of 3 game format with carryover games between episodes for a time. And the key round formats were tweaked a bit.
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The only problem with the H² episodes on "shuffle mode" is the confusion of main game play and bonus round formats from episode to episode. I never knew they had tried the best 2 out of 3 game format with carryover games between episodes for a time. And the key round formats were tweaked a bit.
Until I started watching Pluto, I forgot this was a thing myself. The two ways to figure out which season of H^2 you're watching:
1. Self-contained episodes: 2002-03.
Straddling: 2003-04.
2. Cheaper bonus round prizes: 2003-04.
The last three seasons alternated between 4 and 4:30 pm on WTKR so I watched quite a bit in college. The Pluto channel is taking me back in time right now...when I worked on the yearbook, our theme for those two years revolved around entertainment. I lobbied hard to get the cover to look something like the H^2 intro, but I lost that battle. :P
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The last three seasons alternated between 4 and 4:30 pm on WTKR so I watched quite a bit in college. The Pluto channel is taking me back in time right now...when I worked on the yearbook, our theme for those two years revolved around entertainment. I lobbied hard to get the cover to look something like the H^2 intro, but I lost that battle. :P
It was my last two years of high school; the show was buried in Nashville by then - 5th season aired at 4:30am, season 6 aired at 1:35a. There was a stretch in 2003 when I was having a lot of health problems so I got to see a decent clip of those episodes, but most of the rest of season 5 and pretty much all of season 6 are new to me outside of a handful of episodes I picked up through trading.
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I thought it would be helpful to know which upcoming episodes of Hollywood Squares had which celebrities, so I started making notes when the channel launched. And now that all of the weeks are available on demand, it became much easier to complete the list.
So here (https://mstiescott.neocities.org/squares_celebs)'s a handy series of grids listing every set of celebrities in seasons five and six. Be surprised by some of the celebrities who did the show! Find episodes with celebrities you like! Count how many times Charo appeared! The page theoretically has dozens of uses!
For most of the grids, I just skimmed one representative episode, assuming that the layout wouldn't change during the week. I did find two exceptions to that assumption, though (a week where the cast of Reba cycled through one of the squares and a week where I'm pretty sure Henry Winkler was a last-minute substitution when Master P and/or Lil' Romeo didn't arrive to the studio on time), so if you see any others, let me know.
As the page mentions, the episode number order does not always match the airing order. Especially when it comes to the season five tournament of champions. Not only would I assume that the wild card week aired a little closer to the tournament, but during the tournament, Tom was promoting the upcoming Mother's Day week, which was taped with earlier episode numbers.
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As the page mentions, the episode number order does not always match the airing order. Especially when it comes to the season five tournament of champions.
The season six tournament of champions is kinda the same way. It appears to have aired immediately after It Just Ain't Right week, as the Monday show has Friday's answers.
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For most of the grids, I just skimmed one representative episode, assuming that the layout wouldn't change during the week. I did find two exceptions to that assumption, though (a week where the cast of Reba cycled through one of the squares and a week where I'm pretty sure Henry Winkler was a last-minute substitution when Master P and/or Lil' Romeo didn't arrive to the studio on time), so if you see any others, let me know.
Wanted to check, because I remember people mentioning the big boss, Roger King, being center square for a week. However, he wasn't center on the episode I had gotten to watch on Pluto.
Turns out, that was only a Monday thing, the rest of the week (6082-6085) looked like this:
Charo/Roger King/Peterman
Gena Lee/Mull/Rondell
Judy/Dom/Phyllis
So yes, another week where Martin did do center square in season 6. Really makes the one week stick out now where he was there, but not center.
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Turns out, that was only a Monday thing, the rest of the week (6082-6085) looked like this:
Much obliged!
Really makes the one week stick out now where he was there, but not center.
At the beginning of the Monday episode of that week, Tom explained that the show had booked the Hilton sisters, but they canceled at the last minute, so Martin Mull was brought in to replace them.
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Scott, thank you so much! This answered several questions I had (including wondering if Henry Winkler ever appeared...and he did!).
I noticed another anomaly, which occurred during the second week of Season 5. Michael McDonald only appeared M-W; Anna Nicole Smith (and friends!) appeared Th-Fri.
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I noticed another anomaly, which occurred during the second week of Season 5. Michael McDonald only appeared M-W; Anna Nicole Smith (and friends!) appeared Th-Fri.
Something similar happened during the first season as well, when Billy Crystal and Robin Williams appeared alongside Whoopi for three Comic Relief episodes. It aired during Thanksgiving week, so that could also explain why they only did three eps., knowing most markets might pre-empt the show for football or parades.
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I noticed another anomaly, which occurred during the second week of Season 5. Michael McDonald only appeared M-W; Anna Nicole Smith (and friends!) appeared Th-Fri.
Updated. Thanks!
Something similar happened during the first season as well, when Billy Crystal and Robin Williams appeared alongside Whoopi for three Comic Relief episodes.
I think they were more likely to move celebrities around the grid within a week and swap celebrities in and out during the Whoopi years (maybe only the early Whoopi years?). I remember one week in which nearly the entire cast of ABC's Whose Line Is It Anyway? appeared -- the regulars stayed in the grid for the entire week, but the semi-regulars all took turns filling some of the remaining squares.
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I think they were more likely to move celebrities around the grid within a week and swap celebrities in and out during the Whoopi years (maybe only the early Whoopi years?). I remember one week in which nearly the entire cast of ABC's Whose Line Is It Anyway? appeared -- the regulars stayed in the grid for the entire week, but the semi-regulars all took turns filling some of the remaining squares.
Nope, it happened all throughout the Whoopi era. I know of at least three weeks during Season 4 (including the very star-studded Women Who Care Week) that swapped the squares around and out every episode.
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This happened a few times during the Davidson era as well. They switched out a few New York-centric celebs for the Radio City Music Hall episodes -- The morning show weathermen (Willard Scott et al) were switched out with Gene Shalit; Mark Gastineau and Lawrence Taylor switched out for a week; and I think Debbie Gibson "split" a square one week with another celeb (blanking on the name).
JD
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This happened a few times during the Davidson era as well. They switched out a few New York-centric celebs for the Radio City Music Hall episodes -- The morning show weathermen (Willard Scott et al) were switched out with Gene Shalit; Mark Gastineau and Lawrence Taylor switched out for a week; and I think Debbie Gibson "split" a square one week with another celeb (blanking on the name).
Looking at Kris Lane's most excellent Davidson Squares guide, it appears to be The Fat Boys.
https://web.archive.org/web/20030724122007/http://www.xanfan.com/celebrities/squares86.htm
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Has anyone heard any additional news regarding the previously announced "More TV Game Shows" channel?
I figured it would debut with the HS channel but still has not launched.
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Has anyone heard any additional news regarding the previously announced "More TV Game Shows" channel?
I figured it would debut with the HS channel but still has not launched.
I've been wondering the same thing - kind of surprised no mention of it from Pluto outside from the original announcement of the channel.
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Has anyone heard any additional news regarding the previously announced "More TV Game Shows" channel?
I figured it would debut with the HS channel but still has not launched.
I've been wondering the same thing - kind of surprised no mention of it from Pluto outside from the original announcement of the channel.
Probably there was a delay of some kind. If I venture a guess, I’d imagine there was a hold up with the rights to one of the shows they were planning to use as an anchor.
Pluto is usually good to deliver on their promises about channels & programming, even if it’s delayed on occasion. IIRC BUZZR was announced for 2 or 3 months before it showed up on Pluto. More recently, the XITE music channels were announced several months before they were added. (Though to be fair, I only saw that announced early on one news site, so I’m thinking said site may have gotten out over their skis on that one.)
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For those of us who just can't get enough Jimmy Carr in our lives, all 16 episodes of UK Distraction are now available in Pluto On Demand.