The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: chris319 on August 06, 2025, 12:42:52 AM
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Going back to 1980, is it connect to say that Card Sharks replaced 1/2 hour of the Letterman morning show when Letterman was cancelled, or is it correct to say that the Letterman half hour was replaced by Las Vegas Gambit?
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Well...Neither. August 4 is the day that Dave was scaled back to 60 minutes. October 27 is the first day after he was cancelled altogether:
https://daytimetvarchive.com/grids/1980.html
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According to the chart, one hour of Letterman was replaced by L.V. Gambit and Blockbusters at 10:00 am on Monday, October 27. So it is not accurate to say Letterman was replaced by Card Sharks.
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https://daytimetvarchive.com/grids/1980.html
Thanks for this link - that was a dive down a rabbit hole as I was reminiscing my youth and my knowlege of game show listing times !
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https://daytimetvarchive.com/grids/1980.html
Thanks for this link - that was a dive down a rabbit hole as I was reminiscing my youth and my knowlege of game show listing times !
In seeing that laid out in such stark and consistent grid terms, it's clearer than ever why those that I knew who were at NBC at that point never quite fully recovered from the experience. That's a dizzying number of moves even under ideal circumstances--certainly exacerbated by the fact it was a solid third in prime time and lost the Olympics that year to boot. Oh, and this was also the dawn of the Jean Doumanian era at SNL.
I had almost completely forgotten about the launch of TEXAS in the midst of all of this--and if you think Letterman underwhelmed, you should have heard what the general managers of their Dallas and Houston stations said about an effort that not only couldn't hold a candle to the prime time hit it hoped to be confused with, it even was far weaker than the remaining cast in Bay City--and ultimately help accelerate the complete AW franchise demise.
Had Hill Street Blues and at least the breadcrumbs of something respectable not happened, it's my belief, based both on hindsight and the reflections of some I came to know personally, we might have seen an outright mutiny from NBC in short order. Talk about desperation.
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I've always wanted a complete history of Wheel of Fortune especially 1980 to 1982. This was when Wheel was getting roundly beaten by The Price Is Right, Family Feud, or reruns of The Love Boat. In my opinion, the two things that saved daytime Wheel were the low ratings expectations NBC was getting at the time and moving it to 10:30 AM Eastern in 1982 when it's only network competition were reruns of Alice. What I also found interesting in looking at the ratings books was Daytime Wheel was matching or beating the first half of The Price Is Right starting in April or May of 1983. Before the premiere of the syndicated version.
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I've always wanted a complete history of Wheel of Fortune especially 1980 to 1982. This was when Wheel was getting roundly beaten by The Price Is Right, Family Feud, or reruns of The Love Boat. In my opinion, the two things that saved daytime Wheel were the low ratings expectations NBC was getting at the time and moving it to 10:30 AM Eastern in 1982 when it's only network competition were reruns of Alice. What I also found interesting in looking at the ratings books was Daytime Wheel was matching or beating the first half of The Price Is Right starting in April or May of 1983. Before the premiere of the syndicated version.
https://www.amazon.com/Id-Like-Buy-Vowel-Spinning/dp/B0DC6PWBL8
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The David Letterman Show and Another World each went from 90 to 60 minutes to free up an hour for the debut of Texas.
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https://www.amazon.com/Id-Like-Buy-Vowel-Spinning/dp/B0DC6PWBL8
Legit question - I like Wesley Hyatt's contributions to social media, and happy to support, but for those who have read it - worth $32?
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Legit question - I like Wesley Hyatt's contributions to social media, and happy to support, but for those who have read it - worth $32?
Yes! I very much enjoyed it.
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https://www.amazon.com/Id-Like-Buy-Vowel-Spinning/dp/B0DC6PWBL8
Legit question - I like Wesley Hyatt's contributions to social media, and happy to support, but for those who have read it - worth $32?
Of the surprising number of pop culture authors I know personally, Wes is second to me behind our boy Adam. I always buy their new works as soon as they're released. Like Adam, he is an exceptionally thorough researcher. However, his real strength is as a reference book author, so his prose histories (like this one) can bury you in detail. I'm not sure I needed to know the exact birthdate of every daytime executive who ever came into Wheel's orbit. I also got a little bored near the end with what seemed like an endless and somewhat repetitive parade of contestants and their experiences. With those caveats, it is a definitive history of the show (to the point of publication) and well worth it, especially with a "happy to support" nudge.
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With the cancellation of High Rollers and HS it was a big blow to HQ. Maybe a little over a year later, H and Q broke up and Merrill went solo with Battlestars, using Jay Redack and many of the HS crew. Battlestars was later cancelled and then brought back to life.
One day Fred Silverman himself came to the G-T offices to watch a run-thru of Blockbusters. I have never seen so much worry written all over one person's face.
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It's still a little frustrating looking back and finding out ratings in those slots were noticeably lower for quite a while after the cancellation of a game show in favor of some other genre (soap opera, etc.) Quite a few of those shows probably deserved longer runs than they got.
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It's still a little frustrating looking back and finding out ratings in those slots were noticeably lower for quite a while after the cancellation of a game show in favor of some other genre (soap opera, etc.) Quite a few of those shows probably deserved longer runs than they got.
Indeed. Networks always seemed to treat game shows as disposable, yet would give a soap opera several reprieves before they would cancel one. For reference, NBC wanted to give Search For Tomorrow a 13 week renewal to Spring 1987, even though it had been DOA for years, but Proctor and Gamble insisted that it be gone by the end of 1986. Hence why Wordplay and Blockbusters premiered on consecutive weeks.
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Indeed. Networks always seemed to treat game shows as disposable, yet would give a soap opera several reprieves before they would cancel one. For reference, NBC wanted to give Search For Tomorrow a 13 week renewal to Spring 1987, even though it had been DOA for years, but Proctor and Gamble insisted that it be gone by the end of 1986. Hence why Wordplay and Blockbusters premiered on consecutive weeks.
Years ago I remember stumbling across a Broadcasting magazine article (https://www.worldradiohistory.com/hd2/IDX-Business/Magazines/Archive-BC-IDX/86-OCR/BC-1986-11-10-OCR-Page-0076.pdf#search=%22blockbusters%20texas%22) mentioning NBC's plans for the Blockbusters reboot. The article mentioned the original show getting decent ratings, but IIRC NBC wanted the time slot to accommodate Texas moving to 11 am (Wheel replaced Blockbusters). Meanwhile, Texas tanked and was gone at the end of 1982.
In hindsight, said (NBC daytime VP Brian) Frons, Blockbusters "probably should have never been taken off."
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No mention of demos in the Broadcasting article.
The networks' chief complaint against game shows was that the demos were too old. We were always told only to look at the share numbers (usually in the teens in those days).
What share was Letterman getting when he was cancelled? I still have all that ratings data but would have to turn my apartment upside down to find it.
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What share was Letterman getting when he was cancelled? I still have all that ratings data but would have to turn my apartment upside down to find it.
The first three weeks are here: https://www.gameshowforum.org/index.php/topic,35131.msg407714.html#msg407714 (https://www.gameshowforum.org/index.php/topic,35131.msg407714.html#msg407714). Another thread here had him at 2.8 in early August.
I can’t imagine the ratings the last few weeks were any better; by that point most of the people who would have been his biggest fans (high school/college students?) were back in school.
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The ratings data spanning August 4-October 24 (essentially, the entire window when the show was 60 minutes instead of 90) has him averaging a 2.3 rating and a 12 share. One odd tidbit was that from the beginning, the show was broken into 30 minute fragments--they played the theme music at the start of every half hour. At the end, Dave had 83% clearance for the first half-hour and 82% clearance for the second half-hour. (When the show was 90 minutes, the clearances were 88/90/92%.)
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https://www.amazon.com/Id-Like-Buy-Vowel-Spinning/dp/B0DC6PWBL8
Legit question - I like Wesley Hyatt's contributions to social media, and happy to support, but for those who have read it - worth $32?
Of the surprising number of pop culture authors I know personally, Wes is second to me behind our boy Adam. I always buy their new works as soon as they're released. Like Adam, he is an exceptionally thorough researcher. However, his real strength is as a reference book author, so his prose histories (like this one) can bury you in detail. I'm not sure I needed to know the exact birthdate of every daytime executive who ever came into Wheel's orbit. I also got a little bored near the end with what seemed like an endless and somewhat repetitive parade of contestants and their experiences. With those caveats, it is a definitive history of the show (to the point of publication) and well worth it, especially with a "happy to support" nudge.
As someone who was interviewed in the Wheel book and sent him players to interview, it’s a good read and just needs some dates corrected. To me, the Woolery theme weeks we didn’t know about (and I never came across in newspaper clippings) were worth the price.
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The ratings data spanning August 4-October 24 (essentially, the entire window when the show was 60 minutes instead of 90) has him averaging a 2.3 rating and a 12 share. One odd tidbit was that from the beginning, the show was broken into 30 minute fragments--they played the theme music at the start of every half hour. At the end, Dave had 83% clearance for the first half-hour and 82% clearance for the second half-hour. (When the show was 90 minutes, the clearances were 88/90/92%.)
The decline in ratings was accelerated by the decline in coverage; as I believe most astute followers here now realize every market where a show was pre-emoted was effectively a zero rating toward that overall number. But even if the early Letterman numbers were more encouraging there’s no guarantee that those coverage numbers would have been markedly different. 1980 was an especially crowded syndication marketplace where new shows were debuting and older ones weren’t quite fully gone. This was especially true with talk shoes, where both Mike Douglas and Dinah! still were producing new episodes when John Davidson and Toni Tennille, among others, were debuting. The marketplace being what it was, lower-rated stations had jumped on those bandwagons long before Dave and had already earmarked fall time slots for those efforts. So let’s just say the daytime show had the deck stacked against it from the get-go.
As far as the soaps being given preferential treatment, remember that the P and G shows brought with them large advertiser commitments to the entire schedule, even the lower-rated and lesser-cleared game shows in more vulnerable time slots. And yes, their demographic skew was slightly younger. Made the bar for a game to be deemed a success all the higher.
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The decline in ratings was accelerated by the decline in coverage; as I believe most astute followers here now realize every market where a show was pre-emoted was effectively a zero rating toward that overall number. But even if the early Letterman numbers were more encouraging there’s no guarantee that those coverage numbers would have been markedly different.
Although I would say that some markets bought into the curiosity factor initially. I think of markets like Detroit and Philadelphia, which generally didn't clear whatever NBC offered at 10AM (although Philadelphia was clearing CS for a brief time in late 1979-1980, but not for most of the series), but did clear Dave at first but dumped it within a few months.
Speaking of CS, it still is a curiosity to me that between the cancellation of Fleming J! in 1975 and the debut of SP in 1984, it was the only NBC show to survive more than a year consecutively in the 12N slot (P+ logged about a year or so at 12N, but in a couple of different runs).
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Speaking of CS, it still is a curiosity to me that between the cancellation of Fleming J! in 1975 and the debut of SP in 1984, it was the only NBC show to survive more than a year consecutively in the 12N slot (P+ logged about a year or so at 12N, but in a couple of different runs).
Jackpot survived for over a year a half in the noon timeslot as well. Fleming J! was moved to the mornings to make way for it.
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True, although I did say between the cancellation of J! in 1975 and the debut of SP in 1984. JACKPOT only ran six months at 12N at that time (then got moved to 12:30, then got dumped).
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The decline in ratings was accelerated by the decline in coverage; as I believe most astute followers here now realize every market where a show was pre-emoted was effectively a zero rating toward that overall number. But even if the early Letterman numbers were more encouraging there’s no guarantee that those coverage numbers would have been markedly different.
Although I would say that some markets bought into the curiosity factor initially. I think of markets like Detroit and Philadelphia, which generally didn't clear whatever NBC offered at 10AM (although Philadelphia was clearing CS for a brief time in late 1979-1980, but not for most of the series), but did clear Dave at first but dumped it within a few months.
Speaking of CS, it still is a curiosity to me that between the cancellation of Fleming J! in 1975 and the debut of SP in 1984, it was the only NBC show to survive more than a year consecutively in the 12N slot (P+ logged about a year or so at 12N, but in a couple of different runs).
NBC affiliate relations did offer incentives to their better larger market stations for efforts they considered important, often in the form of more favorable terms and increased leniency on other shows--all the more necessary given their solid third place ranking overall and the fact they only contolled five stations at the time and two of them (Washington and Cleveland) were in more modest-sized markets than their competitors'. Given the fact that WDIV at the time was the Tigers' station, and that KY was part of a more aggressive Group W, I'm certain they extracted more than a few of those MFN considerations in exchange for giving Dave a somewhat more optimal launch.
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Does anyone have a clearance figure for Mindreaders?
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Through the run, Mindreaders had 76% clearance at noon.
-Jason
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Through the run, Mindreaders had 76% clearance at noon.
That seems awfully high.
CS at 12N only averaged around a 67-70% clearance (although like MINDREADERS, I would suspect that some of that clearance is some ET affiliates putting it on in another slot like 9:30 or 4PM).
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Is there any particular reasons the tapes for Mindreaders are missing, given that G-T was generally good at archiving?
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Is there any particular reasons the tapes for Mindreaders are missing, given that G-T was generally good at archiving?
After a show is broadcast, what happens to the tape? I'm guessing it's held by the network for a period of time but is it at the network's discretion to decide what happens to it after that, or is it up to the producer to request it for their archives?
Maybe NBC figured G-T wouldn't want it because the show wasn't a success(?)
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Although I would say that some markets bought into the curiosity factor initially. I think of markets like Detroit and Philadelphia, which generally didn't clear whatever NBC offered at 10AM (although Philadelphia was clearing CS for a brief time in late 1979-1980, but not for most of the series), but did clear Dave at first but dumped it within a few months.
10 year old me finally has a chance to see what this David Letterman Show is about, and I'm greeted with Richard Simmons instead.
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Is there any particular reasons the tapes for Mindreaders are missing, given that G-T was generally good at archiving?
After a show is broadcast, what happens to the tape? I'm guessing it's held by the network for a period of time but is it at the network's discretion to decide what happens to it after that, or is it up to the producer to request it for their archives?
Maybe NBC figured G-T wouldn't want it because the show wasn't a success(?)
But yet, they kept Double Dare. And Beat The Clock.
I think it may be a NBC thing, considering most of the run of Sale of the Century, Wheel of Fortune, High Rollers, and Dream House were all lost.
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Is there any particular reasons the tapes for Mindreaders are missing, given that G-T was generally good at archiving?
After a show is broadcast, what happens to the tape? I'm guessing it's held by the network for a period of time but is it at the network's discretion to decide what happens to it after that, or is it up to the producer to request it for their archives?
Maybe NBC figured G-T wouldn't want it because the show wasn't a success(?)
But yet, they kept Double Dare. And Beat The Clock.
I think it may be a NBC thing, considering most of the run of Sale of the Century, Wheel of Fortune, High Rollers, and Dream House were all lost.
At least some of High Rollers exists and Dream House was lost in a flood much later on.
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Is there any particular reasons the tapes for Mindreaders are missing, given that G-T was generally good at archiving?
After a show is broadcast, what happens to the tape? I'm guessing it's held by the network for a period of time but is it at the network's discretion to decide what happens to it after that, or is it up to the producer to request it for their archives?
Maybe NBC figured G-T wouldn't want it because the show wasn't a success(?)
My interpretation is that any decision to destroy a tape was totally up to the producer/packager who owned the show. Producers paid NBC for everything from the tape stock itself to studio facilities and editing, and the packager owned the intellectual property, i.e. the program concept and content. The packager also paid the performers - contestants, models, emcees, announcers.
It seems improbable that Goodson would have authorized the destruction of Mindreaders tapes because he kept so much else.
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It seems improbable that Goodson would have authorized the destruction of Mindreaders tapes because he kept so much else.
Yeah, but remember he didn't keep ABC Password or "The Better Sex". It's only the CBS shows and the syndicated shows of the 70s that have a relatively perfect track record (though the first year of the Garry Moore "To Tell The Truth" is evidently lost along with the first year of the Narz "Beat The Clock" taped in NY and most of "He Said, She Said"). ABC supposedly was recycling the tapes of Password and the Better Sex for "Family Feud" as the years went by.
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A few notes, touching on various elements involving preservation:
1) I'm not sure that the missing late NBC programs mean anything with NBC- in addition to the points raised concerning High Rollers and Dream House (though the version I've heard for the latter involves flooding), Sale of the Century seems to be a Reg Grundy issue, as Going For Gold (which aired in the United Kingdom into the 1990s) is similarly missing a pile of episodes.
2) I would be cautious about making assumptions about networks in terms of preservation, based on examples from other genres:
2a) There seems to be an idea that CBS stopped wiping earlier than the other networks due to the survival of the Goodson-Todman programs and the rediscovery of The Joker's Wild. The notes that soap opera fans have compiled concerning what survives in that genre make this suspect- the CBS soap operas of the 1970s do not seem to be particularly well-preserved, further suggesting that it was based on production firms;
2b) That said, even production firms could be inconsistent- there is a general consensus among those who have researched television sports broadcasting that ABC seems to have done a better job of preserving their sports broadcasts from the 1960s and early 1970s than either CBS or NBC, but there are a number of places where gaps are apparent, with their coverage of the NBA from 1964-1965 to 1972-1973 existing (on the basis of the available evidence) in a fragmentary state indeed (total number of NBA Finals games known to exist completely on master-quality tape from this period: one).
Overall, this ties back to considering the survival of the programs in a key regard: while we have some ideas of what is out there, there are still limitations to our information (note that, twenty-five or so years later, we still aren't sure of the total contents of that Hollywood Squares rediscovery, to name just one example) that are such that I would be deeply wary about assuming any general rules existed, rather than a collection of individual circumstances for which consistency cannot be assumed.
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My understanding regarding preserved CBS shows of the 70s is that shows taped at Television City stood a better chance of surviving whereas those taped in NY were more prone to earlier destruction. This would account for why Musical Chairs is gone and why the only CBS episodes of $10K that surfaced came from the three weeks taped at Television City.
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Is there any particular reasons the tapes for Mindreaders are missing, given that G-T was generally good at archiving?
Maybe because the show was a dud and not worth archiving?