The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: MSTieScott on August 29, 2016, 01:13:34 PM
-
Scott: Welcome to the results for the 2016 Game Show Fans 50 Greatest! Forty-eight of you voted, and I'm here with the results. But I'm not here alone -- to provide commentary that's more insightful than what I could come up with by myself, I'm joined by JasonA1. Jason, before we find out which shows made the top fifty, what are you interested in seeing from the results of this poll compared to the results of the 2006 poll?
Jason: Well, as I said before, I'm interested to see what 10 years has done to the results - namely, what the advent of YouTube has done to them. Even 10 years ago, if you weren't in the tape trading community, odds are you were relying on your memory or hearsay to judge the shows not being run on GSN. Now, with video seemingly everywhere, we all have a chance to remember even our less-than-favorite shows. But also, I'm very curious what happened to the newest "classics." In the "between time," since 2006, we got all sorts of new games on cable, plus more network shows in the wake of Howie Mandel's briefcases. That's a lot of shows and a lot of time to help figure out where the games of the new millennium truly fit in a list of the greatest of all time.
Scott: I'm glad you mentioned Howie Mandel's briefcases, because that's one of the things I'm looking forward to learning, too: When this poll was conducted in 2006, Deal or No Deal was less than a year old. At the time, we collectively ranked it as the 44th greatest game show. Now that it's had a chance to run its course, will we think more or less of it? But the result I'm most looking forward to seeing concerns two stalwarts: The last time around, Jeopardy! and Pyramid took second and third place, respectively. But Jeopardy! beat Pyramid by just one point. Will it be another neck-and-neck race between these two, or will one of them receive a clear victory over the other?
Let's reveal the results! In the end, 226 shows received at least one vote, but only fifty of them will receive the fandom's top honors. We begin with the shows that just barely made the cutoff.
50. Weakest Link
276 points; 21 votes
2006 ranking: 49
Scott: Even the syndicated Weakest Link had been off the air for about three years when we had the 2006 survey... still, now that it's been 13 years, I was curious whether it would fall off the top fifty entirely. Turns out we gave it essentially the same ranking.
Jason: If you love trivia, Weakest Link is certainly a place to get lots of it. Given our cadre of Q & A fans around here, I'm not surprised to see it back on the top 50 after all this time. George Gray proved it could be done more than capably with another host. Unlike other game shows, I actually enjoyed some episodes of the all-celebrity Link, because the players often had fun sniping at each other and tried to get Anne to crack. I'd be curious to see if Weakest Link could flourish in a revival, but I'd be wary if they decided to cast a more well-known host. There's enough going on that I don't think you need a second show happening at center stage.
49. College Bowl
277 points; 12 votes
2006 ranking: 46
Jason: When it came time to finish my list for 2016, I found a place for College Bowl, less so for the show itself. I think College Bowl deserves lots of credit for helping young people take in interest in knowledge & eventually find a place in school where they could flourish because of it. Watching existing episodes today, you get some early examples of a more modern directing style with the split-screen of both teams, coupled with audio & video questions. Allen Ludden shows enthusiasm for the proceedings, and shows sincerity as he implores the younger audience to get themselves prepared for their own higher education.
Scott: That's the exact same reason I included College Bowl on my ballot -- while I weighted "personal enjoyment" more heavily when I was ranking the shows, I did give consideration for historical impact, and I feel College Bowl deserves recognition for that. Note that only 25% of respondents actually voted for College Bowl; however, seven of those twelve ballots placed the show in the upper 25, which is what allowed it to make this list.
48. Win, Lose or Draw
281 points; 21 votes
2006 ranking: 52
Jason: The first newcomer to the top 50! (But not the last!) It's easy to forget just how big Win, Lose or Draw was in its first run. Saturday Night Live had a very funny parody, picking on the fact it was seemingly on all day with tie game after tie game. The show traveled across the country before their big brothers Wheel & Jeopardy made a yearly thing of it - Chicago, Florida, New York, Hawaii. And thanks to Antenna TV, we have tape of Burt talking about this game in the '70s on The Tonight Show. Win, Lose or Draw was never about the money being won, which is something today's producers might want to remember.
47. Tattletales
291 points; 20 votes
2006 ranking: 31
Scott: This is one of the most extreme changes in ranking between 2006 and 2016. And it can't entirely be attributed to the natural volatility of the bottom of the 50 best: In 2006, 47 out of 80 voters (more than half) put Tattletales somewhere on their list; this time around, fewer than half of the voters saw fit to include it. And on average, Tattletales was ranked lower on individual ballots compared to ten years ago. What happened?
Jason: I'm not entirely sure. If you don't have Buzzr, you'd have to seek it out on your own, so perhaps Tattletales isn't as fresh on our collective minds. Fans might have found more game-heavy shows to rank higher in the meantime, as well. This could also be a case of our average voter age dropping, with less of those fans fond of seeing stars they don't know interacting? Just a guess.
Scott: Yeah, if anything, I thought Buzzr would help Tattletales stay relatively high on the list. Of course, Buzzr's episodes have largely been stuck in the He Said, She Said-inspired beginnings of Tattletales, so... maybe not so much. Actually, if I had to put forward a theory: In 2006, as the poll was beginning, there was discussion and debate about which titles would and wouldn't be considered the same show. Matt mentioned that he would be combining Tattletales and He Said, She Said -- which makes sense to mention, since what Tattletales is best known for bears little relation to its predecessor -- but I'm wondering if that clarification put the show in people's minds and led to them placing it on their ballots. On the ballots this year, the only people who "voted" for He Said, She Said were the ones who listed their vote as "Tattletales/He Said, She Said," acknowledging the previous combination ruling.
46. Twenty One
319 points; 18 votes
2006 ranking: 41
Scott: I believe you and I are of the same opinion regarding the inclusion of the scandal shows on our ballots, Jason. However, in the case of Twenty One, eighteen people disagree with us.
Jason: Yes; I didn't include scandal shows on my ballots in either year. Inherently, the original version of Twenty One didn't work, and producers quickly saw to it that the outcomes were always exciting. Looking back on the Maury Povich version, I think it was a missed opportunity to break out from the post-Millionaire pack. Strikes and tie-breaking questions kept games short - probably too short. Adding a Second Chance helper draws comparisons to Phone-a-Friend. Ditching the Twenty One twist of a new champion's money coming from the old champion, along with the added bonus round, stripped its unique qualities even further. I think there's definitely a place for this sort of game to shine, where two players compete without knowing the others' progress. But both versions had issues. I'm curious how others made this decision.
Scott: I'm sure they'll tell us in the replies, but my hunch is that they wanted to acknowledge the undeniable fact that before the truth was revealed, the original Twenty One took this country by storm. And since I was just talking about historical impact three entries ago, I suppose I can understand that reasoning, especially because the rules explicitly stated that the definition of "greatest" was up to each voter. (Although, of the twelve people who voted for College Bowl, only five also voted for Twenty One.) But in my opinion, the phrase "great game show" implies that the program itself does something right. And if rigging the show is the only way to make it watchable, I just can't bring myself to call it great.
-
For me it's "what kept [the show] from being great?" Sure, Weakest Link had a high trivia per minute ratio, but frequently the contestants were risk-averse dunderheads playing for a relative pittance and casting out the strong players who could build the pot (but then they'd win it.) Tattletales is an interesting enough idea for people who care about celebrity gossip, but I'm not in that wheelhouse. Win, Lose or Draw was ubiquitous but there were so many other good shows that I put ahead of it. Twenty-one's revival could have been good if not great, but they decided too many times to stay on the beaten path: questions that were more pop culture than general knowledge (at least that's what I remember), silly tropes of the times, far too much money for too little work and a network that didn't really let the show grow into itself. The live orchestra was an elegant touch, but in a genre where we're constantly looking for a show to have a one-line elevator pitch, it was just another quiz show throwing around bundles of Benjamins.
-
From what I remember, Maury's Twenty One did pretty well in the ratings (I think it was Top 30), but NBC wanted a Millionaire killer. Had they waited a little longer, and stopped spoiling results in advance, it might've worked. The format changed quite a bit too, IIRC.
-
First of all, I want to thank Scott for running this poll, and also Jason for his commentary.
Forty-eight of you voted, and I'm here with the results.
There was a big drop in the number of voters compared to the 2006 poll, which had 80 participants. (I missed the 2006 poll at the time because I wasn't active on the board.) The drop in participation probably has something to do with the fact that membership in the board has been closed for a couple of years. While I appreciate the desire to keep trolls away, I doubt we'll be able to run a meaningful poll 10 years from now unless we open up the board to additional members.
-
For me it's "what kept [the show] from being great?" Sure, Weakest Link had a high trivia per minute ratio, but frequently the contestants were risk-averse dunderheads playing for a relative pittance and casting out the strong players who could build the pot (but then they'd win it.)
Heaven forbid there be a system to get rid of unlikable, cantankerous personalities. Maybe play some strategy instead and try not to be a show off know-it-all. Perhaps they weren't as big of a dunderhead as you suggest.
-
You can be smart and not be an unlikeable, cantankerous personality. (Ken Jennings.)
-
Since the 2006 poll indicated what years the shows that ranked in the poll aired, I'm going to provide that info here. This will help show what eras the shows we liked most were from. (Hopefully Scott will take over providing this information.)
If there are any errors in these dates, please feel free to provide a correction.
50. Weakest Link (2001-2003)
49. College Bowl (1959-1970, 1987, 1990-1995) (including Campus All-Star Challenge)
48. Win, Lose or Draw (1987-1992, 2014)
47. Tattletales (1969-1970, 1974-1978, 1982-1984) (including He Said, She Said)
46. Twenty One (1956-1958, 2000)
-
I'm deliberately leaving out years and variant titles (unless relevant to the results) in an effort to balance clarity and brevity. For example, I don't want the Password and Pyramid entries to be overwhelmed by a string of titles and date ranges -- there are enough numbers being presented already. We're game show fans; we know what Win, Lose or Draw means.
I don't mind if you want to keep track of that information, though if 2006's results are any indication, the most popular shows will not be limited to one specific era.
-
Actually, if I had to put forward a theory: In 2006, as the poll was beginning, there was discussion and debate about which titles would and wouldn't be considered the same show. Matt mentioned that he would be combining Tattletales and He Said, She Said -- which makes sense to mention, since what Tattletales is best known for bears little relation to its predecessor -- but I'm wondering if that clarification put the show in people's minds and led to them placing it on their ballots.
That makes a lot of sense -- and makes me feel a little sheepish for potentially skewing the results like that. Still, I'm glad it's on the list. It's a personal favorite, and even though it's so much a product of its era, I'd still like somebody to take a shot at reviving it.
-
For me it's "what kept [the show] from being great?" Sure, Weakest Link had a high trivia per minute ratio, but frequently the contestants were risk-averse dunderheads playing for a relative pittance and casting out the strong players who could build the pot (but then they'd win it.)
Heaven forbid there be a system to get rid of unlikable, cantankerous personalities. Maybe play some strategy instead and try not to be a show off know-it-all. Perhaps they weren't as big of a dunderhead as you suggest.
Then they deserved the pittance they got.
It really wasn't that hard to put together a string of enough answers to reach and bank the target. Why was it that only the contestants on the syndicated series could figure that out?
I don't know about you but I want to keep the best player on my team because with him, or her, I have the best chance to maximize my potential prize. That way if I'm lucky enough to get to the final round with him/her and win, I've beaten the best player and reap the proper reward.
-
Heaven forbid there be a system to get rid of unlikable, cantankerous personalities.
Why would you want to get rid of them? Who else would you root for?
Given that the survey is an opinion piece I registered my opinion as to what things made it so that Weakest Link wasn't in my top 50. I enjoyed the show (especially with George Gray) and watched when it wasn't in conflict with something else) but there were too many quibbles to rank it. When the two finalists are clawing over a thousand dollars that doesn't fill me with excitement. (Now on the other hand, the weeks they did when they had family members competing for the prize fund were the most interesting and exciting to me.) The people who decided to put Weakest Link on their list obviously had good reasons for it, and they're certainly welcome to share if they like--I'll disagree and I may ask them questions, but I won't look down at them for it. One person doing that in this thread is plenty enough.
-
It really wasn't that hard to put together a string of enough answers to reach and bank the target. Why was it that only the contestants on the syndicated series could figure that out?
Probably because stringing six independent events together is easier than eight, and I imagine the people who had gone on the syndie version were probably a little more well-versed with how the game worked than the network players who came before them.
Also, when it got down to the Round of Three, was the difference between strongest and weakest players always so vast that it wasn't worth taking fewer bucks for a better shot at winning?
-
I never got past typing out a list of 50-ish of my favorite games and then having no idea how to rank them (for the most part), but I did have Weakest Link on that list, and would probably rank it somewhere in the 35-50 range. It is possible that my ranking is colored by the British version, and I know that's something we're supposed to exclude from consideration for this. I really did enjoy the format and the gameplay, and the fact that between the groan-inducing backstabbing zingers, there was a heck of a lot of trivia content per hour. I would have liked to see George Gray get a crack at an hour-long version - condescending wiseass worked a lot better for me in the domestic version than disciplinarian schoolmarm.
-
For me it's "what kept [the show] from being great?" Sure, Weakest Link had a high trivia per minute ratio, but frequently the contestants were risk-averse dunderheads playing for a relative pittance and casting out the strong players who could build the pot (but then they'd win it.)
Heaven forbid there be a system to get rid of unlikable, cantankerous personalities. Maybe play some strategy instead and try not to be a show off know-it-all. Perhaps they weren't as big of a dunderhead as you suggest.
I think voting off the Strongest Link was a decision made by a small bloc of players before the show (as they were allowed to do). I don't think a group of people would make that collective decision on stage and/or base it on "know-it-all"ness.
Weakest Link fell out of my top 50 when I tried to watch a refresher episode and Anne started explaining "round five, team..." I was beyond checked out. Too much of the same thing. Win, Lose or Draw also did not make my top 50. I think it was the right show at the right time, but not "Great."
-Jason
-
Weakest Link fell out of my top 50 when I tried to watch a refresher episode and Anne started explaining "round five, team..." I was beyond checked out. Too much of the same thing. Win, Lose or Draw also did not make my top 50. I think it was the right show at the right time, but not "Great."
A big problem I had with the NBC version was that even though the game was progressing it didn't feel like that because rarely did the teams pile up some serious money to play for (as a percentage of the maximum) so it had to rely on the host caricature and the catty remarks that were old after once around the horn. When teams are routinely playing for a prize of $50,000 to $75,000 because they either can't reach the last rungs of the ladder or the players bank after every other right answer it loses quite a lot.
I think that the half-hour version with five rounds (including a double-stakes round five as an incentive to keep theS-M-R-T folks around) was about as good as you could ask for with that format and if the syndicated version was all we had to vote on I would rate it more favorably. I don't think it would make it to Greatness as we're defining it, but there y'are.
-
Heaven forbid there be a system to get rid of unlikable, cantankerous personalities.
Now THIS, folks. THIS is actually irony.
-
I think if we just left the first syndicated season alone and unfucked with, I might've been more inclined to rank Weakest Link higher than I did (I don't remember where it was the first time but I had it in my bottom six this time). The network edition was just a slog and didn't work as the full hour, and I felt the syndicated version had a better flow to it.
That said, the second season just did so much wrong by eliminating that last round. Okay, I get it. They wanted to increase the top prize to six figures. That's all well and good.
But by cutting out that last round, now the game just came to an abrupt stop. I built up the interest over four rounds and now everything just ends? And the strongest player is probably gonna get the boot on top of that because the other two are insecure?
And don't get me started on the change in demeanor George exhibited during much of that season. "Yeah, I'm back, and so are we, but Meredith Vieira is in most of my timeslots from last season and the ratings are in the toilet, so let me see how long it is before people notice I'm phoning it in and just waiting for the pink slip."
/okay, maybe that's exaggerating a tick
//still, though, it didn't feel right
-
That said, the second season just did so much wrong by eliminating that last round. Okay, I get it. They wanted to increase the top prize to six figures. That's all well and good.
My recollection was that they cut out a round to get more banter/jokes in.
-Jason
-
That said, the second season just did so much wrong by eliminating that last round. Okay, I get it. They wanted to increase the top prize to six figures. That's all well and good.
My recollection was that they cut out a round to get more banter/jokes in.
-Jason
It still wasn't a smart move any way you cut it...and was there really an increase in the conversations? I really didn't notice a difference.
-
There was a lot more time spent between rounds, yes. What's astonishing is that teams would bank before reaching the $25,000 level. What's the point?
-
There was a lot more time spent between rounds, yes. What's astonishing is that teams would bank before reaching the $25,000 level. What's the point?
And herein, I think, lies the overall problem with the Weakest Link format.
Because instead of focusing on your target like you should be, now you're in a position you never should be in...do I have enough confidence in my own abilities to answer the next random ass question they came up with and keep us on target or do I try to save face and get us something out of the exercise, hopefully scoring brownie points with the rest of team and make them more inclined to keep me around even though none of us have any idea what direction the game is going to take?
That might have been the whole point of putting the wrinkle into the game in the first place but all it accomplished was to show some people are bigger wusses than others. Which I doubt they were going for.
ETA: actually, now that I think about it, maybe they were going for that after all...
-
Heaven forbid there be a system to get rid of unlikable, cantankerous personalities.
Why would you want to get rid of them? Who else would you root for?
I specifically remember a fireman's episode with a guy that was a complete prick the entire time he was on the stage. And for you to think "I'm looking down on people" is something I thought would never happen when defending Weakest Link's voting rules.
-
45. Russian Roulette
352 points; 17 votes
2006 ranking: 54
Scott: I would have predicted that if anything, this show would have dropped further down the list now that it's been over ten years since it's aired. I won't deny that it's one of the better GSN originals, although I personally never liked how often the outcome was decided by the time's up signal. Maybe Who's Still Standing? has made our memories of this show even fonder?
Jason: That makes sense. I never thought I'd have to say "Russian Roulette was the best 'fall through the floor' game show." I think another point in its favor was showing the game show audience Mark Walberg's talents outside of Shop 'Til You Drop & USA Network.
44. The $64,000/$128,000 Question
359 points; 14 votes
2006 ranking: 33
Jason: We talked about scandal-era shows already, but this show's repeated inclusion & outranking over Twenty One surprises me personally. I've watched episodes from both American versions, as well as the British one. I get the same effect of watching sports game shows as a non-sports fan: I can't play along with the material. Other shows that did "specialized subjects" for players kept it confined enough to work for me. By the time it became Alex Trebek's show, they took away a lot of the pageantry that made it unique.
Scott: I know I've had my opportunity to talk about not including the rigged shows on my ballot, but I just want to say: Does Lance Armstrong deserve to be on a list of the 50 greatest cyclists of all time?
43. You Bet Your Life
383 points; 18 votes
2006 ranking: 36
Jason: I'm sure these points are for "the one, the only, GROUCHO!!" I expect a heated debate on whether we like the couples betting on each question, or picking cards from George's tray.
Scott: Nail on the head. As a percentage of ballots cast, You Bet Your Life received fewer votes this time around (37.5% versus 48.75%), but it still received enough to stay in the top fifty. For lack of any other observations, I'll note that two of its more game show-y elements did have some residual lasting impact on pop culture in the ensuing years: "Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?" and the duck with the secret word.
T41. Deal or No Deal
417 points; 23 votes
2006 ranking: 44
Scott: So much for me wondering what would happen to this show. Apparently it would actually move up two or three places.
Jason: On this board, the network run got a lot of criticism for all the stunts, but I know the game itself still has its fans, especially with the versions in other countries. For the math-minded among us, there's lots to take in on Deal or No Deal. If your game show enjoyment comes from schadenfreude, the American version was a veritable buffet. In talking over the list candidates before the vote, one fan suggested to me that Deal or No Deal takes the hit for all the copied production style & formats that came in its wake, which seems plausible to me. Had they brought back Yahtzee in 2006, each team would have their family on stage to talk about why they chose to freeze fours over fives.
T41. Jackpot
417 points; 23 votes
2006 ranking: 30
Jason: It's a real shame there's not more of the original NBC run to watch. I don't know how you think to assemble 15 people, each holding a wallet that contains a riddle, hoping to match like digits in an accumulating pot so you can go for gobs & gobs of money, but Bob Stewart did.
Scott: The 11-place ranking drop is interesting. I wonder whether this is a show that suffered from video being more readily available. I know that in my case, in 2006, I placed this show on my ballot mostly out of an obligatory sense of, "I remember this show from my youth, and no one ever really says anything disparaging about it, so it was probably pretty good." This year, I watched the show again, and, well... like you said, it certainly was unique.
-
Are you overthinking the drop of Tattletales and Jackpot. So far they had the largest drop in voters -27 and -28. The average ranking for those that voted for jackpot was the same 33.
It appears that people that did not vote this time favored mid 70s shows last time.
-
Are Tattletales and Newlywed Game considered different shows? I know they share the same format.
-
Just curious, how many shows will you be counting down at a time? It's 5 a day, correct?
-
Actually, if I had to put forward a theory: In 2006, as the poll was beginning, there was discussion and debate about which titles would and wouldn't be considered the same show. Matt mentioned that he would be combining Tattletales and He Said, She Said -- which makes sense to mention, since what Tattletales is best known for bears little relation to its predecessor -- but I'm wondering if that clarification put the show in people's minds and led to them placing it on their ballots.
That makes a lot of sense -- and makes me feel a little sheepish for potentially skewing the results like that. Still, I'm glad it's on the list. It's a personal favorite, and even though it's so much a product of its era, I'd still like somebody to take a shot at reviving it.
I guess I should have voted on this, huh?
I would throw a suggestion out: most of the Tattletales episodes I saw on Buzzr were from the first few months of the run, with lockout buzzer questions rather than all Tattletales Quickies. I'm sure there was some resistance to going to all Quickies (because, frankly, it made the show more like Celebrity Newlywed Game), but the show actually worked a lot better. Maybe having more frequently exposure to only the first format skewed opinions a bit.
-
I would throw a suggestion out: most of the Tattletales episodes I saw on Buzzr were from the first few months of the run, with lockout buzzer questions rather than all Tattletales Quickies. (...) Maybe having more frequently exposure to only the first format skewed opinions a bit.
I like that reason. I didn't like that format on He Said, She Said either, but it was even sillier with 3 couples & the often reduced chances at playing on the same prompt.
-Jason
-
Could it be that the voters who left it off discovered however many other shows in the last ten years that they think are great-er? I know I listed Russian Roulette last time and didn't this time because while the net stayed the same size the lake had more fish that I was aware of. (Nobody is going to put YBYLife on the list because of the scintillating quiz material, I put it there because Groucho Marx was blisteringly funny in the episode I found to watch.)
-
Just curious, how many shows will you be counting down at a time? It's 5 a day, correct?
Five shows roughly every couple of days, to allow time for discussion to take place in between results.
-
Bill Cosby's stock has fallen in the last year, so it's understandable that YBYL did not get as many votes. The Groucho version still remains excellent. As time goes by, memories fade, so my 70's favorites (Jackpot!) probably won't get the votes. Jackpot was one show that, after the rules are explained, could be played without a host :)
-
Are Tattletales and Newlywed Game considered different shows? I know they share the same format.
You really are adorable.
-
Bill Cosby's stock has fallen in the last year, so it's understandable that YBYL did not get as many votes.
This shtick is really getting kinda old.
-
I still like Tattletales a lot, but I didn't rank it as high this time. I guess in 10 years my overall opinions of some of these shows has changed a bit - not that I think it's worse, but just that I now think certain other shows were better overall.
Jackpot made my list but it's one of those shows that I got burned out on after a while. I watched the '70s version almost every day while home from school at lunch (although I have no memory of the format change) I watched the USA version almost every day for the first two years, but by the third year I just lost a lot of interest in it. The '89 syndicated version wasn't carried in my area.
There are many factors in determining which shows to rank at the top, but the shows that lost my interest at some point generally ranked closer to the bottom of my list.
-
I wanted to address one thing about Weakest Link and Twenty-one before they got too far upthread. One thing about Weakest Link for me is that the voting didn't feel as emotionally powerful. On Survivor you get to see the players as they progress throughout the game, on Link it's eight people thrown together and off they go. On Survivor a contestant on the short end of an alliance can scramble, win challenges, find pocket immunities or exploit cracks in the opposition. On Weakest Link there's none of those options. The voting is a means to an end but frequently the answer to the question "So why did you vote for Jane?" is "she got her questions wrong and she's in the other alliance." Whee.
One thing Jason mentioned is that I wish the revival of Twenty-one had done some things to distinguish itself from the other game shows that had come out in that time period. Similarly to how Sale of the Century constantly asked players how far they were willing to back themselves and to walk the tightrope of risk and reward, no game quite like Twenty-one could play up the psychological element of being left in the dark except for those brief moments when Maury comes into view. If you're playing for $5,000 a point, that could have made for some great television, especially if the show had done away with strikes and second chances and just left the contestants to do battle over some difficult (but not absurdly so) questions for twenty or thirty minutes, and I think folks who were watching the other game shows would have stood by it.
-
Yeah, when I found out about the original format of Twenty-One, my reaction was, "Man, I would love to see that played for real." NBC's desires to mimic the hooks of WWTBAM and give away a million bucks to somebody as soon as possible (then drop the prize money for the first two wins by 75%) really weakened the effort. To further Travis' example, how about after a few ties, when the stake is up to $25,000 a point, and one of the contestants is definitely not playing with house money? That's fantastic drama, good television, and a good game.
I also want to know what gameplay genius found it necessary to append a bonus round that would be worth less than the front game by a player's third win.
-
Jackpot made my list but it's one of those shows that I got burned out on after a while. I watched the '70s version almost every day while home from school at lunch (although I have no memory of the format change) I watched the USA version almost every day for the first two years, but by the third year I just lost a lot of interest in it. The '89 syndicated version wasn't carried in my area.
Gee I thought we were the only school that went home for lunch and yes Jackpot was how I spent my lunch hour and often discussing it on the bus ride back to school.
Tattletales was my rush home from school game show. At first I did not liek to the swithc to all "qiuickies" but soon realized it did work better as all couples got to contribute to every question.
As for Matt's suggestion for a revival maybe someone at ABC or freemantle is reading. If ABC wanted to expand next summer a night of To Tell the Truth, Tattletales, and Match Game could a lot of fun. As a short term thing might easier to couples to agree.
-
As for Matt's suggestion for a revival maybe someone at ABC or freemantle is reading. If ABC wanted to expand next summer a night of To Tell the Truth, Tattletales, and Match Game could a lot of fun. As a short term thing might easier to couples to agree.
IIRC, FremantleMedia has, in recent years, been working on a remake of Tattletales, but under the title of the original format--He Said, She Said!
-
YBYL is so identified with and crafted for Groucho that never once in my voting did the Buddy Hackett or Cosby versions even come to mind. Guidel used the idea of a quiz to sell networks on the idea of giving Groucho a place to wisecrack with contestants. YBYL was only 5% about watching an actual game being played. YBYL, Hollywood Squares, and Match Game 7X were all about one thing - waiting to hear what was going to come out of a star's mouth. In this case, Groucho's. The later title - The Groucho Show - was probably the most accurate. It always was that, but Groucho having been a flop several times on radio, Guidel had to break through network and sponsor resistance with a catchy title and a proven format. The initial game format itself might have barely passed as a radio daytimer with someone like Cullen. Or, in TV's case, 50s Strike It Rich. Even Strike It Rich depended on contestant sob stories. Asking people to simply wager on 4 or 5 questions just isn't much of a game. It was all Groucho, as the rapid failure of reboots proved.
-
For those who may be interested, here are the years of the shows:
45. Russian Roulette (2002-2003)
44. The $64,000/$128,000 Question (1955-1958, 1976-1978)
43. You Bet Your Life (1950-1961, 1980-1981, 1992-1993)
T41. Deal or No Deal (2005-2010)
T41. Jackpot (1974-1975, 1985-1988, 1989-1990)
-
I'm still curious to hear from the people who voted for 64k/128k Question. Did the Darow/Trebek show have its fans?
-Jason
-
I'm still curious to hear from the people who voted for 64k/128k Question. Did the Darow/Trebek show have its fans?
-Jason
Count me as one. The series made my list at 39.
I don't know how much higher I might've ranked it but while I liked the tension that was present the deeper you went, I also felt there were elements that kept it from advancing higher. The gimmicks in the first season were big ones for me.
-
I'm still curious to hear from the people who voted for 64k/128k Question. Did the Darow/Trebek show have its fans?
I didn't vote for either version either time, mainly because my only exposure to the show was bits and pieces. Tonight, I watched most of one Dar(r)ow and most of one Trebek episode, and thought it was okay. Of course, I got Millionaire vibes, and while I liked the presentation from Dar(r)ow's version - early questions on the typewriter, mid-level questions on a monitor - I think the chrome took away from the Big Money.
So my nod goes to Trebek for that one. He seemed to pick up right where he left off from Double Dare.
-
40. Treasure Hunt
472 points; 24 votes
2006 ranking: 45
Scott: Last time, Deal or No Deal and Treasure Hunt, two shows about a blind choice from a large number of containers, ranked right next to one another at #44 and #45. This time, they rank right next to one another at #40 and #41.
Jason: Ooh, statistical anomalies. (That was probably the title of a Bob Stewart pilot.) This is not a show we've talked about much lately, but it clearly left enough of an impression on the voters to make the top 50 again. It can't be a total coincidence they've traveled together in both years, right? Did Treasure Hunt fans rank Deal or No Deal as well? In the same relative place on the list? They were near each other in the 40s on mine.
Scott: For a couple of voters, the two shows were relatively close; for a few others, they were pretty far apart. But the majority of people who voted for Treasure Hunt did not also vote for Deal or No Deal. That's interesting.
Jason: They definitely cater to different tastes. Most of the time, the Chuck Barris sense of humor is right up my alley. It would have to be to sit through all of Treasure Hunt's prize plugs. It's great looking back on the cream of the crop in excitable contestants, who go nuts with every new surprise or every extra $100 they get from Geoff.
39. The Gong Show
478 points; 27 votes
2006 ranking: 39
Jason: At #39, Chuckie Baby managed to follow himself up with The Gong Show in a same-place finish from the 2006 list! There was a bit of a debate last time, as I recall, over what constituted a game show. Do you think this show passes the test? Is there a test??
Scott: If it was introduced today, I'm sure it would be categorized as a "talent competition" along with the likes of American Idol, but those types of shows weren't as readily available in the 1970s. And The Gong Show was presented with enough of the same trappings that game shows had that I've always categorized it as a game show. People compete and the winner gets a cash prize? Sure, it's a game show, why not.
Jason: I agree. I subscribe to the "I know a game show when I see one" metric. I didn't appreciate this show until recently, when I finally sat down to a wider array of episodes. I've long put Gong Show on a shortlist of shows that were products of their time & the great chemistry they found, never to be duplicated, nor even approached with a new version. But ABC managed to do a version of Match Game in 2016 that, in my opinion, finally showed the right mix can be found again. So maybe Gong Show has hope in the future. Between pilots & short-lived series, Don Bleu, Tom Arnold, George Gray, Jeffrey Ross & Dave Attell were all at the center of their own Gong, but none of those really stuck.
Scott: It seems to me that America's Got Talent, especially during the audition episodes, is a spiritual successor to The Gong Show, although America's Got Talent takes itself a lot more seriously.
38. Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?
480 points; 21 votes
2006 ranking: 53
Scott: Now here's a generational choice. I'm not saying that only people approximately my age voted for this show -- in fact, I know that to be untrue -- but this is a show which would not be in the top fifty this year if the majority of voters weren't approximately my age. As a kid, I absolutely loved this show and all of its crazy antics and sketches. I desperately wanted to be a contestant -- I don't think it fully occurred to me that I would actually have to know things about geography if I was on the show. Still, this is the show which taught me where several countries are on the map, and that the Chief had to list all of the countries in South America every time because there were only 13 of them.
Jason: I'm about to use a term I'm not a big fan of, but this show was *produced*. I appreciate it on a different level now. Their computer graphics during the main questions were very slick. Rockapella frequently had new songs. The culprits had unique cartoons for each episode's story. And of course, the endgame was a map that took up most of the studio floor, and they were great at judging it live.
Scott: I think it's possible for a viewer to subconsciously feel the difference between when a show is trying to make it look like everybody is having fun versus when everybody on the show genuinely is having fun. And maybe they were able to fool me, but that looked like a pretty fun show to work on.
37. Remote Control
521 points; 27 votes
2006 ranking: T47
Scott: And here's another show, fondly remembered by those who were young in the 1980s, which jumps up a whole bunch of places. You know, this is one of the earliest MTV shows in which the vast majority of the focus wasn't on music or music videos. So in a way, Remote Control led the march toward the meaninglessness of the M in MTV.
Jason: Right; although, when VH1 Classic flipped to MTV Classic this year, it wasn't just our crowd that was clamoring for Remote Control to be seen again. Music was always part of the game, and I think the show's sensibility fit in with the rest of the network at the time. This was another show on my "chemistry" shortlist mentioned above. Unlike the others, though, Remote Control was trying to find its voice in the presentation department - the sense of humor & personalities were always there. Ken Ober's tossed-off hosting comes across as seasoned compared to what we got in the ensuing decades. He & Colin Quinn are just what the doctor ordered when it comes to this format. Watching back, I'm also amused by Steve Trecasse's music. He managed to drop in many obscure TV melodies from his keyboard, including several that should make a game show fan smile.
36. Lingo
561 points; 30 votes
2006 ranking: 35
Scott: Just try to watch this show without shouting at your screen. I dare you. Based on how little Lingo was discussed on the newsgroup before 2002, I suspect that the GSN version (the Woolery version) is what's kept this show on our list both times.
Jason: I think Chuck's Lingo could have been a new classic in syndication if they had decided to branch out. The GSN version got better with each season, as they put more money into the set, and freed up Chuck from a lot of business by giving him co-hosts. The return of an escalating jackpot to game shows, with continuity between episodes, was very encouraging. Just imagine if Lingo had its own app at the time. This is a show where the game play alone - the five-letter words - should manage to keep it in the top 50.
-
It's always an inevitability at any job I've ever held that eventually the object of my unabashed nerdiness and geekiness is discovered, and there's always a talk about my coworkers favorite show.
At a hotel I worked at for a time, last year, most of my coworkers were somewhere between my age and 45. And overwhelmingly the one show EVERYONE remembered, loved, and wanted to see again? Remote Control.
I'd seen one or two lower quality "trading circuit" multi-generation dubs of the show ten years ago, but since then have sought out as much footage as I can. It's a magnificent show, and one I only now truly appreciate.
-
I can take or leave Deal or No Deal and Gong Show, but for the other three? Nice work, polling group. Well done.
-
Treasure Hunt was one of those shows where the host really meant a lot. Geoff Edwards found a way to control the usually rowdy contestants and draw out the reveals perfectly so that it didn't matter what was in the box. US Deal or No Deal sort of works the same way, but it didn't have the right atmosphere and fell into a hole of gimmicks.
-
So glad Carmen Sandiego made it. I am not the target age but my daughter was and I watched it with her. It was delightful.
Treasure Hunt was the last added last and first to drop this time. At least on Deal or No Deal you need to be able to do athrimatic.
So of the old list 34 of the top 40 remain.
So the remaining suspense where will Cash Cab finish?
-
40. Treasure Hunt (1956-1959, 1973-1977, 1981-1982)
39. The Gong Show (1976-1980, 1988-1989, 1998-1999, 2008)
38. Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (1991-1995, 1996-1997) (including Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?)
37. Remote Control (1987-1990)
36. Lingo (1987-1988, 2002-2007, 2011)
-
38. Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?
480 points; 21 votes
2006 ranking: 53
Scott: Now here's a generational choice. I'm not saying that only people approximately my age voted for this show -- in fact, I know that to be untrue -- but this is a show which would not be in the top fifty this year if the majority of voters weren't approximately my age.
37. Remote Control
521 points; 27 votes
2006 ranking: T47
Scott: And here's another show, fondly remembered by those who were young in the 1980s, which jumps up a whole bunch of places.
There was certainly a generational factor for me. Remote Control debuted when I was in high school, and I thought it was great. (I remember that I once wrote a fall TV preview for my high school newspaper in which I said that Jeopardy and Remote Control were the best game shows on the air at the time.) I hadn't seen Remote Control in a long time, but I still ranked it at #25 on my list this time.
Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego debuted when I was in college, and I was vaguely aware that a TV show by that title existed. I once saw part of one episode on YouTube. That still represents my entire experience with the show to date.
-
I'm amazed, if not appalled that I never included Lingo on either list. It was a fun little show, very underrated IMO.
-
I'm amazed, if not appalled that I never included Lingo on either list. It was a fun little show, very underrated IMO.
I would argue that it's rated precisely where it should be. ;)
-
I rated Idiot Savants last time but not Remote Control last time because I liked the heavier quiz questions. Ten years later I realize that there's more to the picture than just what's on the index cards: there's the mood, there's the presentation and the fun factor. Do I think Idiot Savants could make it five years if it was treated well by MTV? No, I think one that's done simply and with the right amount of whimsy and silliness could, and it did.
One thing that I wish our version of Deal or No Deal did, but couldn't by casting cartoonish caricatures for contestants and a comedian as host is to really delve into what the money means. Not so much as Noel Edmonds did, but when you're pondering an offer that has three digits before the comma, that's time to have a think about it and not to listen to the Family Bullpen braying about how you have the million in your case so no deal. Do the show twice a week once a year, have some sort of play in to choose the contestant and fill out the hour without resorting to buffoonery, and treat the game with a bit more serious and I do think it could have been up there with the versions we revere. They didn't, so we don't.
-
I'm amazed, if not appalled that I never included Lingo on either list. It was a fun little show, very underrated IMO.
I would argue that it's rated precisely where it should be. ;)
I meant in general, not for the poll. Yes, its position is perfect...I think most of my final 10 were short-lived or underrated gems.
-
Count me as one of the voters who had Treasure Hunt on the list but not Deal or No Deal.
I must admit that when Deal or No Deal started, I was really into it for a while, but I lost interest for many of the reasons discussed on this forum in the past. For Treasure Hunt, the viewer never knew what was in the box or how it would be revealed until the very end - that's one reason I kept coming back to the show every week. I had it i the lower 20s.
Lingo and Gong Show were approximately in the same positions on my list as the results list.
-
I would guess I had GONG higher than everyone else, but I did have it much lower than I did 10 years ago.
-
I was surprised I didn't have Lingo on my list but I think what kept it off was how broken I felt the original was.
-
I was surprised I didn't have Lingo on my list but I think what kept it off was how broken I felt the original was.
Each version has things I wish they would have done differently. (You have Chuck Woolery as host. Why on earth do you not have a $500 bonus for a first-line guess, counted out in Chuck Bucks. Honestly.) But man, so much play along.
-
You certainly can't argue against the play along factor Lingo has. I wouldn't. :)
-
I just thought of something.
To me, where Lingo failed the most was its bonus round. The No Lingo round was just so drawn out and long, the Bonus Lingo round was kind of anticlimactic once a team got past the first draw because unless they either had the worst luck ever or choked bad in the 2:00 sprint, they were drawing out the inevitable $5K win. And the most recent edition gave away too much money for its own good.
I wonder if a round like the original Catch Phrase bonus could work. Where you start with a blank card and each square conceals a word and lines made using the center pay higher bonuses.
-
Two minutes is pretty long for a timed bonus round. I think cutting the Bonus Lingo to a 1:00 (or even :30/:45 round) makes things less anticlimactic. To allow a few more words, maybe only give the contestants three guesses?
Of course, that might still give the team just as many chances to rack up a bunch of words, but my brain is fried and not in Armchair Producer mode. :P
-
I was surprised I didn't have Lingo on my list but I think what kept it off was how broken I felt the original was.
See, same can be said for DoND, too. The US version was completely farked up beyond measure, and is a large contributing factor towards my contempt for the game. But if you go to Australia or the UK, it's actually relatively watchable. (Or even the Netherlands treating it like the lottery show it really is.)
So I probably would have buried it further than I would have expected to based on the US treatment. (Make no mistake, I don't think it's a great game anyhow. It's an okay lottery format, but a lousy game.)
-
I was surprised I didn't have Lingo on my list but I think what kept it off was how broken I felt the original was.
See, same can be said for DoND, too. The US version was completely farked up beyond measure, and is a large contributing factor towards my contempt for the game. But if you go to Australia or the UK, it's actually relatively watchable. (Or even the Netherlands treating it like the lottery show it really is.)
This.
I put Deal on my list purely due to the strength of the UK version. It was more style over substance for sure. However the UK version - if you stuck with it for x number of days on end - allowed somewhat of a rooting section for these players. That being said I wasn't a fan of Box 23 - too much of an add-on.
I should mention the (original) French version had the same kind of vibe as the UK version. I saw an episode where there was a small value and the top prize left in play and the contestant was offered progressively two or three ascending offers when left with these two boxes - something like 60%, then 65% of the top prize. It was brilliantly done, and I only wish it was still kicking around on YouTube because it really showed what the format could be.
Ryan.
-
The French version (which would have taken the Italian version as inspiration) was probably my absolute favourite version of the show, tense and usually quite funny, with killer choices of background music from TV and film. Then they Americanized the set and game and it wasn't quite so good.
-
I just thought of something.
To me, where Lingo failed the most was its bonus round. The No Lingo round was just so drawn out and long, the Bonus Lingo round was kind of anticlimactic once a team got past the first draw because unless they either had the worst luck ever or choked bad in the 2:00 sprint, they were drawing out the inevitable $5K win. And the most recent edition gave away too much money for its own good.
I wonder if a round like the original Catch Phrase bonus could work. Where you start with a blank card and each square conceals a word and lines made using the center pay higher bonuses.
On the Woolery version, once they got to around 5 or 6, it was mathematically impossible NOT to win the bonus round. I agree with other posters that maybe 60 or 90 seconds would have been better.
-
10 was the threshold.
-
^Which is why, on at least one occasion, they ended the bonus game early.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO3mqsyOTnk
-
^Which is why, on at least one occasion, they ended the bonus game early.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO3mqsyOTnk
Anybody think alternating guesses would have been more entertaining?
-
On the Woolery version, once they got to around 5 or 6, it was mathematically impossible NOT to win the bonus round.
I think I remember someone figuring out that the exact number was nine, which made me wonder why they bothered with a tenth word, since it was totally meaningless. The nerd in me always wanted there to be a rule that if you got all 10 words, you won the $10,000/jackpot automatically...it would have rewarded unusually good players and cut out a lot of unnecessary ball-drawing.
-
On the Woolery version, once they got to around 5 or 6, it was mathematically impossible NOT to win the bonus round.
I think I remember someone figuring out that the exact number was nine, which made me wonder why they bothered with a tenth word, since it was totally meaningless. The nerd in me always wanted there to be a rule that if you got all 10 words, you won the $10,000/jackpot automatically...it would have rewarded unusually good players and cut out a lot of unnecessary ball-drawing.
Less than nine. You could have 20 balls on the board without a Lingo (12 spotted plus 8 earned), but only if there was a clear diagonal. And since they give them the center ball, it couldn't have been more than seven.
-
Huh. That's even goofier, then.
-
Here's (http://imgur.com/qDdr4ad) a recreation of the Bonus Lingo board (sans numbers) I made using the one pattern they used from S2 onward, and this (http://imgur.com/AHDUizT) is what I believe to be as close as you can get without getting a Lingo, covering
8 7 of the "numbers". Can anyone get it any closer than that?
EDIT: Yup, damn "G" column. Fixing.
EDIT 2: Looks like it is 7 after all.
-
But for the vertical lingo in the G column.
-
That is the kind of takedown that we teach at the police academy, sir.
Quick and efficient.
-
So, yeah, seven.
-
35. The Who, What or Where Game / The Challengers
563 points; 23 votes
2006 ranking: 37
Scott: This is the only ranking which really benefited from the combination ruling. There were a few votes for these two shows as a pair (from voters who remembered the ruling in 2006) and there were a few votes for The Who, What or Where Game, but the majority of votes were for The Challengers. If the two titles had been separated, The Challengers probably would have still made the list, but I don't think The Who, What or Where Game would have.
Jason: The Who, What or Where Game is another in our thankfully-shrinking list of shows with very little surviving video. Given what other gems have been discovered in the past decade, and the fact it ran for about 4 years, I hold out hope we've still got at least another episode of it to see. The 3 Ws is very interesting in that it's a genuine trivia competition between three players that doesn't involve reflexes. If your host adjusts the odds for the dated material, playing the home games shows off what a unique format it had. And The Challengers was long a personal favorite of mine. They added just enough bells & whistles to bring the concept into the '90s.
34. Chain Reaction
586 points; 30 votes
2006 ranking: 32
Jason: Again, Bob Stewart shows us his knack for going to new places in games. Like Lingo, this one found a second life on cable. Do you have a horse in the race when it comes to word association vs. GSN's later adherence to two-word phrases?
Scott: I concede that word association allows the show to use a wider variety of words, but from the perspective of the contestant and home viewer, it also exacerbates the Pass the Buck-esque problem of "your valid guess isn't what we were thinking of." I'm not saying that two-word phrases completely solve the problem (it's a problem which can't be fully solved in this format), but it does make correct answers feel more correct.
Jason: I guess I was never a big fan of knowing the contestants were 100% wrong when their guess was not a widely-accepted two-word phrase.
Scott: Speaking of aspects of the show which hinder contestants' success, what's your opinion on scoring being based on word length as opposed to a flat reward per word?
Jason: The variable scoring never really bothered me on this show. I guess it's like the hidden money behind each answer on Wordplay. I just see it as part of the game. Double score words being included more on USA & GSN would have been a nice marriage of the two. I liked tougher-to-suss-out words to have a bigger reward.
Scott: I suppose I need to remind myself that Chain Reaction was always meant to be one of those shows where contestants go on just to have some fun and play a game. When I get myself into the mentality of "YOU ARE HERE TO WIN AND ONLY TO WIN," it's easy for me to forget.
Jason: This was my spiritual vote for the Go format, as I chose to leave that show off my list this time around.
33. Whew!
599 points; 25 votes
2006 ranking: 38
Scott: If you asked the average person (or magazine, or cable channel) to compile a list of the 50 greatest game shows of all time, it's a near certainty that they wouldn't even think of including Whew!. Yet when you ask the game show fans as a group, they consistently put it on the list. If we do this again in 2026, I bet Whew! still lands somewhere in the thirties.
Jason: I think there's always been lingering speculation - and rightfully so - that our affinity with Whew! was because of how many of us were introduced to it through the late Randy Amasia. I've talked with younger fans who are falling in love with it for the first time on YouTube, who know nothing of that past. Couple that with the fact it actually rose up in the ranks this time, and I'm more confident in saying that Whew! deserves its place. Sure, the game felt skewed in favor of the blocker, but it's so darn fun to watch. I ranked it much higher than 33, but this slot is about as far as a cult hit could or should go in these sort of things.
32. Gambit
620 points; 28 votes
2006 ranking: 50
Scott: This is a surprising jump in the opposite direction. In 2006, only 40% of voters placed Gambit on their ballot. Nobody this year voted for Catch 21 in lieu of Gambit, so that didn't affect the ranking. The only other explanation I can think of is Wink Martindale's YouTube channel bringing new attention to this show.
Jason: That would be my guess as well. Just as other shows' newly-found video made me drop that show down the list, the "new" episodes of Gambit helped me bump it up from my 2006 ballot. I'm a sucker for the Heatter-Quigley pacing. I was not a huge fan of the original Gambit Board endgame, but the added devices attached to prizes on the board helped make it enough of a palate cleanser between games, I guess. Beyond the format being sold off by Merrill, I think another thing keeping Gambit from making a comeback is the shift in what makes a game show these days. There's still not yet a buyer for a speedy new game being done just for game playing's sake. If you tried to make Gambit more "prime time", it could end up looking like a caricature.
31. Now You See It
625 points; 28 votes
2006 ranking: 43
Jason: Outside of Now You See It, word searches have only turned up here & there in game shows, which is surprising to me. Now You See It always had tons of play-along, even while they worked out the kinks on the air. For most fans our age, this was their biggest exposure to Jack Narz, who did a fine job here as he did elsewhere. Had Now You See It come around a bit sooner, and hopefully without the embarrassing-looking turn-your-chairs-around competition, the inevitable revival could have been on a few years sooner. Daytime games were on the way out in 1989, and minor quibbles aside, I liked the Chuck Henry version.
Scott: I'm a sucker for big physical set pieces that light up in interesting ways, so I'm instantly attracted to the original Now You See It board. But yeah, that entire team concept was unnecessary for a show like this. I also agree that the Chuck Henry version had the better rules -- even though the show's fate would have been the same, it's too bad they went with electronic graphics. It just feels wrong for a show -- especially a Goodson show! -- to not have any game boards or score displays on the set. "Now you don't," indeed.
-
I'm pleasantly surprised to see a bunch of old classics move up in the listings compared to last time.
I had Whew in my top 10, but I can understand this placing. I started watching it in June 1979 when school let out for the summer and I was hooked; and the theme music is still my favorite of any game show. Even though there are more than a dozen episodes out there, I'd love to see more!
-
Whew! was not on my list in 2006, never having been exposed to it before. This time around, I ranked it as #11. Everything about it - the set, the music, Tom Kennedy, the format and the material - comes together to make an amazingly good show. I was honestly hoping to see it rank up higher than it did.
-
I'm pleasantly surprised to see a bunch of old classics move up in the listings compared to last time.
I had Whew in my top 10, but I can understand this placing. I started watching it in June 1979 when school let out for the summer and I was hooked; and the theme music is still my favorite of any game show. Even though there are more than a dozen episodes out there, I'd love to see more!
I remember reading here on the forum sometime back about someone having a press kit from The Family Channel's Game Channel venture and it included photos from "Whew!" Makes you wonder if they had plans to play the reruns had the channel made it to air.
-
So from the 2006 list the top 29 all remain plus Truth or #34 Go #40 Break the Bank #42 Dating #47. At least 3 fall off.
It appears the odds of any newer shows making are really long, not even a 3 time emmy winner.
-
35. The Who, What or Where Game / The Challengers (1969-1974, 1990-1991)
34. Chain Reaction (1980, 1986-1991, 2006-2007, 2015-2016)
33. Whew! (1979-1980)
32. Gambit (1972-1976, 1980-1981, 2008-2011) (including Catch 21)
31. Now You See It (1974-1975, 1989)
-
So from the 2006 list the top 29 all remain plus Truth or #34 Go #40 Break the Bank #42 Dating #47. At least 3 fall off.
It appears the odds of any newer shows making are really long, not even a 3 time emmy winner.
Since we have some new shows in the top 50 this time I was starting to wonder which ones fell off. I think what may have hurt them is the lack of video - Break the Bank has had no new episodes surface anywhere since GSN ran about a third of the series in the late '90s; Dating Game hasn't been talked about by us here on the forum in quite a while - so I'm thinking it's unlikely they've moved up that far. As was said earlier, it's probable that Gambit made that big move up because of recent episodes discovered.
I guess memories do fade after a while.
One thing I'm surprised at is that (apparently) You Don't Say hasn't made our list either time. To be fair, I didn't have it on my top 50 either, that must be one of the longest-running shows not to make it. I know it was a pretty big hit in the '60s, but I guess the '70s revivals left us wanting.
-
I didn't actually submit votes, but I would say that Whew! ranks pretty highly for me because it's a less-than-perfect format elevated by excellent production.
Kind of the inverse of US Deal or No Deal, which seems like one of the weaker implementations of an excellent format.
-
One thing I'm surprised at is that (apparently) You Don't Say hasn't made our list either time.
Same reason Hollywood Connection hasn't: the world needs neither a poor man's Password nor a poor man's Match Game.
-
One thing I'm surprised at is that (apparently) You Don't Say hasn't made our list either time. To be fair, I didn't have it on my top 50 either, that must be one of the longest-running shows not to make it.
I found a place for You Don't Say in my top 50 this year, now that I'm much more familiar with it, but the vote was more for the game itself than for the fun of watching the show. Like Go, I've found the gameplay to be divisive with fans - either they love it, or they hate it.
-Jason
-
Whew! was not on my list in 2006, never having been exposed to it before. This time around, I ranked it as #11. Everything about it - the set, the music, Tom Kennedy, the format and the material - comes together to make an amazingly good show. I was honestly hoping to see it rank up higher than it did.
Whew never registered on my radar, and I don't know why. It was such a vibrant and charismatic show, you would think it would've stuck with me.
Whew could've been the excuse I needed to keep The Challengers off my list.
-
So...this list exposed two shows I had at least seen clips of, and for some reason left off both lists. How I missed Whew or Lingo is beyond me.
/Should've bumped Tattletales
-
I know that I saw Whew! in its original run, but over the years I had completely forgotten about what the show was like. Catching up with it on YouTube years later, though, I found it to be a fun show. ("Lox is made by smoking a cigar." "Salmon!") I ranked it #38 on my list.
-
I actually have The Challengers higher on this list than I did on my last and it was pretty high to begin with.
What keeps me from including Whew! on my list is while I do enjoy it and it's a totally inoffensive way to spend a half hour, the format just doesn't do it for me. The idea of setting traps for your opponent is good but the one thing that's always bugged me about the show is that other than that, it's very one-note and there really isn't any room for variety so you can switch things up a little.
-
It's very one-note and there really isn't any room for variety so you can switch things up a little.
Not a big Jeopardy! fan either, eh?
-
It's very one-note and there really isn't any room for variety so you can switch things up a little.
Not a big Jeopardy! fan either, eh?
Apples and oranges.
What Whew! boils down to is that the game is simply 3-4 rounds of "fix the oopsie" and not a whole lot else. Which, while still decent and carrying a good play along factor, just isn't enough for me to put it on my list.
With Jeopardy, you have a few things. One, you have anywhere between 4-6 times the categories that Whew! does and more material to go with it. Two, you have potentially three opportunities during each game to better your position through wagering (not counting Final Jeopardy). Three, answering in the form of a question, a maneuver that turned quizzing on its ear when it was introduced. And four, even though the necessity of its inclusion in the grand scheme of things is debatable, it showed that you could add a bonus round to the format if you desired and not really lose anything.
Whew! was one of several shows that I considered and enjoyed watching but left out for similar reasons. Another prominent example was Three on a Match, which while I liked the basic game premise found it didn't stand out very much either. I didn't have I've Got a Secret on my list either because I feel out of the basic G-T panel games it's not as strong as What's My Line? or To Tell the Truth (which I gained a better appreciation for since last time out). I even felt The Name's the Same was better (and underrated).
-
Good points all on Whew! I came up with a list of 25 greats, one that should have been in the 25, and just listed 25 other favorites that were in no way great, based on how I chose to define "great". I also missed Whew!, and probably for most of the same reasons. Whew! would have been in the favorites. If it were on today, I'd still watch it because the writing was amusing. It's the main reason I watched. The set was well-designed to add dazzle to a simple game. The game itself was not that strong. But I admired how well the producers made so little look so incredible.
-
Same reason Hollywood Connection hasn't: the world needs neither a poor man's Password nor a poor man's Match Game.
Hollywood Connection, despite its unoriginality, was its own unique brand of torture. You Don't Say! was a very pleasant half-hour.
-
Three, answering in the form of a question, a maneuver that turned quizzing on its ear when it was introduced.
I know that's how Merv always said the idea started, and you'd never get rid of it, but it's a novelty that wears off quickly. The blooper format served a purpose, opening it up for humor.
Whew! had flaws--I agree it favored the blocker, and the longshot almost made the other levels pointless--but dang it was exciting and fun. I'd have loved to see it return with fixes, as Second Chance did to become Press Your Luck.
-
I said to Scott when I e-mailed mine that I would probably forget something obvious. WHEW! qualified.
What Whew! boils down to is that the game is simply 3-4 rounds of "fix the oopsie"
Now, had that been WHEW!'s actual title, I might've remembered to include it. :)
-
Yeah, but "a combination guaranteed to make you say fix the oopsie" just doesn't roll as well. :)
-
Hollywood Connection, despite its unoriginality, was its own unique brand of torture. You Don't Say! was a very pleasant half-hour.
The original one, anyway. I sorta kinda liked the 1975 version, but by 1978, I was watching more to play "And You're Famous for What?" with the panel.
I wonder if whoever was programming ABC daytime in 1975 insisted on making their new shows more like Match Game and Hollywood Squares, to their detriment - three new shows with 14 celebrities needed to play each week (on top of the 28 required by the other daily network shows then airing) means you're either seeing the same faces repeatedly or bringing in the owls.
-
30. Win Ben Stein's Money
684 points; 28 votes
2006 ranking: 29
Scott: Win Ben Stein's Money would seem to be an unlikely classic, especially now that it's been 16 years since its heyday (really, does anybody remember this show for any cohost other than Kimmel?). Yet I'm not surprised that it's maintained its position on our list.
Jason: Lest we forget, the show won Emmys in 1999 for Outstanding Game Show & Outstanding Game Show Host for both Ben & Jimmy. Who would have thought a show on Comedy Central starring the teacher from Ferris Bueller & some radio guy from Los Angeles would knock around Jeopardy! in the quiz arena? With time having passed, I forgot how good Ben & Jimmy were at their respective hosting duties. Win Ben Stein's Money was a very solid show that did many details right.
Scott: I wonder how it would have fared if it had been introduced in some other era. Now that the genre is thriving again, it's easy to forget what we had to choose from in the mid- to late 1990s (or maybe it's just best not to think about it). Then along comes a slightly unorthodox game show in which comedy is key, yet the game (played with legitimately difficult trivia!) is always taken seriously. It earned those Emmys.
29. Beat the Clock
709 points; 31 votes
2006 ranking: 24
Jason: No matter what the era or host, I'm always captivated by those quintessentially-Beat the Clock stunts. I liked the unbridled excitement of Bud Collyer and the bonus stunt of the 50s. I liked the Narz/Wood era for its "let's have some fun & win a few bucks"-type atmosphere. And by gum, I like Bonus Shuffle. I don't know why. I like Bonus Shuffle.
Scott: Oh, you're the one! But I kid. When television was in its infancy, and everybody was trying to find ways to make old programming more visual, shows focused on performing physical stunts were a natural choice. But to have a big clock looming over the proceedings, ominously ticking away the seconds? That's how you get people to remember your show.
28. I've Got a Secret
727 points; 30 votes
2006 ranking: 21
Scott: When it came time for me to decide how to rank the panel shows, I had a difficult time, especially with I've Got a Secret. Of the three most popular panel shows, I've Got a Secret is certainly the most fun. But it's also the game show in which the game is the least important. We don't really care whether Henry Morgan can figure out the secret -- we just want to hear about the contestants' interesting stories. Heck, there were episodes where when it came time for the celebrity guest's appearance, they dispensed entirely with trying to guess what the secret was and just jumped right into the comedy bit.
Jason: Perhaps years from now, the Winston-sponsored I've Got a Secret will find its way out again. I remember liking those episodes best. It wasn't long after those shows that the panel got hip to the producers' tricks. At first, I'm sure nobody expected their home furniture to show up on stage, or an elephant to come out of the back, but later, the panel gave me this vibe of "okay, what is it THIS time?" Of all the panel shows, you'd think I've Got a Secret would have made its way back to network TV first (certainly ahead of To Tell the Truth) because of the potential to break format and do demonstrations, putting the game second.
27. The Newlywed Game
730 points; 35 votes
2006 ranking: 26
Jason: For a guy who raised a lot of ire with TV critics, Chuck Barris left a lasting legacy in the history of game shows, even on a list made by fans like us. A lot of his concepts, which seemingly came from refrigerator magnets slapped between the words "THE" and "GAME", really came to life thanks to the talent he used in front of the camera & behind the scenes. Special recognition to Steve Friedman, Mike Metzger and others for curating that Barris style, including the very very odd Newlywed Game questions that helped show off the interesting personalities that were hitting each other with cue cards & pillows. Director John "The Fox" Dorsey was an expert in covering the action. And nobody could grill those couples like Bob Eubanks.
Scott: Objectively, Tattletales was probably the better game, but The Newlywed Game made for a better show. And in this case, I mean "show" in the sense of "spectacle." When the people playing your game are celebrities whose careers are built on their public image and whom you want to invite back for future tapings, you have to treat them with some amount of respect. But when you have a pool full of non-famous people who are willing to tell America about their sex lives just so they can be on TV and maybe win a refrigerator, you can run them through the wringer. And that makes for a more popular TV show.
26. The Chase
740 points; 26 votes
Did not exist in 2006
Scott: Of all of the new game shows which have been introduced in the last ten years, it seems like The Chase had the best chance of making it into the fans' top fifty.
Jason: There was absolutely zero question in my mind we'd see it somewhere. We could have called this exercise The Game Show Fans Decide Where The Chase Ranks in the Top 50. The Final Chase is wonderfully simple & incredibly compelling. For that alone, the show earned its spot on my list, and it crept higher & higher as I compared neighboring shows against one another.
Scott: Here are some random thoughts about The Chase: Interesting that it should rank relatively close to Win Ben Stein's Money, the other exemplary show about trying to defeat a recurring trivia genius. I'm sure that like so many other titles on this list, a new version will be along at some point in the future. Mark Labbett is surprisingly tall in person.
-
I find it interesting that Newlywed Game appeared on nearly 3/4 of the ballots, yet failed to make the top 25 AND will likely be eclipsed by at least 1 other show with less votes.
-
Hollywood Connection, despite its unoriginality, was its own unique brand of torture. You Don't Say! was a very pleasant half-hour.
The original one, anyway. I sorta kinda liked the 1975 version, but by 1978, I was watching more to play "And You're Famous for What?" with the panel.
I wonder if whoever was programming ABC daytime in 1975 insisted on making their new shows more like Match Game and Hollywood Squares, to their detriment - three new shows with 14 celebrities needed to play each week (on top of the 28 required by the other daily network shows then airing) means you're either seeing the same faces repeatedly or bringing in the owls.
I must admit, I kind of liked the 1975 version as well. Its cancellation must have come quick - in an early November episode Tom announced that children would be playing the game during Christmas week (just like on the original run), but just after Thanksgiving it was gone. Ratings must have been OK for a while, but I guess we can thank The Edge of Night for that.
When you think back to the '70s, its interesting how many celebrity game shows there were around the same time. I was really surprised in '76 when reading the TV Guide listing for the debut of Break the Bank , that there was another show with 9 celebrities.
Some of them seemed to make a career out of being game show panelists. Besides a short run on When Things Were Rotten, what else did Dick Gautier do in the '70s besides game shows?
-
30. Win Ben Stein's Money (1997-2003)
29. Beat the Clock (1950-1961, 1969-1974, 1979-1980, 2002-2003)
28. I've Got a Secret (1952-1967, 1972-1973, 1976, 2000-2001, 2006)
27. The Newlywed Game (1966-1974, 1977-1980, 1985-1989, 1996-1999, 2009-2013)
26. The Chase (2013-2015)
-
Some of them seemed to make a career out of being game show panelists. Besides a short run on When Things Were Rotten, what else did Dick Gautier do in the '70s besides game shows?
I didn't realize Gautier was already in his mid-40s when When Things Were Rotten aired. He may have been in that awkward spot where, having appeared on so many game shows, producers didn't take him seriously as an actor.
Does anybody remember how well he did hosting It's Your Bet? I know I watched a few episodes he hosted, but given that was when I was seven or eight years old, I don't remember him as host very well.
-
So do we have to wait until Monday for 25-21, probably the last 5 with any suspense.
-
Some of them seemed to make a career out of being game show panelists. Besides a short run on When Things Were Rotten, what else did Dick Gautier do in the '70s besides game shows?
It was, and has always been, a double-edged sword. On the one hand, a middling or up-and-coming actor can do game shows to stay in the public eye and maybe end up with opportunities they wouldn't get otherwise. Back in the 60s and 70s, that often meant summer stock and other theatrical tours. But it can reach a point of over-saturation, which works against you. I know of a very famous comic actor who loves, loves, loves doing game shows (and has done a few), but won't do too many because of the concern that it might hurt his career.
These days, I see "celebrities" on a show like Celebrity Game Game, who are famous for something they used to be on, and I can't help but wonder whether they could use that $20,000 grand prize they're trying to win for somebody else. That really shouldn't enter your mind when you're watching a celebrity game show.
-
Dick Gautier's fame, such as it is, began before the 1970's. I don't know what else he did, but he had a recurring role on Get Smart (1965-70) as a robot named Hymie.
-
These days, I see "celebrities" on a show like Celebrity Game Game, who are famous for something they used to be on, and I can't help but wonder whether they could use that $20,000 grand prize they're trying to win for somebody else. That really shouldn't enter your mind when you're watching a celebrity game show.
Heck, I thought that when I saw Mary Cadorette on Pyramid after Three's a Crowd ended.
-
She was in the utterly forgettable movie "Stewardess School" in late '86 #lastgraspforrelevance
-
She was in the utterly forgettable movie "Stewardess School" in late '86 #lastgraspforrelevance
She did recur in Night Court for awhile, had a two-episode role in The Bradys, and now teaches dance and has directed a few high school musicals in Connecticut. Pyramid obviously used celebrities who were very good at the game regardless of their fame level later in the 1980s run; she was just the most egregious example.
I had the same thought when I saw Ernie Hudson's family on Celebrity Family Feud - so we're not alone.
-
29. Beat the Clock (1950-1961, 1969-1974, 1979-1980, 2002-2003)
Since we are currently in the age of streaming TV, shouldn't Buzzr's YouTube episodes count here?
Our hosts keep saying YouTube is influencing the voting with old episodes why not new ones?
-
Because I like the old version, not the new. And I for one find the date entries unsightly (either bold or underline, not both) and redundant.
-
29. Beat the Clock (1950-1961, 1969-1974, 1979-1980, 2002-2003)
Since we are currently in the age of streaming TV, shouldn't Buzzr's YouTube episodes count here?
Our hosts keep saying YouTube is influencing the voting with old episodes why not new ones?
I would have included the Buzzr version of "Beat the Clock" on YouTube, but I hadn't known about it before.
-
These days, I see "celebrities" on a show like Celebrity Game Game, who are famous for something they used to be on, and I can't help but wonder whether they could use that $20,000 grand prize they're trying to win for somebody else. That really shouldn't enter your mind when you're watching a celebrity game show.
Heck, I thought that when I saw Mary Cadorette on Pyramid after Three's a Crowd ended.
If I remember correctly, Mary Cadorette was very good at Pyramid. And I don't mind having lesser-known celebrities on Pyramid if they are good at playing the game. (For that matter, I had watched Three's a Crowd, so Mary Cadorette still counted as a celebrity to me.)
-
I've said before that Ben's Money was a slight game that is carried by the host pair (and after Jimmy left it became mediocre to unwatchable.) I would love for it to be the case that you could raise the top prize to $25,000, increase the lower values reasonably and you're off to the races, but I do think the host pair must be given heaps of credit and it was the right thing at the right time. Plus it was un-apologetically hard. The Chase had a fantastic template that was ignored, a host who eventually sort of grew into the role, a game that was made harder by the fact that only three players play (that fourth player not only represents more money in the pot but a further step in the game if you get a full house back home) and puerile sophomoric questions far too often. Fun to watch, fun while it lasted and it lined the pockets for some winners, but I think it falls at the greatness hurdle for me. I can see how the voters disagree.
-
Re: WBSM- I found Sal brought it back around but the damage was already done.
Re: The Chase- here's my main issue with it. It's the same that I have with Winning Lines, which did make my list while The Chase didn't. The main event of the show is the best part. The buildup to get there, not so much. What gives Winning Lines the edge is that to me, at least, you could easily chop the qualifier off and bring someone out to face the Wonderwall. You really couldn't get away with that on The Chase.
Again, fine program done in by game mechanics.
-
25. Supermarket Sweep
799 points; 37 votes
2006 ranking: 28
Scott: Supermarket Sweep is a mystery to me. By all objective standards, I shouldn't like it -- the front game is barely average and the big sweep is repetitive and has no play-along value. Yet I find myself entranced. Is this the result of my younger self being more willing to sit through mediocre programming combined with my present-day pangs of nostalgia? Or is there really something that just plain works about Supermarket Sweep?
Jason: I think, for once, the opening hyperbole got it right. Yeah, going up & down the aisles is not what I've "always wanted to do" but after seeing Supermarket Sweep, it sure was. We always talk about play-along being important, but sometimes it's about living vicariously through the contestants & dreaming about doing what they're doing. My brother & I had arguments over who would run the sweep if we ever got on the show. My female relatives still long for this to come back. Sweep connected with the regular audience in a way other game shows were dying for.
24. Split Second
883 points; 32 votes
2006 ranking: 27
Jason: AKA, Monty Hall's second brilliant contribution to the history of game shows. It's a shame Split Second never broke through beyond its healthy daytime run. Like The 3 W's and The Cross-Wits, Split Second had many years on the air, but little to show for it in the memories of the American public. In a parallel universe, this is on every night in a block with Wheel of Fortune. The amount of material & the many different ways they presented it would seem to equal that mass audience appeal Jeopardy! has. The visual clues & sweeping crane shots were ahead of their time. Unfortunately, when Split Second was in syndication in the '80s for all audiences to see, the excitement was gone. Yes, buzzing in later gave the home audience a leg up & a chance to guess, but it took away the heart that made the original version so unique. The natural pauses in gameplay gave me ample time to chime in from home. The muted energy & cost-effective Canadian production values didn't help, either.
23. Double Dare (Nickelodeon)
1,025 points; 39 votes
2006 ranking: 25
Jason: Runaway hits always inspire imitators. Deal or No Deal had Set For Life; Match Game had Hollywood Connection. Double Dare had a host of challengers after it blew up on Nickelodeon. Its place on our list at #23, as a game show ostensibly just for kids, shows that it did something right the others couldn't. If Supermarket Sweep had an appeal in being jealous of the contestants, then Double Dare had it in spades, getting a whole generation wanting to run on the 1-Ton Human Hamster Wheel or dive down a disgusting mouth. Its competitor Fun House had a giant endgame with a studio-high water slide & much of the same ingredients, but aimed itself solely at kids, whereas Double Dare had some winks to the grown-ups. Shouldn't today's adults be fonder of the show that was made only for them? Was it just being "first" that gives Double Dare the edge in history?
Scott: I feel pretty confident in stating that Double Dare's success can be attributed primarily to one thing: The mess. To use Fun House for comparison: I can go down a water slide at the nearest water park. Crawling through a big pressure cooker is mildly interesting, but not anything I'm itching to do. But when in my life am I going to get the opportunity to slide into a big pile of faux ice cream? When will I get to squeeze through rollers and get covered with multicolored gak? There's something primal about getting to make an enormous mess -- especially being enveloped by it, especially when you know it's safe -- that appeals to the id of children and the young at heart. And while the sloppiness is what so many people remember and adore about Double Dare, I think some credit has to go to the question round, as well. Nobody loves it, but it presented the perfect vehicle for building anticipation: That team said "dare"! The other team said "double dare"!! Come on, say it... yes! Physical challenge!
Jason: That probably has something to do with it. Fun House could get very messy at times, but as a show, it was the demolition derby compared to Double Dare's "occasional crash at a NASCAR race." (How's that for an image?) Growing up, I felt like all the weird asides on Double Dare were letting me in on the adults' fun, whereas the style of Fun House was what grown-ups thought I might like.
Scott: I think you're exactly right. I know more about kids' shows than a man my age should, and the one thing that the highly-acclaimed ones all have in common -- and this goes back to hits like The Bullwinkle Show, too -- is that they were all made to entertain the adults making them. The shows just so happened to also be accessible to kids. Why shouldn't the same go for kids' game shows?
Jason: Absolutely. I still enjoy old episodes of Double Dare today, but with a different appreciation. They were definitely trying to amuse themselves at times. I also like hearing Marc Summers say the show was at its best when it was just kids. I'm sure many of the young contestants were less than thrilled when their parents took their precious few obstacles gingerly to avoid getting messy, or didn't understand how a catapult worked.
Scott: Plus, the kids were never worried about the prizes. Winning, yes -- but the relative value of the prizes was never as important to the kids as getting to complete the obstacles.
Jason: I'd like to see the board weigh in on this show's greatness. Does it transcend its kids veneer, or are we sliming it with nostalgia love?
Scott: Yeah... I bet the two of us could talk about Double Dare all day, but I suppose we have other rankings to get to. I do have one rankings-related observation to make before we move on, though. Note the substantial leap in the points between Split Second and Double Dare. As we get closer to the top, we'll start seeing more of these jumps of 100+ points. From the perspective of meaningful results, perhaps this is really the Game Show Fans 23 Greatest.
22. High Rollers
1,035 points; 42 votes
2006 ranking: 23
Scott: I wanted to point out that the overabundance of passing in this game makes this seem like a flawed format. But it occurs to me... maybe that's a feature. It's exciting when the contestant overcomes the odds to produce a good roll, and it doesn't feel so bad when they fail -- after all, they didn't answer the question correctly.
Jason: Absolutely right. The decision to roll or pass is about as thrilling as the higher/lower decisions of Card Sharks, but it's part of a larger machine that has moments of incredible luck leading to incredible wealth. High Rollers is simple, fun & exciting. The Big Numbers is a mountain that begs to be climbed. This is another one from the Heatter-Quigley factory of churnin' those questions out. You're not lingering on anything when you watch this show. Alex Trebek took some time to settle into his role, but by the time we had The New High Rollers in 1978, it was totally his. Had the ownership not changed hands, I know we would have seen this back on TV a time or two more.
21. The Joker's Wild
1,082 points; 42 votes; 1 first place vote
2006 ranking: 15
Scott: I'm continuing to develop my theory that the average age of the respondents was a larger factor in the poll results this time around. Therefore, it's evident that the Pat Finn version of The Joker's Wild has left an indelible impression on our minds.
Jason: The definition is FUN, Scott, and don't you forget it. But I can see where the classic show also leaves younger fans wanting. Like High Rollers, Joker took a familiar casino device and stripped it down to be part of a TV-friendly format. And like High Rollers, the classic show goes at a pace few could match, with Jack Barry often starting questions before the lights around the category could get going. But it does have some game show cheese, with the melodramatic totaling up of winnings mid-question as a champion nears the finish line, and the less-than-stellar prize packages up for grabs against the devil. I think the CBS run was a healthy mix, offering some material that was a little more challenging than what we got in the syndicated years, and Jack seeming happier to be there after years in the shadows following the game show scandals.
Scott: How can you tell when Jack Barry is happy?
-
I still think of the Finn Joker's Wild at least when it started as a different show with the same name.
seriously the only time I watched it, I had Lloyd Bensten in my head "I knew the Joker's Wild. . ."
-
With 20 classics left, without a shocking ommission, I am both surprised and dissappointed Cash Cab failed to make the cut. When he announced the poll my first thought was where do I put this show.
What a simple and fun concept a group people on a cab ride consult to answer questions and win money. They were happy to win a few hundred dollars. Heck they were happy when they got them right.
One of my favorite things was to hit pause on a red light challange and see how many I could get before hearing the contestants.
Even non game show fans knew this show.
I know there was a backlash about them screening contestants even though it was in the credits from the beginning. Hey I thought they had people with clipboards interviewing people waiting for cabs.
3 Emmys for best game show.
Hope I am wrong, but will be just as shocked by what else is not here if I am.
-
It means people had fifty shows they thought were Great-er than Cash Cab, not that they thought Cash Cab was an awful show whose tapes should be bulldozed over.
-
"Sweep" definitely took me by surprise. I didn't have time to submit my own ranking (life has been a bit overwhelming this year), but if I did I probably would have left it out, even though I watched the show faithfully as a young'un. Sure, the big sweep tended to devolve into the same strategies over and over again, and the glut of gimmicks and bonus items added as the show's run went on kind of watered down what was supposed to be a test of shopping skill. But the novelty of a game show in a supermarket certainly can't be beat. (I guess the "game show in a Family Dollar" that was announced recently is more indicative and appropriate for today's times.)
-
I'm sure this will be the trend for the rest of the list, but this batch really targets a specific era of my childhood, more or less the first half of the 90s. I watched and enjoyed all these shows religiously*, either first-run or in cable reruns. I might have to have a Youtube marathon soon and go back to 1990 or so.
Even though this list includes two long-running hits that helped define the decade (Supermarket Sweep and Double Dare), it seems all five were underrated in one way or another. To add to Jason's point, occasionally I'll see a meme on Facebook telling you to admit you wanted to be a contestant on Sweep. It's cool to see a show that never completely got its due get, fondly remembered years later.
With Split Second, while Monty's version was lacking in presentation, it's still a fun show**. That said, the first time I saw Tom Kennedy's version, I was definitely blown away by how much it lived up to its title. For the 80s version, I know they needed a new bonus game to avoid lifting from Hollywood Squares (which of course lifted from the original SS), but the pick a window bonus took away so much drama.
*/Yes, even Finn's Joker's Wild :P
**//Would love to see clips from the Robb Weller pilot
-
(I guess the "game show in a Family Dollar" that was announced recently is more indicative and appropriate for today's times.)
Interesting how much the shopping landscape (and by extension, shopping-based game shows) seems to have changed in just 25 years. In the early/mid-90s, you had games set in a mock supermarket and shopping mall. When Shop Til You Drop came back in 2003, the set changed to look like a Costco. Now, a game show set modeled after a Family Dollar.
/Waiting on a game show modeled around shopping on an Amazon-like site
-
It means people had fifty shows they thought were Great-er than Cash Cab, not that they thought Cash Cab was an awful show whose tapes should be bulldozed over.
I'm still amazed some people came up with ten game shows greater than Go, much less fifty.
-
Believe me, it was hard doin's.
-
It means people had fifty shows they thought were Great-er than Cash Cab, not that they thought Cash Cab was an awful show whose tapes should be bulldozed over.
Agreed. I liked Cash Cab but it didn't make my list because there were many generic quizzes that were better. Which, despite the gimmicks, was what Cash Cab was.
Then again, this is the guy who put The Amazing Race atop his list the last time. A move which, while it did not earn him any of the over the top scorn he got, was still a head scratcher because not only can you call its place as a game show into question if you're a traditionalist, you could also argue it isn't even the best among those types of shows.
-
With regards to Double Dare, I will admit that I had this one on both of my 2006 and 2016 lists, but I ranked it quite a bit higher for the 2016 one because, looking back at it, I just see so many things the show did well. The biggest is that, even as a 30+-year old, watching reruns on The Splat during "Double Dare Week" was so much fun, and not just for the nostalgia factor. The game itself did such a good job, appealing to both kids and adults, with a layer of interesting strategy (I still love seeing when teams would bluff and get "Double Dared", only to pull the correct answer out and steal quadruple money). To me, it was (and still is) the perfect kids game show.
That being said, there was one thing I used to think whenever I would watch the "Family" episodes: they would up the prizes, but that puts a *lot* more pressure to finish the course. Yeah; kids would likely be disappointed if they don't win the trip, but they get a lot of cool stuff along the way. A family who doesn't win the car because little Joey couldn't find the flag in the dog food dish or because Dad tried to go through the conveyor belt without getting hit by the pads (I saw the latter happen on a recent rerun) is going to end the show on a sour note...not to mention potentially a tense trip home.
If I could separate the two, I likely would leave off Family Double Dare/Double Dare 2000 for those reasons, but I'm happy to see the show ranked so high, even though it's been over 25 years since the original kids' version of the show stopped making new episodes.
Anthony
-
25. Supermarket Sweep (1965-1967, 1990-1995, 2000-2003)
24. Split Second (1972-1975, 1986-1987)
23. Double Dare (Nickelodeon) (1986-1993, 2000)
22. High Rollers (1974-1976, 1978-1980, 1987-1988)
21. The Joker's Wild (1972-1975, 1978-1986, 1990-1991)
-
One of the things that Maxene Fabe mentions that is to the benefit of a show like High Rollers, Joker's Wild or Gambit is when the contestant needs a thing to happen and lo and behold it does, whether it's rolling a particular number to clear off the board and win all the prizes, or Hal Shear needing three Jokers because nothing else will do, or a team has 20 and needs an Ace to win the round. Card Sharks is all about the excitement of those unknowns, because even though the odds say that a particular thing is more likely than the other, they don't always pan out that way. (Wheel of Fortune would be the boringest thing ever without Bankrupts or a $5,000 space.) I think the use of those elements of randomness in an exciting way make those shows in particular great.
-
I still think of the Finn Joker's Wild at least when it started as a different show with the same name.
seriously the only time I watched it, I had Lloyd Bensten in my head "I knew the Joker's Wild. . ."
I recently watched a few episodes of the Pat Finn version of TJW. My favorite format was when you had the choice between two categories and could keep answering and scoring money until you got one wrong -- a Fast Forward category without the risk of losing what you've amassed -- with a race to either $500 or $2000, depending on the round.
The major problem of the Finn version was they took a totally different format and boxed it up using the original Joker's Wild wrapper hoping nobody remembered the original format ("As you know, The Jokers Wild is a game of definitions"), then having to bring back a few of the original TJW elements to have some more relation to it's original game. Yet you still didn't get to Face The Devil nor was there any risk factor involved in the normal game (during the all-Fast Forward format).
Another problem with the show is that the games were so varied on how long the match was. Some games straddled to the next episode, while some ended so early, you had to watch audience members spin the wheel at the end of the show for a few bucks to fill the rest of the 30 minute timeslot. Either you allow the games to straddle and let the games play out at their own pace, or you play until time's up and then have just enough time for the high scorer to play the end game.
Would Kline & Friends had been better off just using the definition format under a different game show name and not try to relate it to TJW? Hard to say, since K&F's track record outside of Win, Lose or Draw was sub-par at best and game shows were on the ebb at that time overall.
-
Unless I've miscounted somewhere, I guess that means Tic Tac Dough is still to come within the top 20. For the record, while I like TTD, I had Joker's Wild ranked much higher (just below my top 10) than the Xs and Os game. My ranking is based on the original - I really didn't take the '90s revivals into consideration, but it wouldn't really affect my ranking. I actually enjoyed watching the Joker reruns on USA for a while. The '90s Tic Tac Dough didn't really interest me.
I also had Split Second and High Rollers on my list - around the mid-20s, but I didn't have the other two just revealed. Kids games have never really done it for me, and Supermarket Sweep I can take or leave.
-
Would Kline & Friends had been better off just using the definition format under a different game show name and not try to relate it to TJW?
Probably not. Their pattern was clear, although we have such a limited sample to prove it - Strike It Rich and Break the Bank used familiar titles to interest buyers & viewers, but presented a new game underneath. While it's possible stations would have signed up for a new game with a new title, as they did with Trump Card and The Challengers that year, being able to tout a new Joker's Wild likely tipped the scales.
-Jason
-
I personally had no beefs with the TJW definition bit - it was the pacing that made it hard for me to watch.
I think Adam N summed up the problems with BtB - they structured a game that should have been funny and told the host and contestants to play it serious.
Hot Potato (in my opinion) would have worked better with less Family Feud style questions and more Pass the Buck style questions.
I have nothing constructive to say about Strike it Rich. I'm not a Garagiola fan, I didn't like the gameplay, the set, or the music.
-
I have nothing constructive to say about Strike it Rich. I'm not a Garagiola fan, I didn't like the gameplay, the set, or the music.
I actually stumbled upon a few.episodes of the UK version of SIR last night on YouTube. What a difference. The game play takes a backseat to the overall comedy and 3 teams play the game in an informal setting (no tuxedos), but damn does the actual game play speed along!!
-
Which may have been a great deal of the problem with the US version - trying to make each game fit into a half hour minus commercial time with no carryover made for a duller show. The three-couple version was more fun. Personally, I liked the original working title of Arch Rivals. There was some potential there to make the game more interesting by creating something in the game play where players could send opponents backwards or block their progress. Something that created a dust-up somewhere, and if a game has to stop and be picked up in the next show, fine. Instead, it was pretty much a straight race to the end square game - and Joe just didn't have any comedic chops.
-
Thought I remembered reading something about a time-filler game where the winning couple would play the end game again and win a smallish charity donation every time they dodged the bandit--was this a thing? The idea of bidding on the number of questions and being shown the answers is moderately interesting but it does have the feeling of something that exists merely to fill the news hole.
-
I actually stumbled upon a few.episodes of the UK version of SIR last night on YouTube. What a difference. The game play takes a backseat to the overall comedy and 3 teams play the game in an informal setting (no tuxedos), but damn does the actual game play speed along!!
It had to, after Barrymore spent the first damn half hour on the initial contestant interviews.
-
Even Barrymore thought the format was rubbish.But Barrymore talking to old people was also very popular, so...
-
It means people had fifty shows they thought were Great-er than Cash Cab, not that they thought Cash Cab was an awful show whose tapes should be bulldozed over.
I'm still amazed some people came up with ten game shows greater than Go, much less fifty.
*sigh.* I do love that "build a question" game, and I use it with my students all the time as a team building exercise, but a good *show*? Not so much.
-
*sigh.* I do love that "build a question" game, and I use it with my students all the time as a team building exercise, but a good *show*? Not so much.
Well, I guess that's the thing, right? Once someone has used that mechanic as the centerpiece of show, nobody else can really do it, barring a revival of that show. So do you penalize one of the great word game mechanics because they wrapped it in a poor scoring system? I guess lots of people do. I wouldn't, but that's why it's a subjective art form.
-
20. Name That Tune
1,176 points; 42 votes
2006 ranking: 19
Jason: Here's another game that lingers in our pop culture even if the show's been off for decades. For all the people who know "I can name that tune in 5 notes," its time in America's collective consciousness was rather brief - 1974-1981, minus time to grow into the familiar rules of Melody Roulette & what have you. Unless, of course, I'm mistaken that there's more than one person with a George DeWitt poster on their wall. Maybe I missed hoards of TV viewers who really loved Jim Lange's Tune Topics.
Scott: First of all, I thought you said you weren't going to mention my George DeWitt poster. But more to the point, I think the votes here may be more for the concept of Name That Tune as a whole. I grew up seeing the Jim Lange version, so when somebody mentions the show, that's the first thing to enter my mind's eye. There have been plenty of other attempts, but when you hear the phrase "music game show," you think of Name That Tune. It's the archetype, so it gets the votes.
Jason: I completely buy that. I always enjoyed watching it; even the episodes dominated by standards & other songs I had no chance of knowing. Music clearance is probably the biggest obstacle keeping this one from coming back, but on the upside, any venue willing to spend the money on music is probably going to make it a big production, something that added to the proceedings in the '70s. The energy of the Tom Kennedy shows makes them jump off the screen. It's a great example of getting the most out of a simple-to-understand game.
19. Tic Tac Dough
1,195 points; 44 votes
2006 ranking: 18
Jason: In 2006, The Joker's Wild sat at #15. This year, Tic Tac moved ahead of its sister show. What do you think put Tic Tac Dough ahead of Joker this time? I don't feel like there's quite as many game show fans clamoring to talk about it over Joker.
Scott: Speaking for myself (and assuming that for most voters, this ranking goes to Martindale's version)... Tic Tac Dough's objective is more visual and easier to understand -- here's a tic-tac-toe board with categories; pick a category. And there's something more satisfying about the wider variety of categories and illusion of choice, especially because you get to see most all of the subjects in the early stages of the game. The Joker's Wild was the same randomization every time, but at the beginning of a Tic Tac Dough game, a contestant had a wider variety of options. They weren't at the mercy of the randomizer until the game neared its conclusion. Whether it was true or not, it felt like there was a little more strategy to Tic Tac Dough.
18. Blockbusters
1,209 points; 43 votes
2006 ranking: 22
Scott: I love Blockbusters, and I'm happy to see it move into the top 20. I find that open-ended trivia can sometimes be a chore to play along with. But give me a tiny hint -- say, the first letter of the correct answer -- and I'm right there. Of the shows in our top 25, this had the shortest run in the U.S., and I think that's a shame. At least they appreciated it in the U.K.
Jason: My dad grew to be a fan of this show, finding time to watch it every morning on GSN & seeing the whole Cullen run multiple times. I loved the two-pronged question writing with multiple definitions for the same word. Poring over the daytime schedules & ratings, it looks like Blockbusters was holding its own, hovering around a 17 share, just like Password Plus (and later Battlestars) got an hour later. When NBC moved the hour-long soap Texas to mornings, out of the shadow of Guiding Light & General Hospital, Wheel of Fortune moved Blockbusters out of its time slot, leaving the network with only 30 minutes of daytime games. Blockbusters might just be a victim of bad timing in the U.S.
Scott: And then the revival missed the mark in a number of ways. A soulless computer-generated board? Same ol', same ol' one-on-one matches? That was disappointing.
17. To Tell the Truth
1,320 points; 42 votes
2006 ranking: 10
Scott: To Tell the Truth takes a hit in the rankings this time around. Of the "big three" panel shows, I ranked To Tell the Truth the highest on my ballot because it was the only one with strong play-along value. Even if you looked away from the screen while secrets and occupations were being revealed, you were still learning the answer no more quickly than the panelists. But when you watch this show, it's easy to play along -- even more so because you can just watch the contestants' responses rather than worry about things to ask them.
Jason: The Garry Moore run, which was later Joe Garagiola's, had the right mix for me. I wish it had more exposure on GSN or Buzzr. The panel had its core game players, together with a guest, and Bill Cullen who could always be counted on to lighten the mood. Only with the most recent version did that attitude creep back in - the three runs that fell in between (1980, 1990 & 2000) were pretty straightforward, all things considered.
Scott: It's weird to call the 2000 version straightforward, considering how much they went out of their way to be edgy, but... you're right. I think the best decision the current version made was to drop the monetary stakes entirely. This is a game which just works better when everybody is playing for fun.
16. Let's Make a Deal
1,368 points; 45 votes
2006 ranking: 17
Scott: In 2006, the game show fans ranked Let's Make a Deal at #17 based entirely on how the show equaled Monty Hall and Monty Hall equaled the show. In the past ten years, Wayne Brady's version came into being and has seen a healthy run, yet there's been no perceptible change in how we ranked the show. Is a vote for Let's Make a Deal for both versions, or are we only voting for Monty?
Jason: I think Let's Make a Deal is one of those shows like Match Game that, no matter what, one version will carry it through history. I gave the show extra credit this year for all the things it pioneered. One of the early '70s episodes I watched to help me make decisions on this ballot had a couple trying to add zeros to a lone 1 in the hopes of winning $10,000 - sound familiar? Let's Make a Deal is where you can really try any game show device you want as part of a deal. It helped that Monty was the producer. There are many times where you can tell he's calling an audible to make a deal the best it can be. All game shows lost a little something when contestants got over winning new appliances or color TVs (oooooh), but on Let's Make a Deal, they always seem relieved at avoiding a zonk.
-
Noting the other four on this list, and generally aware of where we go from here, Blockbusters is going to end up being the highest-ranked show that's mostly unfamiliar to the general (US) public. And demonstrably the shortest-lived.
-
Noting the other four on this list, and generally aware of where we go from here, Blockbusters is going to end up being the highest-ranked show that's mostly unfamiliar to the general (US) public.
Thing is though, at least *someone* outside the game show fan bubble had to have been watching the show: it was on GSN's schedule for the majority of the network's first fifteen years on the air (only really taking a break when the Goodson deal lapsed in '97, and for a brief time in 2001/2002 when they were acquiring a ton of other content, dusting off things out of the vault, and producing first run originals left and right (and top to bottom). It's also survived Buzzr's purging basically everything that isn't one of the signature shows of the genre. Someone's watching, repeatedly, even if it's not a game with any real name recognition or cultural cache.
Really, it's just a fantastic game. The game moves fast enough to carry a little degree of urgency, particularly late in close games, while still being relaxed enough to fit into Bill's slower, more mellow, and more jovial style. The 2v1 mechanic is an interesting and relatively unique twist. And "Q&A with a hint" makes for absolutely *amazing* play at home value, even for viewers who aren't really dedicated trivia nerds.
Ultimately, Blockbusters is the kind of show that's the top of the list for what I'd go to if/when I have friends who're into trivia, who went on a game show bender, whatever, and they want to know a great show outside the usual suspects of Jeopardy/Pyramid/Price/et al. Fun host, accessible trivia with occasional challenges, and a game that's enjoyable to watch play out. I am 100% fine with this show in the bottom half of the top twenty.
-
Even though it was never a huge hit in either version, I'm surprised a US Blockbusters revival hasn't been tried in the nearly 30 years since. While it might take some retooling to self-contain episodes*, it's a fun game long overdue for a revival.
The "two heads are better than one" dynamic added a fun element to the show. I'm sure it's been discussed, but does anyone remember the ratio of team wins as opposed to solo players? An estimate of whether it was even or lopsided in one's favor will do.
*I suppose you could simply play it as "first to cross the board wins 500 points/bucks", and double after the second round. Play until time's up.
But that seems kinda generic, in a Lingo or Hollywood Squares kinda way...
-
The "two heads are better than one" dynamic added a fun element to the show. I'm sure it's been discussed, but does anyone remember the ratio of team wins as opposed to solo players? An estimate of whether it was even or lopsided in one's favor will do.
In the last segment of the final episode Bill breaks down the statistics of which side won more matches and won more money and it was very close, to the point that you couldn't come up with a better way to have two-against-one in that way.
/Among the many things i hate with a burning passion are scoring systems that go 10-10-20-20 and so on. Just play rounds until the game ends then give pocket money for each mark on the board.
//then the winner is faced a Gold Run board where all the initials are the same and the contestant suffers an infarction.
-
*I suppose you could simply play it as "first to cross the board wins 500 points/bucks", and double after the second round. Play until time's up.
"And me, I'm Shadoe Stevens; and we are the new Hollywood Hexagons!"
-
The finale was exactly what I was thinking of, thanks. I thought I'd remembered the two being close, and my memory was right.
*I suppose you could simply play it as "first to cross the board wins 500 points/bucks", and double after the second round. Play until time's up.
"And me, I'm Shadoe Stevens; and we are the new Hollywood Hexagons!"
I lol'd pretty hard at this...
-
I wonder if you could have three players contesting a game on a Catan board where each player is trying to connect two opposite sides of the hexagon and when one player is blocked out the other two players continue head-to-head.
-
Noting the other four on this list, and generally aware of where we go from here, Blockbusters is going to end up being the highest-ranked show that's mostly unfamiliar to the general (US) public.
Thing is though, at least *someone* outside the game show fan bubble had to have been watching the show: it was on GSN's schedule for the majority of the network's first fifteen years on the air (only really taking a break when the Goodson deal lapsed in '97, and for a brief time in 2001/2002 when they were acquiring a ton of other content, dusting off things out of the vault, and producing first run originals left and right (and top to bottom). It's also survived Buzzr's purging basically everything that isn't one of the signature shows of the genre. Someone's watching, repeatedly, even if it's not a game with any real name recognition or cultural cache.
GSN has certainly favored it over the years, and I'd be curious to know if it was ever on the network's short list for a revival. It would have been an interesting choice in the vein of Lingo, another obscurity they gave a pretty long run, and with equal play-along value. A Blockbusters / Lingo hour would be a nice block of originals.
-
20. Name That Tune (1953-1959, 1970-1971, 1974-1981, 1984-1985, 2001-2002)
19. Tic Tac Dough (1956-1959, 1978-1986, 1990)
18. Blockbusters (1980-1982, 1987)
17. To Tell the Truth (1956-1968, 1969-1978, 1980-1981, 1990-1991, 2000-2001, 2016-present)
16. Let's Make a Deal (1963-1977, 1980-1981, 1984-1986, 1990-1991, 2003, 2009-present)
-
Some of them seemed to make a career out of being game show panelists. Besides a short run on When Things Were Rotten, what else did Dick Gautier do in the '70s besides game shows?
These days, I see "celebrities" on a show like Celebrity Game Game, who are famous for something they used to be on, and I can't help but wonder whether they could use that $20,000 grand prize they're trying to win for somebody else. That really shouldn't enter your mind when you're watching a celebrity game show.
Jon Lovitz seemed to joke about that in the winner's circle last night.
-
Let's Make a Deal was the biggest jumper on my list. It was the first network daytime show in a number of years and has had a long run so far.
10 years ago Matt said the show should never be revived again without Monty Hall.
No Wayne is not Monty Hall. But he has taken the new show and made it his own. The interaction between Wayne and Jonathan is especially fun.
-
I wonder if you could have three players contesting a game on a Catan board where each player is trying to connect two opposite sides of the hexagon and when one player is blocked out the other two players continue head-to-head.
It wouldn't make good TV or good gameplay, as it's possible for more than one player to block each other from winning by taking the three hexes on an opponent's side. In the one-on-one board this would cause somebody to make a connection, but with the Catan style board you're suggesting, it would not. So the game can end in a draw.
-
//then the winner is faced a Gold Run board where all the initials are the same and the contestant suffers an infarction.
It's been done, minus the myocardial infarction.
https://youtu.be/RHqr1JJY1zc?t=19m53s
-
*sigh.* I do love that "build a question" game, and I use it with my students all the time as a team building exercise, but a good *show*? Not so much.
...Once someone has used that mechanic as the centerpiece of show, nobody else can really do it, barring a revival of that show. So do you penalize one of the great word game mechanics because they wrapped it in a poor scoring system?
I don't penalize it, not even a little. But I looked at my ballot to be sure I hadn't inadvertently omitted it. Way down in the 20s.
Also, I think it can be done again (or, I guess, before): I think it made a truly excellent endgame for Chain Reaction.
-
I wonder if you could have three players contesting a game on a Catan board where each player is trying to connect two opposite sides of the hexagon and when one player is blocked out the other two players continue head-to-head.
What I do at home, though I doubt this would translate to TV, is have all three players on their own for the initial block, and the winner of that question decides if he/she wants to go it alone, or pick a partner to play as a team, but split the winnings.
-
I like that a lot, but you're right, it would be clunky for TV and I can't imagine the difficulty in finding related pairs who would go on the show (given that Family Feud seems to have an inexhaustible font of same.)
-
It wouldn't make good TV or good gameplay, as it's possible for more than one player to block each other from winning by taking the three hexes on an opponent's side...so the game can end in a draw.
What if the last unblocked player won even if they didn't connect their sides?
Or...ending in draws may not be the worst thing if the prize money escalates as on Tic Tac Dough and Twenty-One.
-
What if the last unblocked player won even if they didn't connect their sides?
This can have the effect of "You won zero boxes, but you win the game because nobody else can." No buys. Watch Rahim Oberholtzer's run on 21 to see how horribly default wins come off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8ckj7X7mB8
Or...ending in draws may not be the worst thing if the prize money escalates as on Tic Tac Dough and Twenty-One.
mmm, maybe. But on a hex board such as that, a draw's playtime would be indeterminate. With Tic Tac Dough, you needed eight or nine correct answers. You can't actually make a drawn board with seven. So barring donkeys or questionable writing (see first episode of '90), you have a rough idea how much material you're getting through per game.
-
About 20 years ago on another board somebody put forward a revival idea for Blockbusters. The big revelation was to be a "golden hexagon" which if chosen meant that only the side that chose it got to answer. I don't recall why he thought this was necessary but my guess was he thought the idea of question-question-question all the way through was boring and needed to be broken up.
One of the great things about Blockbusters is you can hang just about any window dressing on it you please. Want to make it two-against-one? You can? Want to play it more like Jeopardy where you have categories and values? You can. Want to make it more a true rhombus than a TV-friendly squished rectangle thing? You can. Want the host to play more game than fun, or to muse about the comedy of wrong answers? You can. The game and show are malleable to just about whatever one's heart might desire. That's great to me.
-
On noting these past five shows, I always watched NTT every week. I remember seeing TTD in person in L.A. and how they had to reload the monitors with new categories after a tied game, which led to stopping tape. One time, they had a long stop down with technical difficulties, but Wink and announcer Johnny Gilbert kept the audience entertained. Wink answered questions. For TTTT, I'm most fond of the Garry Moore version since I grew up with that and saw several of those shows in person. Blockbusters was an easy to understand game and Cullen made it fun to watch.
-
15. Card Sharks
1,405 points; 44 votes
2006 ranking: 13
Jason: The classic runs of Card Sharks came in two distinctive flavors, both with their fans around here. Jim Perry & the '70s run gave us all the mechanical flourishes you could ever want out of a game show, together with the swift play of the cards. The '80s runs added more ways to get a high/low toss-up question & increased the stakes with friendlier rules in the Money Cards, plus the allure of a brand new car at the back of the set. I grew to like them both over time.
Scott: What's interesting is that, as you alluded to when we discussed High Rollers, the actual turning of cards was pretty rote. You knew when the contestants were going to call higher; you knew when they were going to call lower; you knew they would probably freeze on a 7, 8, or 9. This show needed the "human nature" questions to keep the half hour compelling. Nothing but cards would have been a snooze. Merely playing yes/no questions based on polls of 100 people probably wouldn't have kept the show afloat. But combining the two games resulted in something really fun.
14. What's My Line?
1,471 points; 42 votes; 1 first place vote
2006 ranking: 14
Scott: What's My Line? overtakes To Tell the Truth to claim the title of best panel show in this decade's poll. It had the longest original run, it popularized the panel show format, and as implausible as it sounds, there's something entertaining about watching four people trying to ascertain a person's occupation while they attempt to avoid a "no" answer and make sense of the host's obfuscating clarifications.
Jason: I agree; this is a rare case for me in that I enjoy the black & white shows more than the syndicated run, which of course was always in color. There's no question that panel was playing to win & the show was better for it.
13. Scrabble
1,483 points; 43 votes; 1 first place vote
2006 ranking: 20
Scott: I'm not sure whether this ranking jump should be attributed to the average age of this year's respondents, the increase of episodes available on YouTube, or both. Regardless, there's no denying that Scrabble is a fun game.
Jason: My main criteria to determine this year's list was simply "would I sit down and watch this show?" The rankings then became an exercise in what I'd rather watch. Scrabble gets huge points in this regard. The main thing the YouTube uploads show us is just how fun it was to see day after day. You never knew if this was the day they'd build a podium for Chuck that doubled as a car, or if Chuck would empty out the NBC trash on stage, or if there was a new home viewer contest to participate in. Once they figured out the best format, the game was just as great as the extracurriculars. It had elements of risk & surprise; good players could take a chance on winning bonus money in the front game. The writing was superb. The Sprint & Bonus Sprint often gave us some nail-biting moments.
Scott: It raises an interesting what-if, though: We all acknowledge that this show has very, very little to do with Scrabble the board game. Ignoring the fact that the board game nevertheless influenced the development of this show, if this exact same format had debuted but without any of the Scrabble branding, would it have received as long of a run, or would it be viewed as just another show trying to ride the wave of Wheel of Fortune's success?
Jason: I don't know that you can divorce the two things like that. We've seen shows with clever wordplay elsewhere. Part of what made Scrabble so great to me is that they took elements of the board game & made them seem like they belonged to this TV game. Without the Scrabble branding, the picking of letters through tiles & the bonus squares in particular would feel a little less special & more tacked on. I also have to give special mention to all the aesthetics. Part of why a lot of us love game shows is wrapped up in bells & whistles. Scrabble could have been simple, and might have been simple in different hands in a different decade. But here, we've got two huge turning elements, one of the largest sound libraries ever, tactile random elements in the front game & one of the most unique lock-out devices in game shows for the Sprint. I'm not saying it would pull the wool over everybody's eyes, but I think a number of simpler games could have flourished in the decades to follow if they would have taken the same route as Scrabble by spicing up the bejeezus out of every element of the presentation.
12. Hollywood Squares
1,533 points; 46 votes
2006 ranking: 8
Jason: Squares takes a bit of a tumble going from top 10 territory to #12 with this year's list. Can we attribute this slight drop to the show being off the air for 12 years? I think the fonder memories of Hollywood Squares go back to Peter Marshall, and to a lesser extent with our group, John Davidson. With only a "Hip Hop" version since our last poll, this could be a case of less voter interaction with the format.
Scott: If so, that's too bad, because all three versions of the Hollywood format had their strengths. The Marshall version is well remembered for its one-liners, the Davidson version was willing to try anything, and the Bergeron version showed that there's nothing wrong with simply having fun. Even the Hip Hop version worked, in my opinion. Maybe Hollywood Squares' drop to #12 is just a reflection of the fact that competition for the top ten is fierce. I think we can all figure out what the remaining shows are going to be at this point, and it's difficult to argue that Hollywood Squares should definitely be ranked higher than pretty much any of them.
Jason: I'll be curious to hear your reasons for that, or if the posters have any, because I'm sure some people did vote Hollywood Squares higher, and probably have good reasons for doing so. I personally did not, but sometimes it lies in the simplicity. Squares may have never ventured too far from its roots, but they did things so well for so long, much like What's My Line? and other shows on our list.
Scott: I'll embarrass myself by attempting to make a sports analogy: Hollywood Squares is the reliable baseball player who gets overshadowed by the home run slugger. It didn't do anything badly -- there are just other shows which did things slightly better. In my case, I simply subjectively think the other eleven shows are just the tiniest bit greater. No offense to Squares.
Jason: That makes sense. I don't think either of us, or the group here, drool over every single show that has more rules than showmanship, but in Squares' case, its starkness as a game could have docked it points in a poll like this. We flat out omitted The Dating Game & other shows the general public recognizes, so this could be a result of that same type of thinking.
11. Sale of the Century
1,575 points; 41 votes; 2 first place votes
2006 ranking: 16
Scott: I'm going to say that GSN and Buzzr are at least partially responsible for Sale of the Century's five-position rise.
Jason: They have to be. In 2006, I had fuzzy memories & a handful of shows on tape to form my opinion, but still ranked it high. $ale is also notable in that we have almost no information about its true past. For other shows, like Jeopardy!, there was at least a representative episode or two for a long time where you could get a sense of the original series. Only some of us got to see Jack Kelly or Joe Garagiola in first-run.
Scott: Still, what we know about the version which does exist makes this show worthy of the ranking we've given it. I can only imagine what it was like to watch Sale of the Century during its original '80s run. It's always compelling when a likable player sticks around on a show for longer than the traditional five-day limit. And it's fascinating to see how contestants balance risk and reward under this format. I recently watched an episode in which I knew ahead of time that the champion was going to win everything, and I was still excited as the game unfolded. That's when you know the show is doing something right.
Jason: And the people working at Grundy sure knew how to present a game. Even though it may not have been to the same standard as Let's Make a Deal or Price, Sale of the Century had its own large music library, plus an array of props & sets to present instant bargains & endgame items. Jim Perry was a great fit, playing both ends of the Sale format well. His humor & charm helped the bargain segments, while his authoritative & clear delivery made the questioning, particularly those last 60 seconds, the best it could be.
Scott: For the sake of completeness, I should point out that although I of course would have combined the two shows, nobody who responded to this poll voted for Temptation.
-
So there wasn't lots of love for Temptation?
-
I will say that, I love Card Sharks, and while I agree that a straight prediction of how many people said they would ___ makes for a dry game, hearing the contestants BS their way to saying "47, Jim!" was silly at times. It seems like they were only elaborating because they had to, kinda like when you need 500 words for your paper and just start typing anything on topic.
The BS'g was even worse during "Young People's Week". :P
-
So there wasn't lots of love for Temptation?
I liked the Art James version.
-
I will say that, I love Card Sharks, and while I agree that a straight prediction of how many people said they would ___ makes for a dry game, hearing the contestants BS their way to saying "47, Jim!" was silly at times. It seems like they were only elaborating because they had to, kinda like when you need 500 words for your paper and just start typing anything on topic.
The BS'g was even worse during "Young People's Week". :P
I don't think they were BSing anything--I think they were relying on their own life experience and judgments to provide an answer. Hearing that thought process out loud would then give the viewer a chance to see if it squared with what they thought, or if they were very far apart. If the number ends up being very far from the original guess, or the higher/lower split was wrong, then you can say "huh, I didn't think of that angle." The question format also provides a linking device back and forth to the calling higher-or-lower of the playing cards as well.
-
I, for one, like the BSing. Surely if you're watching episodes with other people, you've had similar discussions and engaged in similar BSing.
If memory serves, they never did the BSing on Power of Ten, not even after locking in their answers, and that's incredibly dry, repetitive, and at times tedious.
-
They didn't. Drew would ask the questions, the contestants logged their guesses and Drew revealed the answer and awarded the point. I suspect that's because they wanted to get to the end game, where they actually did delve into the thought process and the results of the audience poll, but it wouldn't have hurt them to talk a little bit, especially if the contestants' guesses were more than fifty points apart.
-
For Card Sharks, I like the 80s versions best. They fixed the scoring in Money Cards, and Bill Rafferty in particular added a touch of humor. The Pat Bullard version was a train wreck. For WML, how many other game shows lasted 25 years giving $50 as a top prize? Scrabble had good play along value. I enjoyed all versions of HS except the Davidson version. I just thought he was inept as a host. Jim Perry made SOTC fun to watch, reading the Speed Round questions quickly and with good enunciation.
-
Jason: The classic runs of Card Sharks came in two distinctive flavors, both with their fans around here. Jim Perry & the '70s plus the allure of a brand new car at the back of the set.
I guess I wasn't a big fan of how it was executed...I thought it was a bit of a downer to have an exciting money cards run followed by a buzzer sounding in the second part of the bonus game. IMO, the car should have been tied to a money milestone.
-
IMO, the car should have been tied to a would have been better set money milestone.
Play Your Cards Right did that and it worked beautifully. Start with 250, another 200 on line two, if you had 4,000 going into the Big Bet the final card was for the car, if 3,950 or less it was double or zero if the couple went for it. I get why the CBS version did what they did (they get some bucks every time the car is shown, five-point-five times out of seven the car isn't won, so that's a net gain) but I think most people will agree that it was done clumsily. I wouldn't use that to penalize the show, however. (I didn't use Card Sharks 2001 to penalize either, as it happens.)
-
The car game on the Eubanks version was probably unnecessary, but it didn't take away from my enjoyment of the show. The cards were sometimes unpredictable but that's part of what made it a fun half-hour. It's been a while since I've looked at my tapes (DVDs) of the show, but in watching some of the GSN reruns of late, I'd kind of forgotten some of the interesting types of questions they came up with. This has always been one of my favorites.
I had Card Sharks and Hollywood Squares in my top 10, but if being off TV for a while is one of the reasons for the drop for Squares, I guess it makes sense. The two shows that have moved into the top 10 are still on everyday (either in reruns or first run). Out of sight, out of mind I guess. I'm a bit surprised though that through the memories of all Squares runs that it didn't rank a little higher.
Sale of the Century and Scrabble both ranked in my top 20. I had What's My Line just a bit lower.
-
Took a long time to warm up to Card Sharks, but grew to love it for the points mentioned. The cards are unpredictable, and one could say that the "what do 100 people think..." gives the quiz part a Family Feud feel. Kinda like "When asked their favorite part of a Thanksgiving dinner, how many said cranberry sauce?". Gives you a chance to see if you're thinking in the mainstream. I am surprised by WML?'s ranking. A heritage show that laid a foundation for the successes to follow. On the 2006 list, I had it as #1. Listed it as #2 this year, but it was a toss-up. My 1 and 2 could flip flop and I'd be happy, but went at the collection at a different angle than some. Be interesting to see the rest of the list. Thanks for the hard work putting it together. Nice job and commentary.
-
15. Card Sharks (1978-1981, 1986-1989, 2001-2002)
14. What's My Line? (1950-1967, 1968-1975)
13. Scrabble (1984-1990, 1993)
12. Hollywood Squares (1966-1981, 1983-1984, 1986-1989, 1998-2004, 2012, forthcoming 2016)
11. Sale of the Century (1969-1974, 1983-1989, 2007-2008)
-
What My Line? was my #10 game. I think what swayed if for me were the memories of watching it every week during Black & White Overnight before I'd go to bed for school and the subsequent memories of watching it every night when GSN ran it at 3am daily. The grand tradition it was steeped in gave way to wonderful chemistry when the panel was at its best. I still believe I've Got A Secret had the best panel, especially since it remained the most consistent among the G-T panel shows, but the game and fun they had throughout an episode of What's My Line? was something that could keep me entertained every time.
-
These were all about where I had them. Sale and Card Sharks were in my top 10, and Scrabble, Squares, and WML occupied spots 12-14. Of my panel shows WML ranked the highest. I included three.
-
Scott: By this point, you should be able to figure out which are the remaining ten shows. But before we reveal the order of the game show fans' top ten, here's a list of #51 through #100. Given the small number of respondents in this year's survey, it really isn't a very definitive ranking of our top 100 shows. Think of it more as your answer to the question, "What happened to (show which I think should have made the list)?"
51. Double Dare (CBS)
259 points; 15 votes; 2006 ranking: 68
52. The Cross-Wits
259 points; 13 votes; 2006 ranking: 63
53. The Dating Game
255 points; 15 votes; 2006 ranking: T47
54. You Don't Say!
246 points; 13 votes; 2006 ranking: 51
55. The Big Showdown
239 points; 11 votes; 2006 ranking: 55
56. Truth or Consequences
234 points; 9 votes; 2006 ranking: 34
57. American Gladiators
209 points; 11 votes; 2006 ranking: 71
58. Greed
203 points; 12 votes; 2006 ranking: 59
59. Survivor
203 points; 5 votes; 1 first place vote; 2006 ranking: 65
60. Break the Bank (1976)
202 points; 10 votes; 2006 ranking: 42
61. Three on a Match
200 points; 9 votes; 2006 ranking: 61
62. 1 vs. 100
199 points; 15 votes; did not exist in 2006
63. Cash Cab
195 points; 13 votes; 2006 ranking: T136
64. Million Dollar Mind Game
171 points; 10 votes; did not exist in 2006
65. Celebrity Sweepstakes
171 points; 8 votes; 2006 ranking: 57
66. Liar's Club
168 points; 10 votes; 2006 ranking: 62
67. Wipeout (1988, syndicated)
166 points; 12 votes; 2006 ranking: 66
68. The Amazing Race
163 points; 6 votes; 1 first place vote; 2006 ranking: 74
69. Caesars Challenge
154 points; 6 votes; 2006 ranking: 87
70. Hit Man
153 points; 7 votes; 2006 ranking: 67
71. Face the Music
149 points; 9 votes; 2006 ranking: 75
72. Eye Guess
145 points; 10 votes; 2006 ranking: 64
73. Bumper Stumpers
144 points; 9 votes; 2006 ranking: 102
74. Body Language
143 points; 12 votes; 2006 ranking: 58
75. Celebrity Name Game
142 points; 9 votes; did not exist in 2006
76. Grand Slam
142 points; 7 votes; U.S. version did not exist in 2006
77. Trivia Trap
136 points; 9 votes; 2006 ranking: 90
78. Dream House
136 points; 8 votes; 2006 ranking: 86
79. Legends of the Hidden Temple
134 points; 11 votes; 2006 ranking: 89
80. 2 Minute Drill
127 points; 5 votes; 2006 ranking: 72
81. Go
113 points; 7 votes; 2006 ranking: 40
82. Shop 'til You Drop
110 points; 11 votes; 2006 ranking: 104
83. Debt
108 points; 9 votes; 2006 ranking: 73
84. The Mole
101 points; 3 votes; 2006 ranking: 91
85. Battlestars
95 points; 5 votes; 2006 ranking: 77
86. Love Connection
88 points; 5 votes; 2006 ranking: T156
T87. Video Village
88 points; 3 votes; 2006 ranking: 69
T87. Make the Grade
88 points; 3 votes; 2006 ranking: 135
89. Talk About
85 points; 6 votes; 2006 ranking: 83
90. Duel
83 points; 5 votes; did not exist in 2006
91. Finders Keepers
82 points; 8 votes; 2006 ranking: T100
92. Idiot Savants
80 points; 4 votes; 2006 ranking: 118
93. Child's Play
79 points; 7 votes; 2006 ranking: 82
94. Pitfall
75 points; 4 votes; 2006 ranking: 99
95. Bullseye (1980, syndicated)
71 points; 6 votes; 2006 ranking: 56
96. Trivial Pursuit (Family Channel)
68 points; 5 votes; 2006 ranking: 139
T97. Pass the Buck
66 points; 4 votes; 2006 ranking: 79
T97. Winning Lines
66 points; 4 votes; 2006 ranking: 84
99. Starcade
64 points; 5 votes; 2006 ranking: 70
100. Idiotest
64 points; 4 votes; did not exist in 2006
Scott: While there's a lot to process here, there are a few specific things which warrant mentioning. First of all, I would like to call attention to the massive leap for Love Connection, because I think I know what happened. When GSN presented its top fifty game shows in 2006, the network placed Love Connection at #18. There was a decent amount of complaining here on the board when that was announced, and roughly a month later, only two of the eighty fans voted for Love Connection at all when completing their 2006 lists. This year, without that peer pressure, the show received a couple more votes. Related to that, I think a lot of the major shifts (in both directions) can be attributed to the age of most of the voters landing in the range of "grew up during the 1980s/1990s."
Jason: I can see that point with some of the shows, but I've also seen younger fans who treat YouTube like we used to treat the trading circuit. Perhaps they're forming their own opinions about the classics now that they've seen them in full, as opposed to copying popularly-held opinions, which I'll admit I was guilty of when I first started participating. You read enough people who say a show is great, and without being able to see it, that's what you come to think too.
Scott: I admit that I also used others' opinions to guide some of the rankings on my 2006 ballot, but I think nostalgia still played a significant role in these results. As evidence, I'll point to the big move up for our #37 and #38: Remote Control and Carmen Sandiego -- especially the latter. Objectively, I think Carmen Sandiego deserves to be somewhere on the list because it found a fun way to teach kids geography. But realistically, I'm sure it saw its gain because a lot of the voters thought, "I remember watching that show back in the day. Those were good times." If you didn't grow up watching that show back in the day, you're less likely to think that. I know the rankings in the bottom of the top 100 are largely meaningless, but I think they demonstrate the impact that '80s/'90s nostalgia voters had in this smaller pool of respondents. See Trivial Pursuit's 40-position jump. Heck, three people feeling really strongly about Make the Grade allowed that show to make the top 100. I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that nostalgia voting had a smaller, but still perceptible, effect on the rest of the list.
Jason: I can agree with that, especially with shows like Trivial Pursuit, as you mentioned. I'd like to see people weigh in with regards to Carmen & Double Dare who weren't in the target demo when those shows were first run. I also want to bring attention to those shows that fell out of the top 50 since 2006: The Dating Game, Truth or Consequences, Break the Bank (from the '70s) and Go. The last two in particular interest me, because they're in the same type of fan darling category as Whew! Did people leave them off on accident? Was it deliberate given more historical perspective?
Scott: Can I use my nostalgia tirade as a potential answer? Three of those four shows would be more fondly remembered by people who grew up watching game shows in the '70s than by people who grew up in the '80s. See also Stump the Stars and The Money Maze, which were ranked #78 and #92 respectively last time but which fell out of the top 100 this time. Are those two worse than Shop 'til You Drop and Caesars Challenge? Or objectively, would they be ranked roughly the same if not for the rose-colored memories of several of the voters?
-
Without trying to pick a fight, I do admit that I'm curious about #59 and #68 being the ones from 51-100 to get first place votes.
-
Also not trying to pick a fight, I'm curious to hear from those who backed them. I think for a long time that Survivor has been best of breed and the American version of The Race has become unwatchable while the Canadian version is top drawer, but does that make them the best game show?
-
Well, we already should know who cast the first place vote for #68. Because it probably was the same one as last time. (I'm not trying to pick a fight either.)
Me, I didn't include either because neither fits the game show definition. I consider reality competitions to be separate from traditional game shows.
-
I'm also curious about people's reasoning for counting (or not counting) The Amazing Race and Survivor as game shows. Both strike me as being in a gray area between game show and reality show, but with TAR just inside of where I would draw a hard line (because it's possible to objectively measure "be the fastest") and Survivor just outside (because what constitutes "good gameplay" is subjective.)
-
I ended up with around 8 - 10 shows that didn't make the group's top 50. Most of them I had ranked in the 40s.
I've never considered Love Connection, Survivor, Amazing Race or Big Brother to be game shows, so I didn't rank them on my list.
One show I had ranked quite high is Break the Bank, and it's slightly disappointing to see it drop so far this time around. As Matt said last time - this was "the one that got away". The show had high ratings during its network run but was cancelled in favor of the network expanding the soap operas to 45 minutes. It probably should have had a much longer run than the 15 weeks it got. Unfortunately the one-weekly syndicated version in the 1976-77 season kind of got lost as there was a lot of competition in the "checkerboard" format that year.
I always loved the show - I think the set and huge gameboard won me over from the beginning - just what was the layout this time around? I loved the theme song and game play - it was just as funny at times as Squares could be. It still pains me to this day that GSN never gave it a complete run-through, while (in my opinion) a couple of inferior short-lived shows were run through several times. I always hoped they'd eventually go back to it (mainly because of the celebrity factor) but they never did, and I guess it's unlikely we'll ever get any more of it. At least we have a few weeks of it, plus a handful of the syndicated shows.
Another show I"m surprised to see drop is Truth or Consequences. I had it in the 30s. I fondly remember the syndicated version in the early '70s and I thought its long run would pull it into the top 50. I also had Celebrity Sweepstakes on my list, but with only two episodes of it around most of the series is just hazy memories at this point, so I can see why it wouldn't make it.
In an alternate universe somewhere, all of these old episodes exist and play to high ratings on GSN! :)
-
I'll be brave and admit that I put both Survivor and Amazing Race on my list. I ranked the former fairly high (it was in my top 20), but the latter was near the bottom of my list. These were the only two "reality" game shows I had on my list.
Although I know these shows fall in that "gray" area of what many might consider a game show, I've always looked at both as game shows because the focus of each show is on the game, not the voyeuristic stuff. It is possible to win each game solely by being good at challenges (look at physics teacher Bob from a few years ago) and not just with backstabbing and conniving. This is in contrast to a show like Big Brother, which, although is a show I greatly enjoy, focuses way more on the social conflicts and relationships between players and not as much on the game. This is also a reason why I didn't put Love Connection on my list.
Even Jeff Probst, in an article I remember reading about a decade ago, called Survivor basically a game show played on an island and strongly disagreeing with it being called a "reality show".
The fact that Survivor has been on the air consistently for well over a decade, still pulls fairly decent ratings, and, at its heart, is a very enjoyable game to watch being played is why I ranked it so high.
Just FYI, my definition of a game show has always been a television show consisting of contestants playing a game for some sort of prize. But, the focus of the show must be on the game and shouldn't just be a reality show with a game element (e.g., The Bachelor), and it should be a game that (most) anyone could audition for, and be cast to play.
I'm sure people will poke holes in that definition, but that's why, according to that definition, I put these shows on my list. YMMV, of course.
Anthony
-
Thank you for revealing yourself and for sharing your reasoning. I agree some places, disagree others, but there y'are. If it's mine to do, I order them Survivor > The Mole > The Race > Big Brother.
-
I'm also curious about people's reasoning for counting (or not counting) The Amazing Race and Survivor as game shows.
I really wish we were civilized enough to accept that there's really not a fight to pick. I have personal reasons why I wouldn't consider Survivor and Race game shows, and that's clearly the majority opinion around here. But if you want to think they are game shows, I don't think you're committing a sin against nature. And if you've decided they are game shows, it also seems perfectly logical to consider either one of them to be the best of what the (broader) genre has to offer. Again, most of us don't feel that way, which is why they end up being ranked so low on the overall list. That's precisely the point of the exercise.
-
But here's the problem. You had quite the shitstorm stirred over this same discussion ten years ago. As in it drifted past the mere point of simply criticizing his choice and devolved into personal attacks.
-
I'll just throw a devil's advocate out there. I'd rather call shows like Survivor and Big Brother game shows than reality television, because their premises couldn't be farther from reality, in my opinion.
-
I'm also curious about people's reasoning for counting (or not counting) The Amazing Race and Survivor as game shows.
I really wish we were civilized enough to accept that there's really not a fight to pick. I have personal reasons why I wouldn't consider Survivor and Race game shows, and that's clearly the majority opinion around here. But if you want to think they are game shows, I don't think you're committing a sin against nature. And if you've decided they are game shows, it also seems perfectly logical to consider either one of them to be the best of what the (broader) genre has to offer. Again, most of us don't feel that way, which is why they end up being ranked so low on the overall list. That's precisely the point of the exercise.
I wish we were all civilized enough to not accuse other people of being uncivilized and trying to pick fights when they simply don't remember that it turned nasty the last time the discussion was had. If that's the case, then I'm fine with avoiding having it again. I was genuinely curious as to why some say they are game shows and some say they aren't, and all I remember of the last 50 Greatest was "that was a thing we did once," and I haven't made an effort to review it.
-
Let's all agree to stand down on civilization. We're all trying to be civilized, and we're so unused to it that it feels kinda weird. Nobody is trying to make it personal about anybody else.
As for myself, I don't want to approach it from the perspective of arguing whether a given show is a game show. That die was cast by the pollsters by allowing the votes to be accepted, and so no take-backsies. Besides, there were other votes cast besides the first-place votes, so that discussion would be very counter-productive.
I do, however, wonder why someone believes that those shows are the two that are the best shows of the genre. What makes them special? Is it the longetivity? Is it the locale? Is it the production quality? Is it the gameplay? Is it the proverbial "million damn dollars"?
I do hope against hope that our most contrarian voters will reveal themselves, if only to have the discussions from an academic perspective. I also understand why they might view the general tone of the place and nope the hell out of that idea.
-
Speaking of
...Power of Ten...
...have y'all heard the fascinating Planet Money podcast with its head writer and EP?
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/07/27/487654380/episode-714-can-a-game-show-lose (http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/07/27/487654380/episode-714-can-a-game-show-lose)
-
Another show I"m surprised to see drop is Truth or Consequences. I had it in the 30s. I fondly remember the syndicated version in the early '70s and I thought its long run would pull it into the top 50.
I've tried to watch Truth of Consequences, and I get the sense it's a product of its time. I think it was popular because it was something the TV audience wanted back then. Other shows did what they did - House Party, Candid Camera, This is Your Life, etc. - so I never got the feeling while watching it that it left a great legacy to TV, it was just part of a trend. ToC gets remembered in mainstream game show lists & articles because it had a history, but not because it was a wonderful show, IMO. For fans at large in a vote like this, who seem to value good competition, it has trouble finding a spot.
I also had Celebrity Sweepstakes on my list, but with only two episodes of it around most of the series is just hazy memories at this point, so I can see why it wouldn't make it.
Celebrity Sweepstakes is another one that fell off my list deliberately. I've been lucky enough to see more episodes of this lately (for instance, there was that documentary on comedian Billy Braver made recently, and the full episodes surfaced with some people in LA). In many of the shows I watched, the audience seems stuck on one celebrity as the longshot, and the contestants keep betting on that one star. One contestant inevitably makes a windfall, while the other keeps using them to catch up. The effect is one star out of six doing much of the talking (90% of the time with no attempt at a zinger) while the scores end up something like $1,080 to $8. I did enjoy episodes where the answers were verbal, because they moved faster, but I didn't get enough of those before the ballot to say it deserved a top 50 spot again.
One show I had ranked quite high is Break the Bank, and it's slightly disappointing to see it drop so far this time around. As Matt said last time - this was "the one that got away". The show had high ratings during its network run but was cancelled in favor of the network expanding the soap operas to 45 minutes. It probably should have had a much longer run than the 15 weeks it got.
I forgot to check into this show once I got access to ratings data, and your comment piqued my interest. For starters, we're talking about 2:30 PM, when CBS had on Edge of Night and NBC had Doctors. Before Break the Bank, ABC had a number of shows try to go against the soaps. Big Showdown largely had trouble keeping up with its competition. Edge of Night began losing viewers around the time Rhyme & Reason took 2:30 on ABC. Rhyme won the time slot for its first 8 weeks on the air, then lost to Doctors for the next 8. Eventually, CBS puts Guiding Light on at 2:30 instead, while expanding As the World Turns to an hour. Both moves help CBS.
The Neighbors took Rhyme & Reason's place and went neck & neck with Doctors - but both shows lost to Guiding Light. Break the Bank comes on and averages a loss to both shows over the first 9 weeks of its run (pulling a 26 share to the soaps' 32 & 27). Then, Break the Bank starts to gain ground over Doctors. On July 12, Hot Seat and Family Feud premiere. Two weeks later, with Break the Bank still losing to Guiding Light, but now beating Doctors more decisively (29 share to 25), One Life to Life expands as you said, and Bank goes bye-bye.
Barring any notable exceptions I'm forgetting, these are the days when a network ordered a show and kept it on for the length of the deal. So while history shows Hot Seat would have been the better show to bounce off the schedule, I think it was a matter of bad timing for Break the Bank.
That said, with regards to the top 50, I couldn't pick Break the Bank as a candidate for "greatest." Points for its cool music, set & game mechanics, but minus many for entertainment. Hollywood Squares wasn't a wall-to-wall house of fire for comedy even in its heyday, but Break the Bank struggled to get even one memorable zinger per show. The shows without the forfeit-the-box-automatically rules are hard to watch.
As for Go, I agreed with Clay - I like the game mechanic, but Go itself was not a good enough show to merit a rank from me this time around.
-Jason
-
I forgot to check into this show once I got access to ratings data, and your comment piqued my interest. For starters, we're talking about 2:30 PM, when CBS had on Edge of Night and NBC had Doctors. Before Break the Bank, ABC had a number of shows try to go against the soaps. Big Showdown largely had trouble keeping up with its competition. Edge of Night began losing viewers around the time Rhyme & Reason took 2:30 on ABC. Rhyme won the time slot for its first 8 weeks on the air, then lost to Doctors for the next 8. Eventually, CBS puts Guiding Light on at 2:30 instead, while expanding As the World Turns to an hour. Both moves help CBS.
The Neighbors took Rhyme & Reason's place and went neck & neck with Doctors - but both shows lost to Guiding Light. Break the Bank comes on and averages a loss to both shows over the first 9 weeks of its run (pulling a 26 share to the soaps' 32 & 27). Then, Break the Bank starts to gain ground over Doctors. On July 12, Hot Seat and Family Feud premiere. Two weeks later, with Break the Bank still losing to Guiding Light, but now beating Doctors more decisively (29 share to 25), One Life to Life expands as you said, and Bank goes bye-bye.
I'm glad someone finally looked the ratings information up. I'd always assumed that the "it was third in the ratings in 1975-76" stat was through EoTVGS, which was fine except that season ended five weeks after Break the Bank premiered. This makes a little more sense.
In any case, as someone who actually watched the show regularly during its run, I can say on my behalf that, yes, I was definitely sucked in by the theme and cool set. As a 13-year-old, I thought the game itself was derivative of Hollywood Squares, but it was an okay way to pass a half hour. I was properly disappointed when it was cancelled, and thrilled when it came back - although it obviously didn't make much headway in the New York market (6 PM Saturday nights on the then-independent WNEW), and Barry's version of the show just didn't do it for me. When I finally got around to watching a few episodes on GSN and YouTube, I realized why -- there are only so many ways you can have two stars give two different answers to the same question without the second one sounding insincere, stupid, or peevish. It also didn't have the humor of Squares -- there really weren't any zingers. I think the show got a raw deal on ABC, but I'm not sure how long it would have lasted even if one of the other networks had picked it up.
-
I'll just throw a devil's advocate out there. I'd rather call shows like Survivor and Big Brother game shows than reality television, because their premises couldn't be farther from reality, in my opinion.
To be fair, the premise of most reality television is far from reality.
I don't think it's that big of a deal to consider Survivor or Amazing Race game shows. They are competitions played for a grand prize and are perhaps less scripted than some of the fare that populates Bravo and E. To rank them higher than some of the classics that defined the genre is hard for me to swallow. Perhaps it's the traditionalist in me, but some of the studio games that build just as much or more excitement while allowing me to play along score so much better for me. I didn't put either of those shows on my list because the ones I have on my list I have enjoyed more than either of them, however if I did do a full 100, they would've been included.
I'll also spill that my #50 game not listed here was Whose Line Is It Anyway? An improv show built around a fake game doesn't sound like much of a game show to me, but I felt that they were playing for the prize of who had the funniest idea in that moment to get the most laughs. I view the show that way every time I watch, in addition to laughing to those jokes they make.
-
I didn't include either one...I remember this causing more of a [poop]storm on ATGS, but I digress. For the life of me, I don't know why it caused such caustic arguments, but it did. Yes, there is a gray area, but Survivor and Amazing Race do offer mini games as part of the competition. That's not making me rush to compare it to TPiR, but I could at least understand the argument on why they deserve inclusion. It's similar to what Jefferson Graham said about Love Connection when he wrote Come on Down: "It's not a game show, but everyone thinks it is..."
IIRC, part of the reason this caused such a debate is because it wasn't a traditional in-studio show ("shiny floor" shows, as GSN tried to call them). If that's the case, then Diamond Head Game shouldn't be considered a game show either.
TL; DR: call it what you want. Your answer is technically not wrong whether you consider it a game show or reality show.
-
I do, however, wonder why someone believes that those shows are the two that are the best shows of the genre. What makes them special? Is it the longetivity? Is it the locale? Is it the production quality? Is it the gameplay? Is it the proverbial "million damn dollars"?
I personally don't consider Survivor or The Amazing Race to be game shows (something like "reality competition" seems more appropriate), but, if I did, I could see myself considering Survivor for a top 10 ranking on the 50 greatest list. At its best, Survivor is a pretty fascinating little microcosm of everything that is wrong with the way people relate to each other. On the other hand, I never found The Amazing Race remotely interesting.
-
TL; DR: call it what you want. Your answer is technically not wrong whether you consider it a game show or reality show.
Vigorous co-sign. I have way more important things in my life to be worried about than where in the Venn diagram of TV a particular show falls, and if someone here wants to be belligerent in throwing his or her (aw, let's be real fair, it's a he) that's his dime and we can adjust our opinion accordingly. I do take umbrage with the "perhaps less scripted" line, but I can have that conversation with JJ. I'd rather hear why you think that a show is good, bad or indifferent than what category it fits.
-
Used to be that if it had an announcer and fee plugs, it was a game show. :) "The Talk" will often have knockoffs of game shows, but no one would consider it a game show. If the show calls itself a game show, it's a game show.
-
I personally don't consider Survivor or The Amazing Race to be game shows (something like "reality competition" seems more appropriate)
I agree. I think there's a difference between "reality competition" and "game show". If you bring Survivor and Amazing Race onto the list, wouldn't you also have to bring shows like Hell's Kitchen, American Idol, Fear Factor or even The Bachelor?
-
Celebrity Sweepstakes is another one that fell off my list deliberately. I've been lucky enough to see more episodes of this lately (for instance, there was that documentary on comedian Billy Braver made recently, and the full episodes surfaced with some people in LA).
Cool - at least it's nice to know more episodes of this exist. I hope the rest of us get to see these eventually!
Break the Bank struggled to get even one memorable zinger per show. The shows without the forfeit-the-box-automatically rules are hard to watch.
I'll agree with you there. I think the rule in the first place was short-sighted - they should have automatically awarded it to the opponent from the beginning - unless it resulted in a win. I bet the producers didn't think there'd be so many wrong answers! Shows later in the ABC run moved much quicker once they changed that rule.
As for Go, I agreed with Clay - I like the game mechanic, but Go itself was not a good enough show to merit a rank from me this time around.
I know it has its fans, but i'm not one of them. I can watch it from time to time but I didn't rank Go in my top 50. I think it's OK as a bonus game, but as the premise for an entire show it gets tiresome. And don't get me started on the theme...
-
10. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
1,619 points; 42 votes; 1 first place vote
2006 ranking: 11
Jason: I gave a lot more love to Millionaire this year than I did in 2006. A decade ago, I was probably still lamenting the original show's rapid decline as it aired multiple nights with celebrity editions growing in number. But looking back on the phenomenon, I couldn't help but get really happy. For a brief, but wonderful time, you couldn't escape Millionaire. In school, we huddled around the little Flash game on ABC's website until the CD-ROM came out. Once we owned that, it was a matter of nights before my family & I went through the material. I'll never forget watching the first players climb to six figures. It's still strange to me that the show hasn't gone away since 1999, save for a few months between the network & syndicated runs. We don't really have an analog for this. It's like The $64,000 Question managed to stay on quietly for ten years after all the hoopla. Maybe it's more like Ken Jennings on Jeopardy! - mainstream attention for a bit followed by a continuing, successful run.
Scott: Millionaire is a good example of how keeping things simple can be in a show's best interest. This game is simply questions, multiple choices, and a couple of opportunities for hints to add just enough strategy to the whole ordeal. As viewers grew overly familiar with the show, they tried to spice things up with a timer and with surprise dollar values, but the format just doesn't need those things. No television show can be a nationwide sensation for years upon years -- I'm glad to see that Millionaire now seems to be comfortable with just being a solid Q&A game.
9. Press Your Luck
1,720 points; 46 votes; 1 first place vote
2006 ranking: 12
Scott: I love Press Your Luck. I ranked it higher this time than I did in 2006 because I find it so gosh darn addictive. Still, its finish in the top ten does surprise me a little bit. The set screams "game show" and it's left an indelible mark on the public consciousness, but of the shows in the top ten, Press Your Luck by far had the shortest run. Does it earn its ranking, or is there some generational bias here?
Jason: I could see where you could argue for generational bias, but I don't think it's a slam dunk case. When they do "greatest" of music lists in magazines or on TV, The Beatles find a place because their greatness transcends their time - it's the 2-minute pop hits that feel more at home in a diner while you drink a milkshake that stay behind. I think Press Your Luck deserves to be brought forward. Sure, in some respects, it's a time capsule. But unlike some of the million-dollar hits, which are products of their time, Press Your Luck manages to be engaging even when played at home for no stakes. Just like the other gambling games on our list, there's an incredible rush when a player pulls off the impossible, and an equally great pang of what could have been when a whammy comes at the worst possible time. I think that alone is something special that deserves acknowledgement. One of the things that bothered me looking back on my 2006 list was how much credence I gave to shows' legacies vs. my own enjoyment. My entry looked more like a polishing of the TV Guide Top 50, with some rare gems thrown in. This year, I made my entry completely my own, and Press Your Luck got into my top 10. By points, the show's average place on voters' lists was around #14.
Scott: I suppose I'm feeling some misplaced sense of shame. Society says I'm supposed to favor smart shows, like Millionaire, and shows with wit, like Hollywood Squares. I'm not supposed to love a program in which people shout at a giant slideshow covered with incandescent bulbs. Well, I admit it -- Press Your Luck is a great game show! And there's nothing wrong with that!
8. Concentration
1,736 points; 46 votes; 1 first place vote
2006 ranking: 9
Jason: My family & I played the heck out of any home version of Concentration we owned. There was a contestant on Idiotest who won a car on Classic Concentration. I was on the phone relaying the story to my dad when a guy walking by on the studio lot who looked to be my age decided to interrupt & tell us both how much he liked Classic Concentration growing up. For a show whose heyday was in black & white, that really only made it to this millennium through Endless Games, that shocked me. And in our voting, that same sort of thing was reflected - we're getting further & further away from the show's last life on television, and yet, Concentration stays strong, going up from 9 to 8.
Scott: It's the only show in our top 50 which primarily utilizes a memory game, and the only memory game show the general public remembers (sorry, Hit Man and Eye Guess). Normally, I'm against computerizing game boards, but in the case of Classic Concentration, it makes sense (it probably helps that the rebus itself was still a nice, hand-drawn art card). How do you feel about a game board which only exists virtually versus a physical game board in which the rebus is divided by black lines?
Jason: Even growing up, I thought it was weird that we never "saw" the Classic Concentration board. Going back to presentation being so important, in regards to Scrabble, it would have been a whole sight better if they built some sort of set piece around where the players were looking. Without it, the effect is like news anchors talking to someone via satellite. Half the show takes place in the virtual fourth wall where the cameras are. I'm still teeming for even more Jack Narz Concentration. That version bridged the gap nicely between the original run & Classic Concentration. Do you think this show has any shot of coming back even within the next 10 years?
Scott: Sadly, no. In an era where all media's goal is to deliver rapid-fire content, I just can't imagine a scenario where enough viewers would be willing to sit down and, well, concentrate on watching a TV show. The reason Concentration is a great show is because if you play along, you really play along. But unlike every other show in our top ten, a distracted viewer can't briefly check in on Concentration at any given time and be satisfied with a nugget of gameplay.
Jason: The actual gameplay doesn't work in brief bursts, yes, but do you think there's any chance people would want to stick around if they joined in on a partially-revealed puzzle? It might take time for the audience to get re-accustomed with rebuses, but when I pass by a Final Jeopardy! I always wait through the reveals to get the correct response, even if I didn't watch the whole show.
Scott: Ah, but there's the rub. First you have to get the audience to remember what a rebus is, and Concentration isn't the format to do it. When a person glances at a partially-completed Wheel of Fortune puzzle, they immediately know what they're supposed to do. The goal isn't as clear when only portions of rebus units are visible. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I remain pessimistic.
7. Match Game
1,811 points; 46 votes; 2 first place votes
2006 ranking: 5
Scott: We can all agree that the iconic version of Match Game was never about the game. It was about sometimes-famous people getting together to have fun while making jokes that were as risqué as Program Practices would allow. Many of us assumed that with television standards loosening through the decades, Match Game was a product of its time. Yet now we have a new version, popular enough to get at least a second season, in which sometimes-famous people get together to have fun while making jokes that are as filthy as they'd like (even if they know they'll be censored). That wasn't enough to keep Match Game in the top five this year, but it does reveal a surprising strength to the format.
Jason: It's sort of like they continued an old movie franchise and found something to say with new characters in familiar surroundings. Match Game lives & dies on the personalities, and they managed to find a good mix with the most-recent ABC version. Up until now, all we had were Match Games in name only. None of the versions in between curated a stable of stars like the '70s run. A vote for Match Game is almost certainly not a vote for the game format, it's a vote for the comedy. Nobody's lauding Saturday Night Live for its masterful interchange between acts of sketches & music. Now that the "curse" has been broken, maybe we'll be looking back decades later on multiple versions of Match Game like we do SNL casts.
6. Wheel of Fortune
1,847 points; 46 votes; 1 first place vote
2006 ranking: 7
Scott: It's easy to criticize Wheel of Fortune now, as the show adds more and more sparkly things to keep the attention of an increasingly ADHD viewing public, but even today, if you turn the show on, you're going to try to solve that puzzle alongside the contestants. Wheel of Fortune may no longer be the utter phenomenon it once was, but it's still a very good game.
Jason: And I don't think I'm alone around these parts in welcoming some of the added stuff. I liked the Jackpot. I like the Wild Card. The presentation's a heck of a lot busier than it was years ago, but in the spirit of your previous sports analogy, I'm willing to embarrass myself too: are there football fans who think the superimposed first-down line & constant score bug detracts from watching the game? Wheel has had a natural evolution, and the general audience has stuck with it through every tweak. I think, at least in part, we don't talk about it around here very much because the changes were gradual enough that they didn't engender a reaction like Millionaire did when it went to the shuffle.
Scott: You're right that Wheel of Fortune has been good at making its changes gradually and subtly, which I think helps shield it from some of the criticism an overly analytical group like ours would otherwise give it. When Millionaire makes a change, it's a big sweeping thing that we all take note of. When Wheel of Fortune makes a change, it's so small in the grand scheme of everything else on the show that the threads here usually don't go very far. I also wonder how many loyal Wheel watchers we have on this board, as opposed to those who don't tune in often, but know that the show is still there, doing its thing. I think that not being under that microscope helps the show's reputation among our group, but then again, I don't think that would have an appreciable impact on Wheel of Fortune's ranking in this poll.
-
I wonder if Concentration is suitable for a Web series like they did with Password. One rebus should be enough to fill a video
-
I honestly wonder whether Concentration is too..."cerebral" for today's audience? Not for the difficulty, but because so much is going on with remembering whether the Refrigerator is behind 13 or 18, then trying to decipher a rebus on top of it. I love the show and personally had it at #23; I just wonder if it will have Suzy Q. Homemaker fumbling for the remote to watch Judge Judy.
Honestly, I think the show could return if you replace the rebus with something a little simpler, say a simple image. Yes, you now have Get the Picture, but I'm thinking about the average 2016 audience. If they were made up of all Invision members, it would prolly run for years! :P
-
If we've got to the point where thinking is too hard then maybe the game show is done as a genre. The fact that "Hit the Buzzer, Win a Cookie" is in the top ten and got a greatest of all time vote does not fill me with confidence.
-
Well, to say thinking is too hard might teeter on hyperbole. Fortunately, Jeopardy has 32 years in its current form, Millionaire's coming up on close to two decades, Idiotest and The Chase do pretty well. So, I think a thinking person's game, if executed right (see Questions, 500), can still make it. I just wonder if Concentration requires too much thinking*, and IMO that partially comes from shows like Deal or No Deal or whatever paternity test-based talk show pissing in the proverbial gene pool.
*/And if the answer is yes, the show's title might be a bit ironic
-
You know, I don't understand how answering questions, earning things associated with answering those questions, using said things to take turns at a game board with thousands of dollars in potential prizes available as well as penalty spaces that take your money away by landing on them, as well with testing your adversity to risk and how strategy plays into your decision making boils down to "hit the buzzer, win a cookie".
-
10. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (1999-present)
9. Press Your Luck (1977, 1983-1986, 2002-2003)
8. Concentration (1958-1978, 1987-1991)
7. Match Game (1962-1969, 1973-1982, 1990-1991, 1998-1999, 2016-present)
6. Wheel of Fortune (1975-present)
-
10. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
It's still strange to me that the show hasn't gone away since 1999, save for a few months between the network & syndicated runs. We don't really have an analog for this. It's like The $64,000 Question managed to stay on quietly for ten years after all the hoopla. Maybe it's more like Ken Jennings on Jeopardy! - mainstream attention for a bit followed by a continuing, successful run.
Maybe The Simpsons might be a better analogy, even though it's not a game show. In its first couple of years, it was a national phenomenon. It's not a phenomenon anymore ... but it's remained on the air for 27 years.
-
Who Wants to be a Millionaire: I'm glad to see this move into the top 10. I saw almost every ABC telecast and pretty well every episode through the first few years of syndication. Due to time slot and station changes in recent years, I only catch it once in a while now. I think the phenomenon of the Regis version alone probably merits a top 10 placing. He could make you laugh in a very tense moment, and make you feel for the contestant when he lost. I always thought this was the best of the primetime "comeback" shows.
Press Your Luck: I was talking to a colleague in another department the other day and game shows somehow came up. She said "I like the one with the whammies". From what I could tell, she wasn't aware that it was on GSN everyday, so it was from memories of the original. It certainly left its mark.
Even though it only ran three years, the endless reruns would seem to suggest was cancelled way before its time. An oddity about this show is that through decades of reruns (1 year in syndication, 8 years on USA, 1 year on Buzzr and now 15 years on and off GSN), the whole series has never been repeated. The last few weeks of the series from Sept 1986 haven't been seen since the handful of CBS stations still clearing the 4 PM timeslot originally aired it. If GSN ever does pick up the last bit of the series, they'll almost be like new episodes because so few have ever seen them.
I had all of these five shows in my top 20, with two of them placing in my top 5.
-
You know, I don't understand how answering questions, earning things associated with answering those questions, using said things to take turns at a game board with thousands of dollars in potential prizes available as well as penalty spaces that take your money away by landing on them, as well with testing your adversity to risk and how strategy plays into your decision making boils down to "hit the buzzer, win a cookie".
Given that you essentially dismissed any discussion of an opinion not adjacent to your own as it to pertains to "what's a game show" I don't feel particularly compelled to engage you here.
-
You know, I don't understand how answering questions, earning things associated with answering those questions, using said things to take turns at a game board with thousands of dollars in potential prizes available as well as penalty spaces that take your money away by landing on them, as well with testing your adversity to risk and how strategy plays into your decision making boils down to "hit the buzzer, win a cookie".
Given that you essentially dismissed any discussion of an opinion not adjacent to your own as it to pertains to "what's a game show" I don't feel particularly compelled to engage you here.
If you're referring to my statement about how I don't consider certain programs to be game shows by my definition, I was willing to elaborate. Since nobody pressed me on it, and some of the responses that followed echoed some of my sentiments on the matter, I didn't need to really add anything because there wasn't anything I could've added.
If you're not then I really don't know what you're talking about.
-
I just wonder if Concentration requires too much thinking*, ...
*/And if the answer is yes, the show's title might be a bit ironic
I don't think the point is that it require too much *thinking,* but that it requires too much *attention.* Although you might be able to solve a rebus with a quick look-in, you couldn't follow the prize-matching part of the game without being attentive to the whole game. You wouldn't necessarily have to *look* at the screen the whole time, but you'd have to be actively listening.
-
I was wondering if Millionaire would make the list. I'm glad it did. It has great play along value. Regis' version would have lasted longer if they didn't overexpose it. Plus the celebs playing for charity gets old quick. Press Your Luck was a definite improvement over Second Chance, far more exciting. I was surprised Concentration made the Top Ten, for the fact that it's been off for over 20 years. I liked the Jack Narz version since I grew up with that. I figured MG would be in the Top Five. I always liked it. WOF has became a TV staple. I saw a taping of it at Radio City in NYC some 10 years ago with Pat, Vanna and the late Charlie O.
I think I've figured out what the Top Five shows are.
-
Adding to Clay's point, that's one of the reasons I gave Concentration a high rank in my list. It was an excellent use of early television because it totally demanded your attention. It could hold you, as compared to other shows where you could flip the dial and take in a few minutes of some other show and not miss much. The excitement built as the puzzle was revealed, bit by bit, like Wheel of Fortune. A point was made a long time ago that a lot of Mark Goodson's games could just as easily been done on the radio (Password, To Tell The Truth, What's My Line?, Family Feud) if TV had never been developed. Concentration was one of several games that played to television's strengths. Could it work with today's attention spans? Well, if one can sit through an entire two- hour drama because it's captivating, what's the difference? It's a matter of want to. If you're interested enough and it's good enough, you'll watch it.
-
I think I've figured out what the Top Five shows are.
Yes. And Your Number's Up and Bargain Hunters could not be more deserving.
-
I just wonder if Concentration requires too much thinking*, ...
*/And if the answer is yes, the show's title might be a bit ironic
I don't think the point is that it require too much *thinking,* but that it requires too much *attention.* Although you might be able to solve a rebus with a quick look-in, you couldn't follow the prize-matching part of the game without being attentive to the whole game. You wouldn't necessarily have to *look* at the screen the whole time, but you'd have to be actively listening.
This is a good way to look at it. With Wheel, you have to watch, but you can glance up from whatever errand and solve the puzzle, even though it's only halfway filled-in. But yeah, Concentration requires more....well, concentration. :)
-
I'll cosign that.
I know lots of moms who are staying at home to attend to the family and home while the dad is out earning the money. I believe that every one of them is smart enough to play along with Concentration or any other game show of the 60s, 70s or 80s. If you watch a minute of game play of Concentration you get the idea: reveal two cards, see if the item matches. If so, reveal the puzzle pieces, if not cover them and continue play. Anyone watching could then make the choice of "does this interest me?". That's the hurdle, not difficulty.
-
I think I've figured out what the Top Five shows are.
Yes. And Your Number's Up and Bargain Hunters could not be more deserving.
I'm suddenly curious to see if either of those shows garnered a vote.
-
I was wondering if Millionaire would make the list.
The list as a whole? I had no doubt it would make it. I mean, it's arguably one of the most iconic games of the last 25 years and is largely credited with reviving the genre. It was just a matter of how high it would place.
Top 10 doesn't surprise me, again, given how it took off in the U.S., and has remained on the air, minus a few months in summer 2002.
-
I think I've figured out what the Top Five shows are.
Yes. And Your Number's Up and Bargain Hunters could not be more deserving.
Then there's Show Me The Money, with Captain Kirk himself
-
I was wondering if Millionaire would make the list.
The list as a whole? I had no doubt it would make it. I mean, it's arguably one of the most iconic games of the last 25 years and is largely credited with reviving the genre. It was just a matter of how high it would place.
Top 10 doesn't surprise me, again, given how it took off in the U.S., and has remained on the air, minus a few months in summer 2002.
Here's what I thought cemented Millionaire's status for me as a top 15 (I say that because it just missed my top ten, as I had it at 12).
Through all the changes they made to the show over the years (getting rid of the Fastest Finger round for the syndicated series, lifelines coming and going, the 2010 format overhaul, the 2015 return to the classic format), the show never lost its sense of self. Which is one person vs. a stack of questions with total control over his destiny, with the drama ratcheting up the higher he goes. And as a viewer, you're locked in step with him the whole way and once he starts getting high up on that ladder, you start to get excited because you just don't know where it's going and can't wait to find out.
-
Then there's Show Me The Money, with Captain Kirk himself
whoosh.
-
I had it at 20, which now surprises me, given everything I said. I think, for me, that while it's still one person answering a stack of multiple-choice questions, it's not quite the appointment television it was 16 or 17 years ago.
And that's perfectly okay; you could say the same thing for Wheel now, compared to 1984. Millionaire comes on at noon here, so I don't get to watch too often, but the last time I did, it was still a fun game show, just refitted for daytime. Years ago, someone here noted that game shows don't hold the same iconic status and last for decades, compared to 40 years ago. So, to see a show break out the pack and stay on the air is a great thing, changes and all.
-
I had it at 20, which now surprises me, given everything I said. I think, for me, that while it's still one person answering a stack of multiple-choice questions, it's not quite the appointment television it was 16 or 17 years ago.
And that's perfectly okay; you could say the same thing for Wheel now, compared to 1984.
I think your observations help show that part of what made Millionaire so appealing in its first run, and in game show history for the voting, was the specialness of the big money & the primetime pageantry. Sort of like why people chose some of the scandal shows, I guess. Conversely, that's what's less appealing for me personally in syndication. As a game, I wouldn't really play straight-up Millionaire for fun on my own. Playing the CD-ROM with my family is still fun, but as a collaborative effort by everybody in the room. I liked the tweaks for the Facebook game when the shuffle format was around. I think I'm in the minority among game show fans who liked the shuffle format for the very reasons it came about - it made the early questions interesting, it made every show different, etc.
-Jason
-
If we've got to the point where thinking is too hard then maybe the game show is done as a genre. The fact that "Hit the Buzzer, Win a Cookie" is in the top ten and got a greatest of all time vote does not fill me with confidence.
Heaven forbid that people like a show that is entertaining as opposed to something boring and mundane such as Quiz Bowl.
-
There's no generalizing quite like your generalizing.
-
There's no generalizing quite like your generalizing.
Who's more generalizing? Mark or you, who boiled down a show that employs knowledge, strategy, and risk to create drama perhaps better than most shows of its era into the 80s equivalent of How Much Is Enough?
I mean, there's dislike of a show and then there's Nisanian level hating just to hate.
-
who boiled down a show that employs knowledge
You know, you keep going to this well out of the gate, but I am sure you realize that the question difficulty wasn't exactly S.A.T.-quality. It's a little disingenuous and really undermines the rest of your argument. Just saying.
-
Undermines? Maybe a bit, but I do think that Travis gave the short shrift to a game that while not heavy on the knowledge front is a bit heavy on the strategy front. It's probably one of the things I loved most about the show. Those very interesting situations that could arise as the scores remained close and the Whammy was still ever present on the board.
While I wouldn't place it at #1, and I didn't place it Top 10, I'd certainly give it its credit for being as entertaining as it was.
-
If we've got to the point where thinking is too hard then maybe the game show is done as a genre. The fact that "Hit the Buzzer, Win a Cookie" is in the top ten and got a greatest of all time vote does not fill me with confidence.
Heaven forbid that people like a show that is entertaining as opposed to something boring and mundane such as Quiz Bowl.
HEY! I'm right here!
-
I do think that Travis gave the short shrift to a game that while not heavy on the knowledge front is a bit heavy on the strategy front.
I completely agree. I also agree with Chris that the questions on most episodes were just a speed bump on the way to the big board, but the players had to do something to get there. Compare that to other luck-based shows in which you were clear once you passed the audition, and didn't have to make decisions in a competitive game. Outside of PYL, many of the other great shows don't require a high level of understanding either; they boil down to simple concepts.
-Jason
-
Undermines? Maybe a bit, but I do think that Travis gave the short shrift to a game that while not heavy on the knowledge front is a bit heavy on the strategy front.
I was using a rhetorical device to make a point.
If you enjoy the show that's great. We're all children of God with different experiences and tastes. If someone says "I like that it gave away lots of money and prizes in an entertaining way and frequently had big wins," that's a start. Someone else could like the Whammy taking money away. Or someone else could point to the technological marvel of the big board (and one of the reasons I don't have the show on my own list is that it was beaten severely.) I can bet that several people who have rung in put the show on their lists. For the person who has it as number one all time, tell me why it's better than Millionaire, Jeopardy, Pyramid, The Price is Right or What's My Line? Don't dismiss my opinion because I expressed it in a way that you don't care for.
-
I do think that Travis gave the short shrift to a game that while not heavy on the knowledge front is a bit heavy on the strategy front.
I completely agree. I also agree with Chris that the questions on most episodes were just a speed bump on the way to the big board, but the players had to do something to get there. Compare that to other luck-based shows in which you were clear once you passed the audition, and didn't have to make decisions in a competitive game. Outside of PYL, many of the other great shows don't require a high level of understanding either; they boil down to simple concepts.
-Jason
This really expresses my view better than the post I just made so I'll just quote it to show my agreement. :)
For the record I had Press Your Luck in my top 15 and ranked What's My Line just ahead of it.
-
I personally don't consider Survivor or The Amazing Race to be game shows (something like "reality competition" seems more appropriate)
I agree. I think there's a difference between "reality competition" and "game show". If you bring Survivor and Amazing Race onto the list, wouldn't you also have to bring shows like Hell's Kitchen, American Idol, Fear Factor or even The Bachelor?
If Fear Factor isn't a game show, then is Beat the Clock a game show? At their core, they're both "do a stunt, win a prize if you succeed, go home at the end of the episode." The main difference beyond the construction of the stunts themselves seems to be that, at the time Fear Factor debuted, anything that wasn't a straight Q&A was being dubbed a "reality" show because the term was in vogue.
I also don't get the slippery slope argument of "If you say that this one show that gets lumped in under reality competition shows is a game show, then all reality competition shows are game shows." The Amazing Race and Survivor (and Big Brother, which hasn't really come up here either) are kind of outliers in the reality competition genre, which, these days, is basically down to shows about romance and talent competitions.
-
5. Family Feud
1,914 points; 48 votes
2006 ranking: 6
Scott: Family Feud is the first show in the countdown to appear on every single ballot. It's also the only show in the top ten that didn't receive a single first place vote.
Jason: I did some last second shuffling with my ballot that moved Family Feud up in the rankings. I remember watching a special that was something like LAPD vs. the LA fire department, or celebrity lookalikes, and I still literally yelled at the TV to play along with the questions, even though what made the episode "special" was suspect. With every host, every new piece of theme music, every change to the set, what makes the show great has never changed. You can pretty much explain the meat of Family Feud just by asking a question. Anyone can play. Bullseye rounds aside, it's stayed largely intact, even reverting back to its classic set & music! I think, like Wheel of Fortune, our group may have seen enough of it to last our entire lives, which may explain the lack of #1 votes, but there's no question that Feud has stood the test of time.
Scott: No question whatsoever. Dawson's version had its iconic run. Combs' version was successful, too. And the current run of Family Feud is now in its eighteenth straight season. Who would have predicted that?
4. Password
2,037 points; 48 votes; 1 first place vote
2006 ranking: 4
Scott: It's a testament to the simplicity and brilliance of Password that it hasn't had a successful version for over 25 years, yet we've ranked it as the fourth greatest game show.
Jason: Perhaps our society's quality of communication has changed over time, but the words in play didn't age. Password gave game shows a great legacy by popularizing bonus rounds & celebrity partners. I think there's a lot to like about both the puzzle and non-puzzle Passwords. Do you have a preference?
Scott: I tend to prefer the the puzzle variety, even though I acknowledge that it severely limited the words the show could use. A half hour of straight Password (even if it's occasionally interrupted by spurts of speedy Password) gets a little tedious -- having a puzzle to solve helps break up the monotony. Still, I also enjoyed watching teams come up with brilliant clues for the tougher words of original Password... Cashword was a good attempt to capture that spirit, but it isn't quite the same when you know you have three unopposed chances to build up to the solution. It seems like there should be some effective way to marry the two formats. I can't immediately come up with one, but it certainly seems like there should be a way.
Jason: I don't think we're alone in that. Both flavors of Password had their strong suits, and a new version that combines them both would be cool.
Scott: And now, the big winners! The Game Show Fans Greatest Game Shows are...
3. Jeopardy!
2,076 points; 45 votes; 6 first place votes
2006 ranking: 2
2. The Price Is Right
2,163 points; 47 votes; 14 first place votes
2006 ranking: 1
1. Pyramid
2,264 points; 48 votes; 14 first place votes
2006 ranking: 3
Scott: Ten years later, the top three shows are still the top three shows, but now they've all moved around. There's a lot to discuss -- let's start with Jeopardy!, which falls from second to third place. When we held our first vote in 2006, Jeopardy! was still coming down from its Ken Jennings high (the Ultimate Tournament of Champions had been held roughly a year prior). However, ten years later, the show has seen a number of multi-day champions who have exploited the game's strategies with a frequency that hasn't really been seen until now. One of those gameplay trends -- wagering to tie -- resulted in a rule change. I don't want to use this thread to rekindle debate over the other strategy -- Daily Double hunting -- so I'll just say this, which I think is objective and fair to both sides: It's the optimal strategy for winning Jeopardy!, but it makes the show less fun to watch at home. Could these developments have had an effect on how our group ranked Jeopardy!?
Jason: Maybe. But I think, like our ardent Millionaire fans, you'd have to do a lot to shake Jeopardy! from the proverbial medal podium of the voters. These things & more helped the show stay active in social media discussions, which is mighty impressive for a show with as few changes over the years as Jeopardy!
Scott: The fact that three people left Jeopardy! off of their ballots entirely really stands out. When I saw this result, I wondered a) whether those omissions were accidental and b) if they were, whether Jeopardy! could have taken second place -- after all, it lost by just 87 points, so a couple more top-five rankings would have given it the silver. As it happens, of the three people who didn't vote for Jeopardy!, I know two of them well enough that I felt comfortable asking them whether the omission was deliberate. In both cases, it was.
Jason: I suppose what makes Jeopardy! fun to watch is not successful with the entire audience, so I get it. Even though strides are always made to make the material accessible, it's ultimately going to be like Frasier to the other shows' Friends - perhaps just the air of knowledge is enough to turn off people for whom composers & English lit are completely foreign topics. The cost of merchandise and the basic identification of things we see & hear everyday are practically the definition of accessible. While the Jeopardy! omissions surprise me in the grand scheme of things, I can understand them.
Scott: Speaking of omissions, The Price Is Right finds itself excluded from one ballot this year, but even if that hadn't happened, it still wouldn't have won the top spot this time around. This is the result which surprises me the most. In 2006, The Price Is Right took first place with a pretty comfortable lead. I think a lot of people assumed it wouldn't have any trouble holding on to that position. I'm too close to the situation to provide an unbiased opinion, but I'll note that while all three of our top shows have seen changes in the past ten years, it's fair to say that The Price Is Right and Pyramid have seen the most. Still, I think we've concluded that votes for, say, Let's Make a Deal or Match Game were reflective of those shows' legacies rather than only their current incarnations. So what happened to Price?
Jason: With Price, it's natural to wonder what the changeover to Drew might have done to its rank among the voters. Were there Barker faithful giving it more points than it deserved in 2006? Did those same people downgrade the show unfairly once Drew took over? For me, it merely dropped a spot for the opposite reasons I gave Feud a jump. The nighttime runs in the '70s, as well as other episodes without as much variety to the games & showcases, showed me there was more to the mix than just the format itself. Feud just has that spark that nothing can hold back. Like Match Game, there's evidence that something else is needed on top of the basic game of The Price is Right. Even if you consider the Cullen version, they too had the bonuses & humor of Bill Cullen to help things. A straight contest would likely not be as great.
Scott: I don't want to sound like a fanboy, or an apologist, or whatever, but I think that Bob Barker really is responsible for turning The New Price Is Right into the multi-decade hit it became -- for exactly the reasons you allude to. Sure, estimating the value of merchandise is something to which every viewer can relate. But that isn't what present-day Price Is Right's most memorable moments have ever been about. It was Bob Barker's experience and ability to draw the entertainment out of everyday people that defined this show, even from its earliest episodes in 1972. If both '70s hosts had simply focused on the pricing games the way that Dennis James did, TPIR would have still had a decent run, but it wouldn't have become an institution.
Jason: And on the flip side, no matter what, every time a Winner's Circle starts, I have to see how it ends. That's been true across all versions. Pyramid took the top spot on my ballot, just as it took top honors for the entire poll. I can play the game over & over and never tire of it. Pyramid never had big hitches in the rules or major strategy moments - it's just a pure game. After Dick Clark's passing, there was a fabulous article (http://gameological.com/2012/04/a-game-of-sounds/) on the sweet science of Pyramid that captured what made it so great. Slowly but surely, we're getting there with the new version on ABC.
Scott: I can't help but wonder whether it's the present-day state of Pyramid that gave it top honors this year. When the 2006 poll took place, the most recent version we had was the Osmond Pyramid... and well, we all know what that was like. Since then, we've seen a GSN revival which, though it didn't always have the level of gameplay us hardcore fans like to see in our Pyramid, was a faithful adaptation that really deserved more than one season. And now we have the ABC version, which demonstrates that the Pyramid format is just as engaging today as it was when Dick Clark was the host.
Jason: What I hope the new version really does is get the public to associate that game with the Pyramid title again. In the time before Pyramid's primetime comeback, there's been Catch Phrase & Heads Up!, just to name a few of the entities that picked up the game mechanic. Now if we do this list again 10 years from now, I don't think it's a certainty these rankings will stay. Naturally, we should get at least one more Chase-like contender to break into the top 50. The Price is Right evolved a lot over its 35 years with Bob Barker, and at the rate they're going, we're bound to see it continue with Drew. Pyramid & Match Game could continue on ABC and perhaps into syndication. Pat & Vanna & Alex may not be on their respective shows.
Scott: I think what we've proven with this poll is that even among the longest-running game show titles, there will always be a place for us to debate the merits of each. Especially when it comes to game formats that are as diverse as the ones which make up our top ten. As we've clearly seen, opinions change over time, and no one set of rankings will remain the same forever. I like having a decennial poll which makes us reflect on what makes a game show great, both in the past and in the present. The best game shows are capable of being entertaining to multiple generations of viewers, and I too look forward to seeing what the future of our genre holds.
That does it for the 2016 edition of the Game Show Fans 50 Greatest! I'd like to thank everybody who dedicated some of their time and compiled a ballot for this survey. I'd especially like to thank Jason, who made this results presentation exponentially more insightful than what it would have been if I was doing it on my own. Congratulations to the winners, and here's to the continued popularity of the TV game show so we can do this again in 2026!
-
"Pyramid" ousting "Price" from the top spot seems like a huge upset at first glance, but Scott is right, the recent revival gave it a massive bump. I've always considered it the most "fragile" of game show formats because so much about getting it right relies on execution and nuance. Competent celebrities, a host who builds suspense while keeping things low-key, the subtle ratcheting up of difficulty in the Winner's Circle...it's a deceptively simple format, and deceptively easy to screw up. While there were nits to pick about the Strahan run, it (and Baldwin's MG) ultimately proved that a classic game show, produced faithfully, can still find an audience in the new millenium, which should be cause for celebration for us die-hards.
TPiR, on the other hand, is basically the SNL of game shows. Both have had their high and low points through the years, but the format is such a warhorse, and both "regimes" on the show have overall been pretty good at figuring out when something they try doesn't work. (I'm aware other fans will disagree with me on that last point.) Some probably believe the show has been in a valley for the last 9 years because they will never accept Drew as host, and that may well be why the show slipped out of the top spot. But if nothing else, Drew has shown that a classic format can have life beyond its iconic host, and just like Pyramid, that should give GS fans hope.
-
I refer to Pyramid these days as "the greatest game ever created for television", but strangely enough, I had it second to Jeopardy ten years ago. While I'm surprised to see it the number one pick, Sam's right. A decent revival and the general feeling from some fans that Price just isn't as good anymore both must have been factors. I doubt the smaller sample had much to do with it. You had almost fifty and I think we were a little shy of seventy the first time around.
If you left either Jeopardy or Price off of your ballot, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that somehow, in a staggering moment of blindness, whichever one you left off just happened to slip your mind. If you want to tell us that's not the case and you had a reason, let me offer you some advise. Don't. Just don't. Whatever case you make will be ridiculed, as will you.
-
It's one thing to leave off High Rollers or Cash Cab because you forgot or ran out of slots. It's quite another to dismiss Jeopardy out of petulance, ignorance or some bizarre grudge.
/I nearly left both Family Feud and Match Game off my ballots entirely because I knew everyone else would carry their water and I've seen quite enough of both of them, but each one did lots of things that I like even if I wouldn't rate them in the top ten, so I pushed two also-rans overboard to slug them in and I'm OK with that.
-
I can at least understand how somebody who doesn't like difficult trivia looks at Jeopardy! as just wall-to-wall material (like Fifteen to One) and doesn't consider it great, or at the very least, doesn't consider it fun. I've talked to a fan or two who left off shows in the same manner you mentioned Travis - they took what I thought to be a lot of misdemeanors by a legacy show as enough crimes to take it off their list. For instance, if you didn't like Richard Karn, I don't think you needed to strike the entirety of Feud off your list, but there you go.
I know that my criteria to value shows I'd actually watch nearly took some bonafide classics off the list - I can see where voters of any age might find What's My Line? boring. I certainly feel that way about most Dating Game episodes I watch.
We saw some people accidentally leave off a show or two, but I'm curious for those with deliberate omissions to come forward, even for the shows outside the top 10 (because those will be easier to discuss without getting too salty anyway). I already mentioned some reasons I had for leaving Go, Weakest Link & Break the Bank off my list. I'll have to see my virtual top 50 "workspace" again for the others.
-Jason
-
I dropped Jackpot, Shopping Spree, Greed and Street Smarts off my list (all four were already in my Bottom 10 in 2006). While I obviously enjoyed those four shows, I've simply viewed others that since deserved the inclusion IMO.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread, Youtube introduced me to many shows I hadn't seen 10 years ago. Out of the four "replacements", two were classics I hadn't yet seen in 2006 (Big Showdown, Trebek's Double Dare), the other two debuted since (1 vs. 100, Celebrity Name Game). The latter of the latter category was my #50 pick.
Reading the list, I still don't know how I missed Whew! or Lingo.
-
It could be worse. I forgot to include Concentration.
-
Let me weigh in:
I did some "comparison ranking" with my choices: meaning how they ranked this time (my ballot and the eventual results) with how I ranked them when we did this last. Here's what I came up with.
Jeopardy came closest: I put it at #4 while the official rank was #3.
Sale Of The Century and Let's Make A Deal both had the farthest: My list had SotC at #43 compared to the official rank at #11 and LMaD at #48 to #16.
Among the shows I added to my ballot this time around were three recent ones: Family Game Night, Let's Ask America, and The American Bible Challenge. I also had LMaD, Split Second, The Who What Or Where Game/The Challengers, and Say When!!
You may WHOOSH if you want to.....
Cordially,
Tammy
-
It could be worse. I forgot to include Concentration.
Clearly, you weren't concentrating.
-
Reading the list, I still don't know how I missed Whew! or Lingo.
Whew is not on my list, and I'm comfortable with that. Of all the shows we talk about around here, I find that one and Press Your Luck are disproportionately loved. Maybe it's an age thing. I can admire the execution of Press Your Luck (which was on my list), but I just find Whew to be horribly flawed in almost every meaningful way.
-
It could be worse. I forgot to include Concentration.
Clearly, you weren't concentrating.
If Matt can win the internet three more days in a row he'll also win a Buick Skylark.
-
What this list proves is the genius of Bob Stewart.
-
My top ten (in order) were Jeopardy, Match Game, Pyramid, TPIR, Password, Feud, Concentration, Card Sharks, The 3ws/Challengers (vote was cast for the latter but I did consider both editions) and Sale of the Century.
Looking at my ballot, here's the shows that I voted on that missed out on the top 50 but ranked 51-100.
-Double Dare (had it at #30)
-The Cross-Wits (had it at #35)
-Greed (#41)
-Bumper Stumpers (#21)
-Trivia Trap (#43)
-Finders Keepers (#46)
-Pass the Buck (#48)
-Winning Lines (#33)
-Shop 'til You Drop (#36)
-
Jim makes a good point. I still have in my files the 2006 list of a revered member of this group who called it, based on preferences, a very Stewart-centric list. Personally, it's easy to forget that Password, To Tell The Truth and The Price Is Right are Bob Stewart creations because these rough diamond (and they are diamond) ideas were given the brutal polishing and buffing Mark Goodson laid on top of every idea that came out of his company. The solo Stewart productions still had rough edges, mostly in presentation, but the core ideas were incredibly entertaining. Pyramid is probably the closest Bob came to giving one of his formats real polish, but in some ways, many of his other shows had that Little Rascals feeling - "Let's put together a big show in old man Miller's barn!" They may have been rough around the edges, but they were still very entertaining - even when flawed. Some of them had an energy (Jackpot, Shoot For The Stars), others needed Bill Cullen to cover the flaws. Stewart deserves a lot of praise for his contributions to game shows.
-
I was the first place vote for Millionaire (and Pyramid 4th) but I'm okay with this result. Thank you Scott and Jason for putting this together.
-
5. Family Feud (1976-1985, 1988-1995, 1999-present)
4. Password (1961-1967, 1971-1975, 1979-1982, 1984-1989, 2008-2009, 2015)
3. Jeopardy! (1964-1975, 1978-1979, 1984-present)
2. The Price Is Right (1956-1965, 1972-present)
1. Pyramid (1973-1988, 1991, 2002-2004, 2012, 2016-present)
-
I refer to Pyramid these days as "the greatest game ever created for television", but strangely enough, I had it second to Jeopardy ten years ago. While I'm surprised to see it the number one pick, Sam's right. A decent revival and the general feeling from some fans that Price just isn't as good anymore both must have been factors. I doubt the smaller sample had much to do with it. You had almost fifty and I think we were a little shy of seventy the first time around.
We actually had 80 voters in the 2006 poll (http://www.gameshowforum.org/index.php/topic,11330.0.html).
While Jeopardy! was my #1 choice, I had Pyramid at #2 and I'm happy to see it overtake TPIR for the top spot. (I had TPIR at #5.)
-
1. Pyramid (1973-1988, 1991, 2002-2004, 2012, 2016-present)
I don't believe the Clark versions were one continuous run, were they?
-
If you gave everyone here the task to pick the ten greatest, I suspect there would be lots of overlap, and a few stragglers. Same if you said to pick the top twenty or twenty-five. We have a good idea of what are the greats, the near greats and the onlookers. When you get to fifty I think you run out of greats and start to look for shows to fill out the last of your ballot. The fact that there was a lot of clumping at the top shows me that as a group we're of like mind and know what great means more than some silly TV network or magazine.
My last ten were: Supermarket Sweep, Hot Streak, Hollywood Showdown, Dirty Rotten Cheater, Talk About, Chopped, Late Night Liars, Remote Control, Million Dollar Mind Game and finally Estate of Panic, because by golly I just enjoy it. The point I'm making to allay the "well, I did thus and so, and here's why" is that of course this exercise isn't purely scholarly, there has to be some amount of opinion and feeling and personality that goes into it and that's what makes it fun.
To Mark's question: they weren't. $20k ended in 1980, $50k went a year-ish in 1981 and New $25k picked up in Fall 1982. $10k was also off the air for a month and a bit in 1974 when CBS cancelled it and ABC scooped it up.
-
1. Pyramid (1973-1988, 1991, 2002-2004, 2012, 2016-present)
I don't believe the Clark versions were one continuous run, were they?
Not continuous in the proper sense but I get what he did because a Pyramid aired every year from '73 through '88. There were just two large gaps in between.
-
1. Pyramid (1973-1988, 1991, 2002-2004, 2012, 2016-present)
I don't believe the Clark versions were one continuous run, were they?
No, as TLEberle and PYLdude indicated, that was a simplified listing for the start-and-stop pattern of the era, taking into account the network and syndicated runs.
-
Don't dismiss my opinion because I expressed it in a way that you don't care for.
Did I though? I thought I expressed why I thought your opinion undersold Press Your Luck. Sorry if it came off as out and out throwing it aside. It's certainly a valid opinion.
I guess I was the sole 1st place vote for Password. It was really, really close when it came to Password and Pyramid. I chose Password for its pure word play. Pyramid has so much excitement, and I believe that the Winner's Circle is probably the best segment in all of television. It was tough for me to rank Password ahead of it.
-
The show I had highest that did not make the top 50 was Truth or Consequences at #11.
The show highest on the list that I did not have on mine was The Chase at #26. I felt like the American version did not have enough impact to consider it as one of the greatest.
The top 7 shows matched my top 7 shows, but in a slightly different order.
I had Password one slot above Pyramid because I felt as though Password paved the way for Pyramid's success. There was no moving Price from my top spot.
The only two shows on my list that did not make the top 100 were Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! and Stump the Schwab.
Thanks to Jason and Scott for running this!
-
I think I've figured out what the Top Five shows are.
I had them all, but not in the order they appeared. I figured TPIR would be #1, with Jeopardy or Pyramid being #2. So of the Top 5, three were created by Bob Stewart and three came from G-T. Of the Top 10, G-T had four, and Merv Griffin had two - ooooh!
Good job by those who compiled this list. Thanks.
-
My last ten were: Supermarket Sweep, Hot Streak, Hollywood Showdown, Dirty Rotten Cheater, Talk About, Chopped, Late Night Liars, Remote Control, Million Dollar Mind Game and finally Estate of Panic, because by golly I just enjoy it.
Ooh, Talk About. :) I've just started getting into it. For some reason, I had never checked it out before. It's good stuff.
I've never seen an episode of our version of Dirty Rotten Cheater. It's never popped up on YouTube.
-
My top few choices were mostly the same as the aggregate, but the rest of my list was quite a bit different than most.
The highest-ranked show that I excluded from my Top 50 was Double Dare, at #23. I've never really been a fan of kids/family games, which is odd because I grew up watching a ton of Nickelodeon. I was just a bit too young for Double Dare's run, though. I did watch quite a bit of Double Dare 2000, but it didn't make the same impression as the original did on a lot of folks on here.
The one kids' show that I did watch quite a bit of was Figure it Out. I still have the home game! God bless you, Lori Beth Denberg. :)
I'm probably the person most responsible for getting Debt (#25 on my list) and Battlestars (#26) in the top 100. Debt has really grown on me over the past few months, and Battlestars was quite fun - even if it was essentially Hollywood Triangles.
Also - no love for Dealer's Choice? I had it in my Top 50, which is pretty high - but I'm surprised that it wasn't in the overall 100.
-
My bottom 10: To Tell the Truth (not a fan of panel shows), Dirty Rotten Cheater, Face the Music, Let's Make a Deal (do not like the current version), Scrabble, Wipeout 80s, To Say the Least, Remote Control, @midnight (and this is so far off my top 50 now, as it doesn't have the appeal it had just a few months ago), Late Night Liars at 50.
I was probably the main reason Celebrity Name Game hit the top 100. I had it at #19. I looked at it from the overall entertainment factor--Craig Ferguson is a fantastic host, the spontaneous humor is always fun to watch, and the game really improved by leaps and bounds from season 1 to seasons 2/3.
I'm also at fault for Travis having Late Night Liars on his list. He was running out of shows and cribbed my list as a cheat sheet.
-
Late Night Liars is an interesting case. Was it good? Certainly one could make the argument and I would because I enjoyed it. But do you consider the fact that the show only aired for one and a half weeks to be a hindrance or not? To me, that's what would've prevented me from including it had I considered it (and that's more of a case of "at this point in the list, I'm tapped out and can't think of anything else" than anything).
I had Downfall on my list as the last one in. Call me crazy if you must but I felt the concept of a race against time to prevent everything you could win, as well as yourself, from going off the side of a building to be a fascinating one.
-
Million Dollar Mind Game had 6 shows, yet it landed in the top 100. Grand Slam, another in the top 100, had the same 8 episode run as Late Night Liars. Quality > Quantity. And your number 50 had even less shows--five.
-
My heart skipped a beat when I saw Pyramid at #1. For some years, I've said that and Jeopardy! the twin pinnacles of game shows. J! is the greatest straight-quizzer, and Pyramid is the greatest non-quizzer.
-
Call me crazy if you must but I felt the concept of a race against time to prevent everything you could win, as well as yourself, from going off the side of a building to be a fascinating one.
I liked the show because it was CHOCK FULL of content for an hour's time (and I like Jericho, period, and anyone who disagrees is a STUPID IDIOT <clap, clap, clapclapclap>), but having to disclaimer the conveyor belt at the top of every show really ruined the gimmick.
/armbar
-
Late Night Liars at 50.
Bless you. I just couldn't pull that trigger.
-
Late Night Liars is an interesting case. Was it good? Certainly one could make the argument and I would because I enjoyed it. But do you consider the fact that the show only aired for one and a half weeks to be a hindrance or not? To me, that's what would've prevented me from including it had I considered it (and that's more of a case of "at this point in the list, I'm tapped out and can't think of anything else" than anything).
I had Downfall on my list as the last one in. Call me crazy if you must but I felt the concept of a race against time to prevent everything you could win, as well as yourself, from going off the side of a building to be a fascinating one.
You just answered your own question--obviously we don't consider it a hindrance if we gave points to it, and you gave points to Downfall, a similarly short lived series.
It's clear to me that we devoted the last five or ten spots on our lists to quirky/off beat shows that we enjoy that we know aren't going to chart but we want to show some love to them, and to talk about (har!) and share memories of them.
-
Miscellaneous thought/opinion:
My top fifty included both Gong Show and Love Connection, and I'd intended to include both Survivor and Amazing Race but both got brain-glitched off the final version of my list. Plus a series whose most famous run was outright rigged in Twenty One, a comedy vehicle for Groucho Marx (You Bet Your Life), and quite a few shows to have their first runs after 1995 (Debt, 5th Grader, Cash Cab, The Chase, the two reality competitions I'd intended to include but accidentally drafted out, Deal or No Deal, etc). The same list where I omitted forum favorite Whew - a very fun game whose evangelism for the show stops and starts within this community and that ultimately I get frustrated when I think about the format of. Blocking is at *such* a disproportionate advantage, and adding celebrities to the mix was not a good thing - almost never is. Is there a show? Is there a game involved, even a nominal one - whether that game involves trivia, or dating, or figuring out how much cocaine Chuck Barris could do between tapings? Congrats, it's a game show. That's my definition.
Because ultimately, a list like this is both wholly subjective - both open to broad/narrow determinations of "what is a game show" as well as the definitions of "greatness" (format? cultural relevance? personal enjoyment?) and additionally won't ever be a conclusive list, representing just a few dozen opinions within a walled garden.
Besides longevity, I think in deeper ways, the top three are what they are - and probably will be for a long time - because in so many ways they're the pinnacle of their respective types of shows. Jeopardy is the definitive quizzer for all but a select few, while you can make an argument for Password ultimately Pyramid has proven the more versatile, durable, and often enjoyable, and Price is Right is a sterling "game-as-variety-show", where there's a rotating mix of often wildly different segments, unified together by the emcee and show-as-structure, driven as much by the personalities of the players and the fun factor of the mini-games than the show as a whole.
Know what I'd really, genuinely love to see: Throw open greatness voting. Game show fans on Facebook, on Reddit, on show-specific boards like Golden Road and J! Board and Buy a Vowel. And if they can't think of fifty, then let them do twenty or twenty five. I'm genuinely interested to see what a greatest/favorite list looks like when left immune to twenty years of feedback loop and to folks who maybe don't have the entire history of the genre on VHS/DVD/HD. (The lengthiest and most sincere and most enjoyable real-world conversation I've ever had about a game show? Talking with a bunch of 35+ co-workers at a hotel about Remote Control. Who remembered it by name and would almost all - and we're crossing every demographic here - buy DVDs or iTunes releases if offered.)
-
It's clear to me that we devoted the last five or ten spots on our lists to quirky/off beat shows that we enjoy that we know aren't going to chart but we want to show some love to them
That's how Brexit passed. :)
-
or figuring out how much cocaine Chuck Barris could do between tapings? Congrats, it's a game show. That's my definition.
I'd certainly watch this over Three's a Crowd in a walk.
-
on show-specific boards like Golden Road and J! Board and Buy a Vowel.
Problem here is that unless you get a sufficiently large sample size (and you won't; there just aren't enough of us), you have now guaranteed that these three shows are the top 3. And now the exercise isn't interesting, because I don't care about what the fourth best game show that doesn't have its own community is.
-
on show-specific boards like Golden Road and J! Board and Buy a Vowel.
Problem here is that unless you get a sufficiently large sample size (and you won't; there just aren't enough of us), you have now guaranteed that these three shows are the top 3. And now the exercise isn't interesting, because I don't care about what the fourth best game show that doesn't have its own community is.
I should have really specified from the beginning, but tend to stick to more train-of-thought type discussion: When I say I'd love to see this, I'm talking theoretically. Because yes, if you did open it up right now, you might pick up some folks from LearnedLeague and Facebook, but a lot of the voting would come from those show-specific sites. Though, if those are the shows that have sustained and vocal interest enough to have their own communities, perhaps they ARE the greatest shows. And if that happens, Jeopardy wins. All the Price and Wheel fans vote J! #2, and all the J! fans and trivia folks give the A&Q game the #1, and it's no contest.
I'm more imagining a scenario where you have the Chris Lemon and Matt Ottinger and Chelsea Thrasher votes next to the votes of all of my LLama friends, next to votes of my friend from work who has a DVR timer for Match Game and watches it in binges, next to the votes of people who do passionately love and know about the genre, but don't participate here because they're, well, an asshole - next to the vote of, say, a Bob Boden or Aaron Solomon type who's in the industry, but is at best only loosely tied to this segment of the fandom in 2016 and who obviously has other things going on in his life. Even the person who's never heard of Bullseye but has a Tivo at home with every episode of 5th Grader and Cash Cab. What do they think the greatest games really are?
Purely as a thought exercise, I'm utterly fascinated by what would happen to the list as the scope of voting expands beyond the slowly shrinking walled garden of the Game Show Forum née alt.tv.game-shows
-
Re: the point regarding the last spots being for obscurities: don't doubt it at all and I'd wonder just what else garnered votes.
Far as my question goes I appreciate the answers but it was more in a scientific sense that I was asking. There's a lot of stuff that's relatively short lived out there, and quite a bit of it was decent TV. It then becomes a matter of where you stand as to whether or not a show like Duel, Million Dollar Mind Game, Grand Slam, Downfall, Dirty Rotten Cheater, Late Night Liars, etc. was good enough for you to give it a vote. With my list, I had a lot of stuff on it so it was a little more difficult as I got to the end to fill in gaps. Certainly Dirty Rotten Cheater and Late Night Liars were worth votes.
-
And if that happens, Jeopardy wins. All the Price and Wheel fans vote J! #2, and all the J! fans and trivia folks give the A&Q game the #1, and it's no contest.
Except this assumes that the J! fans don't throw #2s and #3s at Price and WoF. I still think it skews the top of the poll HEAVILY towards "who can mobilize their community the best?" But then I don't care about who wins the NIT, either. :)
but don't participate here because they're, well, an asshole
I'm an asshole. What's your point? :)
Purely as a thought exercise, I'm utterly fascinated by what would happen to the list as the scope of voting expands beyond the slowly shrinking walled garden of the Game Show Forum née alt.tv.game-shows
In a utopia, yes, I agree that this would be an interesting exercise if you could get the sample size big enough to offset the obsessed.
-
on show-specific boards like Golden Road and J! Board and Buy a Vowel.
Problem here is that unless you get a sufficiently large sample size (and you won't; there just aren't enough of us), you have now guaranteed that these three shows are the top 3.
I would co-sign on this. Even if those fans are fans of game shows in general, if they only found out about the poll on a community devoted to one show, as opposed to here, there's a high chance they'd vote disproportionately high for those shows. When Golden-Road did their arm of the best pricing games ever list, I doubt they wanted our votes folded in, because as game show fans first and not Price fans first, we'd vote for more "mainstream" games vs. their community. (Which goes into my next point....)
Know what I'd really, genuinely love to see: Throw open greatness voting. Game show fans on Facebook, on Reddit (...) And if they can't think of fifty, then let them do twenty or twenty five. I'm genuinely interested to see what a greatest/favorite list looks like when left immune to twenty years of feedback loop and to folks who maybe don't have the entire history of the genre on VHS/DVD/HD.
I guess, but I thought the whole point of our exercise was to see what game show fans (particularly on this board) thought the best 50 were, as opposed to the unwashed masses/TV Guide writers who haven't seen much beyond Wheel, Jeopardy, et al. I think it would be interesting to a point, but I wouldn't want to do such a poll at the expense of this exercise - perhaps in addition to. It's like asking Star Wars fans to rank the movies in the series, but then folding in votes from people who don't know what an Ewok is. I would first be more interested in increasing the number of people on this board who participate before we get (for lack of a better term) less informed opinions in the mix. To build off from another quote you made re: Bullseye, this list interests me because the average voter is somebody who knows what both versions of Wipeout are.
I'm more imagining a scenario where you have the Chris Lemon and Matt Ottinger and Chelsea Thrasher votes next to the votes of all of my LLama friends, next to votes of my friend from work who has a DVR timer for Match Game and watches it in binges, next to the votes of people who do passionately love and know about the genre, but don't participate here because they're, well, an asshole - next to the vote of, say, a Bob Boden or Aaron Solomon type who's in the industry, but is at best only loosely tied to this segment of the fandom in 2016 and who obviously has other things going on in his life.
I'm surprised we only had 48 ballots, because I actively campaigned people in real life & in different (but still general) game show venues online. I know I had a hand in getting about 4-5 additional people to submit.
My top fifty included both Gong Show and Love Connection (...) Plus a series whose most famous run was outright rigged in Twenty One, a comedy vehicle for Groucho Marx (You Bet Your Life), and quite a few shows to have their first runs after 1995 (Debt, 5th Grader, Cash Cab, The Chase, the two reality competitions I'd intended to include but accidentally drafted out, Deal or No Deal, etc). The same list where I omitted forum favorite Whew - a very fun game whose evangelism for the show stops and starts within this community and that ultimately I get frustrated when I think about the format of. Blocking is at *such* a disproportionate advantage, and adding celebrities to the mix was not a good thing - almost never is.
I had Gong Show pretty high on my list. In contrast to most of you, though, I had trouble finishing mine because I started reading back "greatest" in my head. I didn't want to fill it out with shows I merely liked, I wanted them to have some kind of value. For example, I liked Debt well enough, but was something that derivative worth being considered "greatest?" That line of thought was the impetus for my putting College Bowl in. Yeah, I'd never really watch College Bowl on my own, but it did so much for young people (as I said in the results). I'm not condemning a vote against Whew, but IMO, at least it had something to offer beyond re-skinning familiar devices as the aforementioned Debt and 5th Grader did.
-Jason
-
Much as I love Chelsea's idea, aside from the issues of bias from the respective fandoms, is also the overlap. There are a fair share of users like myself, JJ, Chelsea who peruse the various forums with regularity. How would we fix this? One vote per person, perhaps? Even then, we run into Chris' very real problem of the number of people/small sample size.
With specific respect to my page, not sure a whole ton of folks could name 25. Yeah, we've got fans of the genre, but it's because transforming more into a show guide/advice/support page, oftentimes by new members who are awesome folks, but don't care about shows that aired 30 years ago, aside from maybe something PYL. Furthermore, it's more than likely known by these folks the phrase of 'Big bucks/no whammies!' is somewhat colloquial, forget Larson, let alone Randy, Jenny, etc.
Would've voted in this, but found it like 5 hours before closing, and personally needed more time than that. Should be said, despite my page's show, Jeopardy! would be my #1, with Pyramid and Password as a close #2 and #3. After all, like many here, I prefer the genre on the whole to a specific show.
When Golden-Road did their arm of the best pricing games ever list, I doubt they wanted our votes folded in, because as game show fans first and not Price fans first, we'd vote for more "mainstream" games vs. their community.
As someone who admins GR these (yeah, yeah, trying to fix those issues) I honestly really appreciated the input here for voting, just to see what each site looks for, values, in a compare/contrast sort of way for psychoanalysis. It also let me know how people view the individual games as somewhat mini game shows on their own (this forum) and how they worked within the schema and history of Price (Golden-Road). So long as they're well-supported reasons, it's fascinating to me why people picked what they did.
-
Call me crazy if you must but I felt the concept of a race against time to prevent everything you could win, as well as yourself, from going off the side of a building to be a fascinating one.
I liked the show because it was CHOCK FULL of content for an hour's time (and I like Jericho, period, and anyone who disagrees is a STUPID IDIOT <clap, clap, clapclapclap>), but having to disclaimer the conveyor belt at the top of every show really ruined the gimmick.
Downfall wasn't on my list, but I'll concede that it was the best in the world at what it did.
-
Not that anybody cares, but the obsessive compulsive proprietor over at a certain blog few people take seriously chimed in on our list and came up with one of his own.
-
Know what I'd really, genuinely love to see: Throw open greatness voting. Game show fans on Facebook, on Reddit, on show-specific boards like Golden Road and J! Board and Buy a Vowel.
I'd prefer if we could re-open this message board to allow people with legitimate interest in discussing game shows to join. I know why this board was closed to new members, but it would be a mistake to assume that everyone who isn't here, but would like to be, is just a troll who wants to refer to Hot Potato as "hat putato."
-
Not that anybody cares, but the obsessive compulsive proprietor over at a certain blog few people take seriously chimed in on our list and came up with one of his own.
Which suggests to me, at least, that there are other people (not necessarily the person you're referring to) who would be interested in joining and participating here.
-
Not that anybody cares, but the obsessive compulsive proprietor over at a certain blog few people take seriously chimed in on our list and came up with one of his own.
1) You're correct.
2) What was his overall champion: I'm Telling, Hollywood Connection, Headline Chasers or Mindreaders?
-
Not that anybody cares, but the obsessive compulsive proprietor over at a certain blog few people take seriously chimed in on our list and came up with one of his own.
1) You're correct.
2) What was his overall champion: I'm Telling, Hollywood Connection, Headline Chasers or Mindreaders?
If I read it correctly, it was 500 Questions.
I'm pretty sure I didn't since his list was difficult to decipher.
-
Of course it was. The actual answer was even better than the joke.
-
Of course it was. The actual answer was even better than the joke.
What was it? I really don't wanna go back there.
-
If I read it correctly, it was 500 Questions.
I wonder, if you add up all of the worldwide versions of that show, if even THEN they have asked 500 questions.
-
Of course it was. The actual answer was even better than the joke.
What was it? I really don't wanna go back there.
I'm presuming that it was 500 Questions, because I asked you what the answer was and you said that's what the answer was.
-
Of course it was. The actual answer was even better than the joke.
What was it? I really don't wanna go back there.
I'm presuming that it was 500 Questions, because I asked you what the answer was and you said that's what the answer was.
Oh. I thought you had gone there and found a more discernible copy of his list.
-
Honest to Pete I try to devote as little energy as humanly possible to Casey Abell, may his name be forever blotted out.
-
Casey's top pick was Match Game.
-
So he rails against us for being old centric and tops his list with a game show first conceived in 1963. Interesting.
Actually, not really.
-
Like I said, don't devote much thought to him.
-
He and his legion of followers (mostly castaways from this board) are a match made in Hell. And for that reason alone, I'm glad there's no more Open Enrollment here. Because you know exactly who would be at the front of the line.
Anyway, thank you Scott and Jason for the list and ensuing discussion. I always enjoy a nice discussion on the differing tastes, and this one was no exception.
-
Just as Matt provided in 2006, here's a clean recap of the entire top 50:
1 Pyramid
2 The Price is Right
3 Jeopardy!
4 Password
5 Family Feud
6 Wheel of Fortune
7 Match Game
8 Concentration
9 Press Your Luck
10 Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
11 Sale of the Century
12 Hollywood Squares
13 Scrabble
14 What's My Line?
15 Card Sharks
16 Let's Make a Deal
17 To Tell the Truth
18 Blockbusters
19 Tic Tac Dough
20 Name That Tune
21 The Joker's Wild
22 High Rollers
23 Double Dare (Nickelodeon)
24 Split Second
25 Supermarket Sweep
26 The Chase
27 The Newlywed Game
28 I've Got a Secret
29 Beat the Clock
30 Win Ben Stein's Money
31 Now You See It
32 Gambit
33 Whew!
34 Chain Reaction
35 The Who, What or Where Game/The Challengers
36 Lingo
37 Remote Control
38 Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
39 The Gong Show
40 Treasure Hunt
T41 Deal or No Deal
T41 Jackpot
43 You Bet Your Life
44 The $64,000/$128,000 Question
45 Russian Roulette
46 Twenty One
47 Tattletales/He Said, She Said
48 Win, Lose or Draw
49 College Bowl
50 Weakest Link
Looking over the results Scott compiled, I noticed a number of shows performed better than others even though they had fewer votes cast for them. While I don't encourage changing the way we do things, I found it interesting enough to run the numbers a different way. In a worst-case scenario, 48 of us could vote for the exact same show at #50, giving that show 48 points, but 2 people who champion their own show could trump that popular opinion with a pair of #1 votes, giving their choice 100 points. Even though most of us would have agreed the other show deserved consideration, it would have a harder time ranking.
So here's the list re-imagined, where the number of people who chose a show takes precedence, and the actual points it scored acts as a tiebreaker when shows have the same number of votes.
1 1 Pyramid
2 4 Password
3 5 Family Feud
4 2 The Price is Right
5 6 Wheel of Fortune
6 7 Match Game
7 8 Concentration
8 9 Press Your Luck
9 12 Hollywood Squares
10 3 Jeopardy!
11 16 Let's Make a Deal
12 15 Card Sharks
13 19 Tic Tac Dough
14 13 Scrabble
15 18 Blockbusters
16 10 Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
17 14 What's My Line?
18 17 To Tell the Truth
19 20 Name That Tune
20 21 The Joker's Wild
21 22 High Rollers
22 11 Sale of the Century
23 23 Double Dare (Nickelodeon)
24 25 Supermarket Sweep
25 27 The Newlywed Game
26 24 Split Second
27 29 Beat the Clock
28 28 I've Got a Secret
29 34 Chain Reaction
30 36 Lingo
31 30 Win Ben Stein's Money
32 31 Now You See It
33 32 Gambit
34 37 Remote Control
35 39 The Gong Show
36 26 The Chase
37 33 Whew!
38 40 Treasure Hunt
39 35 The Who, What or Where Game/The Challengers
T41 T41 Deal or No Deal
T41 T41 Jackpot
42 38 Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
43 48 Win, Lose or Draw
44 50 Weakest Link
45 47 Tattletales/He Said, She Said
46 43 You Bet Your Life
47 46 Twenty One
48 45 Russian Roulette
49 51 Double Dare (CBS)
50 53 The Dating Game
The first number is the "new" place, and the second number is where it was. Two new shows swap in, #1 would be the same, but there's a lot of shuffling. 1 vs. 100 was chosen by 15 people just as The Dating Game was, but lost to Dating Game by 56 points. Note that Sale of the Century falls 11 places - I didn't realize how many people omitted it when we did the results - seven in all. I'm curious to hear from some of those people (if they're in our midst).
-Jason
-
Not that anybody cares, but the obsessive compulsive proprietor over at a certain blog few people take seriously chimed in on our list and came up with one of his own.
Yup, and the old blowhard windbag took it as a huge compliment (no surprise with his huge ego) and dedicated a blog entry to the fact that he was talked about! Oh, joy!
-
If he's such an "old blowhard," why pay him any attention at all?
-
Not that anybody cares, but the obsessive compulsive proprietor over at a certain blog few people take seriously chimed in on our list and came up with one of his own.
Yup, and the old blowhard windbag took it as a huge compliment (no surprise with his huge ego) and dedicated a blog entry to the fact that he was talked about! Oh, joy!
I feel like I should say something but question if it's worth the effort. Because I'm the one he called out.
-
Call me crazy if you must but I felt the concept of a race against time to prevent everything you could win, as well as yourself, from going off the side of a building to be a fascinating one.
I liked the show because it was CHOCK FULL of content for an hour's time (and I like Jericho, period, and anyone who disagrees is a STUPID IDIOT <clap, clap, clapclapclap>), but having to disclaimer the conveyor belt at the top of every show really ruined the gimmick.
Downfall wasn't on my list, but I'll concede that it was the best in the world at what it did.
Yep. Game shows aren't all serious business. Sometimes you've just got to sit down and drink it in, man.
-
He and his legion of followers (mostly castaways from this board) are a match made in Hell. And for that reason alone, I'm glad there's no more Open Enrollment here. Because you know exactly who would be at the front of the line.
Yep, the one who thinks we're all Copyright Nazis.
-
He and his legion of followers (mostly castaways from this board) are a match made in Hell. And for that reason alone, I'm glad there's no more Open Enrollment here. Because you know exactly who would be at the front of the line.
Yep, the one who thinks we're all Copyright Nazis.
Which is eventually what drove me to respond. God help me, I should've known better but he always spins everything to make himself look like a victim.
-
So, are we good to start posting our final lists (those who care to do so, of course)?
-
Absolutely.
-Jason
-
I guess I'll get the ball rolling on this....:
50-Trump Card
49-Jackpot
48-Hot Potato
47-Legends of the Hidden Temple
46-Tattletales
45-I’ve Got a Secret
45-Crosswits
44-Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
43-Trivia Trap
42-Duel
41-Go
40-Win Lose or Draw
39-Whew!
38-Blockbusters
37-Now You See It
36-Celebrity Sweepstakes
35-Crosswits
34-Shop 'til you Drop
33-Weakest Link
32-Cash Cab
31-Twenty-One
30-Tic Tac Dough
29-Remote Control
28-The Joker's Wild
27-The Gong Show
26-Russian Roulette
25-Win Ben Stein's Money
24-Scrabble
23-High Rollers
22-Beat the Clock
21-Double Dare (Nickelodeon)
20-The Challengers
19-Card Sharks
18-What's My Line?
17-The Newlywed Game
16-Wheel of Fortune
15-Let's Make a Deal
14-Supermarket Sweep
13-Hollywood Squares
12-Family Feud
11-Match Game
10-Press Your Luck
9-Name That Tune
8-Split Second
7-Concentration
6-Password
5-The $10,000 Pyramid
4-Jeopardy!
3-The Price is Right
2-To Tell the Truth
1-Sale of the Century
-
Would it be helpful for respondents to submit their lists using a Google Form? The shows linked within Lists of game shows on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_game_shows) and the related sub-articles could be used to populate a form with 50 drop-down choices. The results could then be pivoted from a Google Sheet when ready. You can also setup the form to only accept one response, but this would require a log-in.
-
Couldn't seamlessly reverse the order without doing a lot of cutting and pasting, so here was my list from best to 40th-best.
1. Pyramid
2. Match Game
3. Price Is Right
4. Jeopardy!
5. What's My Line
6. To Tell The Truth
7. Concentration
8. Hollywood Squares
9. Family Feud
10. Now You See It
11. Password
12. Scrabble
13. Card Sharks
14. Blockbusters
15. Split Second
16. Gong Show
17. I've Got A Secret
18. Wheel Of Fortune
19. Tattletales
20. Sale Of The Century
21. Tic Tac Dough
22. Press Your Luck
23. You Bet Your Life
24. Hit Man
25. Let's Make A Deal
26. Millionaire
27. Body Language
28. High Rollers
29. Joker's Wild
30. Newlywed Game
31. Remote Control
32. Name That Tune
33. The Chase
34. Supermarket Sweep
35. Treasure Hunt
36. Dating Game
37. Lingo
38. Deal Or No Deal
39. Gambit
40. Battlestars