• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

GSN Runs What's My Line/I've Got Secret Only A Few Weeks?

G

Gregg

I was so glad when GSN brought back What's My Line? and I've Got A Secret earlier this month, from 3-4am weeknights. I recorded a good number of episodes. The shows are black and white but real classics in TV history. Both lasted for many years in prime time on the networks.

So I check this week, ready to start recording and I find out Card Sharks, a daytime game show in color, has replaced these classic shows in the 3am hour. I don't understand the management at GSN. At 3am, why not go with something special? Hardly anyone is up at that hour anyway and you'd get more folks recording that hour with classic black-and-white prime time game shows than with a not-so-special daytime game show in color that few would decribe as a classic.



Gregg
[email protected]
 
They seem to be hung up on Card Sharks. I think I've seen some of them for the 3rd
and 4th time already.

I'd much rather see What's My Line and I've Got A Secret oldies in the daytime instead.

Older Wheel Of Fortune would be good also......even some older Art Fleming Jeopardy.

I think they try to keep it ALL IN COLOR, but they should have access and show more classics than they present.

And get rid of Bob the bachelor.........he should be advertising Twinkies instead of (whatever
he does). I wanted to get rid of him even before his ex-wife did! He puts the "OB" in obnoxious.
Guess they are hung up on him also.

Why don't they start a black and white game show channel?
 
I'm not sure about the network episodes of "Wheel Of Fortune"
(particularly those with Woolery), but NBC destroyed all but, I
believe, two of the Fleming episodes of "Jeopardy!". As for running
"Line" and "Secret" in color, you can more or less forget it. "Line"
didn't go to color until its last season on CBS (1966-67); "Secret,"
either in 1965 or '66. GSN could show syndicated "Line" (usually
considered inferior to the original by true fans of the show), but
there are not a lot of color "Secret"s (the 1972-73 syndicated show
hosted by Steve Allen, about four weeks in 1976 with Bill Cullen, and
the more recent Stephanie Miller and Bil Dwyer-hosted shows, and I
don't know how much interest there is in any of them).

What I never understood is why GSN viewers so resoundingly rejected
the Garry Moore version of "To Tell The Truth". Personally, I liked that
version better than Bud Collyer's or any subsequent version.
 
I used to Tivo "black and white" overnight game shows on GSN, too. Now, that Nielsen counts DVR playbacks in the ratings, it would seem GSN is missing an opportunity here. They don't have to limit themselves to Line or Secret five nights a week. Add Password (Allen Ludden), Truth (Bud Collyer), Concentration (Hugh Downs), original Jeopardy (Art Flemming), Truth or Consequences (Bob Barker), Beat the Clock (Bud Collyer), original Match Game (Gene Rayburn), original Hollywood Squares (Peter Marshall), even Who(sic) Do You Trust (Johnny Carson). Promote these shows for time-shifting on co-owned cable channels or on DVR "showcases."
 
MattParker said:
Concentration (Hugh Downs), original Jeopardy (Art Flemming), Truth or Consequences (Bob Barker), original Match Game (Gene Rayburn), original Hollywood Squares (Peter Marshall), even Who(sic) Do You Trust (Johnny Carson).
Click to expand...
...as was noted above, very few of the NBC game shows of the '60s are known to exist, and I think GSN went through the existing stock of the Marshall Hollywood Squares (mostly nighttime NBC and syndicated eps) a couple of times over circa 2001. As for Who Do You Trust?, that depends on how many kinescopes that either ABC or Don Fedderson managed to hold onto; I've only seen three of the Carson run pop up at archive.org or on DVD. I'm positive neither ABC or Fedderson would have ever held onto any videotapes from that far back, as they were so expensive to maintain, let alone acquire. Perhaps there's a few of the syndicated Truth or Consequences with Barker that Ralph Edwards hung onto from the late '60s and early '70s. If it wasn't in the Goodson-Todman archives, which GSN has already run the snot out of in the last dozen years as it is, I doubt it exists if it hasn't popped up by now...
 
Ultimajock said:
MattParker said:
Concentration (Hugh Downs), original Jeopardy (Art Flemming), Truth or Consequences (Bob Barker), original Match Game (Gene Rayburn), original Hollywood Squares (Peter Marshall), even Who(sic) Do You Trust (Johnny Carson).
Click to expand...
...as was noted above, very few of the NBC game shows of the '60s are known to exist, and I think GSN went through the existing stock of the Marshall Hollywood Squares (mostly nighttime NBC and syndicated eps) a couple of times over circa 2001. As for Who Do You Trust?, that depends on how many kinescopes that either ABC or Don Fedderson managed to hold onto; I've only seen three of the Carson run pop up at archive.org or on DVD. I'm positive neither ABC or Fedderson would have ever held onto any videotapes from that far back, as they were so expensive to maintain, let alone acquire. Perhaps there's a few of the syndicated Truth or Consequences with Barker that Ralph Edwards hung onto from the late '60s and early '70s. If it wasn't in the Goodson-Todman archives, which GSN has already run the snot out of in the last dozen years as it is, I doubt it exists if it hasn't popped up by now...
Click to expand...

I wonder if the original sponsors of these shows have at least some copies within their own private collection? With Bob Barker and Truth or Consequences, I seem to recall reading many years ago I believe in the now defunct TV Collector magazine where Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company ( Bob Barker was a spokesman for their BelAir & Raleigh Cigarettes ) had some shows stored away somewhere in Kentucky. Then again that 25 years ago when I had read that piece in TV Collector.
 
...well, that may be a lead, but it brings up another sticking point. If there are indeed some of those in Brown & Williamson's possession, and they contain logos for those brands of cigarettes built into the set -- like the "Winston" that was at the front of Garry Moore's desk on I've Got a Secret -- that could prevent GSN from having anything whatsoever to do with them. Remember, entire seasons of IGaS were knocked off the GSN schedule because some anti-smoking activist was able to sue GSN for allowing such "advertising" on American TV, even though R.J. Reynolds had paid Goodson-Todman and CBS decades ago and GSN saw not a nickel of that loot...

...now, one thing that I suspect may be a possibility would be for GSN to run surviving episodes of the British and Australian versions of these shows. Goodson-Todman sold almost all of their formats in one form or another to British, Australian and New Zealand networks, and I'd suspect quite a few specimens of those versions are in airable shape...
 
Ah, the advantages of 20/20 hindsight: if anyone could have
known that Johnny Carson would become an institution
thanks to "The Tonight Show," his five years on "Who Do You Trust?"
would have been worth a fortune in the syndication market. But I, too,
wonder if Don Fedderson even bothered to save more than the two or
three episodes some of us have seen.
 
It might be nice to speculate on additional black-and-white shows that GSN could show. But I think we already know what GSN has in its library because those are shows they're already run. Of course, many of us have only seen a few of them so they'd be new to most us. But I think this is what they have, virtually all produced by partners Mark Goodson-Bill Toddman...

What's My Line (dating I think from 1949 to the late 60s)... Host John Daly
I've Got A Secret... Hosts Garry Moore and later Steve Allen
Beat The Clock... Host Bud Collyer
To Tell The Truth... Host Bud Collyer
Password... Host Allan Ludden

I believe GSN has around 1000 b/w episodes of What's My Line. The show ran for 20-something years with few pre-emptions and no reruns, live every Sunday night. The other shows number well into the hundreds. Then there are a few short-run shows that used to pop up on GSN from time to time such as The Name's The Same with host Robert Q. Lewis and a Bill Cullen hosted show from around 1950.

I still don't know why GSN doesn't just run these classics between 3am and 4am. OK, it may be hard to run a black-and-white show in a more visible time slot. But at 3am, why not program what GSN has called in the past "Late Night Black and White" or more recently "Way Back Play Back."


Gregg
[email protected]
 
When GSN ditched most of their black and white show it made it easier for me to ditch cable. I loved to watch them and being one who hadn't moved to the DVR era I would often watch them in real time (or videotape them).

While my memory is a bit foggy didn't they have "black and white weekends" or was it just overnights? I seem to remember Sundays as a time they played many of the B&W shows from back when. Many of the shows from the era were well produced and far from some of the deteriorated derivatives we've all witnessed when some produce thinks that just blow the dust off an old show name and turn it into a megahit. I wonder if any of them realized this when their "masterpiece" fell flat on its face?

A little less than 2 dozen syndie version Hollywood Squares with Peter Marshall are on Hulu and I'll watch those multiple times over some of the dreck on the tube now (especially since pulling the plug on cable). If more of the online programming outlets could grab some of the old shows I bet they would have a loyal following.

Our of what everybody's mentioned I don't think I've seen one bad suggestion, although the actuality of those film or tape copies still existing is pretty sad. I know I would be right there ready to watch if somebody had them.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom