8/4 UPDATE: ABC renews “Celebrity Family Feud”, “The $100,000 Pyramid”, “Match Game” and “To Tell the Truth”. All four game shows will return next summer.
They’re some of the most popular, longest-running and highly entertaining programs on television. What are: Game Shows? And this summer, they’ve made a well-deserved comeback.
In June, ABC debuted a new version of “To Tell the Truth”, with host Anthony Anderson and the iconic Betty White as a weekly panelist. In the Tuesday 10pm slot, “Truth” almost always beat NBC’s summer replacement variety series “Maya & Marty” in the ratings. A few weeks later, The Alphabet net unveiled its highly-publicized “Sunday Fun & Games” lineup. The biggest hit of last summer, “Celebrity Family Feud” with host Steve Harvey, is back on at 8pm and still doing very well. The new “$100,000 Pyramid” starring Michael Strahan is the consistent winner of all the primetime shows of the night at 9pm.
In a twist on the classic Dick Clark versions, contestants can actually play for $150,000: winning $50k on the first trip to the Winner’s Circle and another $100k if you make it there a second time. Just don’t expect to find a category in which contestants must “Describe these things associated with Kelly Ripa”. And at 10pm is the reboot of “Match Game”, with a quirky, bubbly Alec Baldwin filling the role originated by Gene Rayburn. Same music. Same format. Even the telescopic microphone (which Rayburn invented) is the same. And the off-the-wall comments from the celebrity panelists are often laugh-out-loud funny.
ABC’s Game Show Sunday has had such an impact in the ratings that NBC decided to re-run older episodes of Jane Lynch’s “Hollywood Game Night” to try to compete. An episode that was supposed to air earlier in the year but was delayed (for reasons unknown) until last Thurs. featured Julia Stiles. Producers/editors failed to take out a portion in which she said, “We’re filming a new ‘Bourne’ movie. It doesn’t have a title yet.” (this on the exact day “Jason Bourne” was released).
TV Guide devoted a recent cover story to the resurgence of the Game Show. It included in-depth interviews with Harvey, Strahan and Baldwin. The magazine also cited “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!” as STILL two of America’s most-watched programs. And they highlighted some of the biggest game show moments of all-time, including John Carpenter becoming the first “Millionaire” winner with Regis Philbin, and Ken Jennings’s incredible reign on “Jeopardy!”
“Celebrity Name Game” is heading into its third year with Craig Ferguson, who’s now a two-for-two winner in the Best Game Show Host Daytime Emmy category. “The Price is Right” and “Let’s Make a Deal” continue to be big for CBS Daytime. And “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”, with “Bachelor” host Chris Harrison, is moving operations for its upcoming season to Las Vegas. GSN is on fire, too, with hits “Idiotest” and “Winsanity”.
Because of all this excitement, “The TODAY Show” recently devoted a week of segments in which they visited different game show tapings, trying to get answers to why they’re so successful. Not surprisingly, here’s what they learned: they’re exciting, they’re unpredictable, and in a current culture dominated by constant change, they stick to a simple, established formula.