GSN today announced a new executive director of development and good news for the game show fans: he has a long history in the genre. The new man is Joel McGee. McGee began his career working for Mark Goodson productions in 1994, working on such shows as The Price is Right, The New Price is Right, and Family Feud. He began a relationship with GSN back in 2002 while developing and producing Cram, which was (sorry to the nay-sayers) one of GSN’s most original and rather enjoyable concepts to date. Plus Icey was excessively hot. He was also a producer of the fan-favorite Dirty Rotten Cheater which just began a short revived run in England.
“Joel brings a considerable amount of development experience and insight with him to GSN, especially in the game show genre,” said Jamie Roberts, Senior Vice President of Programming at GSN, to whom he reports. “We’re fortunate to have found someone with his creative instincts and vision.”
Looks like GSN got someone who really knows the industry and what fans want. Hopefully we might be able to see a big boost in their original lineup soon. Despite how great That’s The Question is, their lineup is severely lacking. Just one relatively straight quiz show, please. There are enough word games for now.
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Glad to see GSN hire someone who knows the game show world. Glad to see it indeed.
And Alex I agree with you. Cram wasn’t bad. There was just something about the show that annoyed the heck out of me. But Icey was HOT.
The main problem with Cram was Graham Elwood was an annoying host. watch the april fool’s ep. hsoted by Marc Summers and you’ll see what I mean. Definitely looks like a guy with an appropriate resume.
I hate to be the buzzkill here, but you guys seem in the minority when it comes to Cram… whether Icey was hot or not, resorting to a phone sex parody to sell it was utterly pathetic. It’s unsurprising it came from the mind of Johnathan Goodson, who clearly disproves the old “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” saying.
But that’s not to take away from this guy’s resume, unlike John Goodson, he’s actually got a fairly winning record. Maybe we could see a revival of Dirty Rotten Cheater on GSN now? It’s long overdue.
I didn’t really enjoy Cram. I would like to see more classics though more importantly some that haven’t been ran on GSN like Wipeout, $1,000,000 Chance of a lifetime, High Rollers ( since GSN doesn’t have a dice game) I am thinking though that hiring this guy could be a step in the right direction though. Lingo and Russian Roulette are my two favorite GSN originals. I would like to see Russian Roulette back on the schedule preferrly season 1 ran on weekends at least.
The fact that this Joel McGee once worked for Mark Goodson definately gives him some “pedigree,” which hopefully will equal “credibility” for GSN. I mean, how much Texas Hold’Em-High-Stakes-Celebrity Poker can GSN have? Who do they think they are, anyway? ESPN2? The Travel Channel? (lol)
The one thing I liked about Cram was MS. Pickwick’s facts in the bonus game.
Dirty Rotten Cheater is one of the more underrated shows. Despite a short run, it was an innovative, and intense program.
It is definitely a good idea to hire somebody who KNOWS the industry. You know, It kind of makes me wonder how many people who work at GSN now REALLY “know” the industry.
Hopefully we’ll get some of the classics back. Like TTD, TJW, HR, the Gene Wood version of BTC, etc. Maybe this guy will be richer than Cronin and spring for Perry SOTC, Scrabble 1984, and Bruce Forsyth’s Hot Streak.
I heard Jamie Farr had something going with Reg Grundy in 1987. It was called “Double Up”, but it never made it to air. Is anyone intrigued by this besides me?