Normally, this would be in Mini Buzz, but there’s too many changes and opinions to bother.I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cable network pull an acquired show after such a short run. After two, maybe three, episodes, GSN has pulled Show Me the Money from their lineup. It’s not even on their show list anymore. A representative from GSN told BuzzerBlog, “[It's] just a schedule change for the moment.” It’s being replaced by Dog Eat Dog. I’d honestly like to know if GSN thought that picking up a rather large failure would be smart. Did they actually think a show that hardly got over 5,000,000 people after people finally saw the show and was practically universally panned would be a big hit.
The awful Richard Karn episodes of Family Feud are gone from the 11PM ET hour starting July 17th. They had a hit there with I’ve Got A Secret, but apparently that wasn’t good enough. It’s being replaced by more poker which is exponentially better than Karn’s Feud. EDIT: MINOR CHANGE HERE. Karn Feud will air on Tuesday, July 18th at 11PM ET, but it looks like that’s the only day so far. Also, here’s another of the changes I wanted to post. It looks like Quiznation won’t be airing on Tuesdays starting on the week of July 16th. There’s a gap in airings, as the show isn’t appearing on July 17th or July 18th, which in GSN’s time definition is Monday and Tuesday. We’ll keep you updated if this changes.
GSN should take a look at how the British version of GSN, Challenge, runs. They employ the same general game theory that we have, but they expand it more. They air episodes of shows like Whose Line is it Anyway, Gladiators, and other things like that. I’m glad GSN is finally realizing that the reality shows aren’t working, but it’s now apparent that the game shows they have aren’t working. GSN missed out big time on American Gladiators. Some general game pickups like Junkyard Wars, Whose Line is it Anyway?, and shows of that ilk can’t hurt any more than what they have now. Apparently Karn Feud and Show Me the Money haven’t been the successes they have wanted. GSN’s lineup is just void of any fun anymore. If they don’t want to look back to Challenge, look to the old 2002-2003 lineup, with a much wider variety in their originals and a more successful schedule in general. The originals back then had a wider variety of game play, not just all word games. You had trivia, word, psychological, and pure luck shows. It’s just not looking good right now. There’s a reason the old network had higher rated shows than the current lineup. I do enjoy the current lineup and it has a lot of terrific shows, most of which are coming very soon, but it just doesn’t have the same appeal as it did five years ago.
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Well the schedule goes from bad, to worse. More DED, More Poker. How much of this can people actually take. I am not shocked SMTM and Karn’s Feud were doing bad. They should have never removed MG from the 11pm slot. I used to watch GSN a lot, but now I rarely watch it anymore. It is missing a lot of variety. I am tired of seeing the same 5 shows everyday. GSN better shape up soon. There rating last month was a .3 with about 176,000 people watching. That is horrible. And I don’t see it getting any better.
BTW Alex I love the picture you have up for this.
I loved GSN. Watched it almost every minute of every day LOL. But after GSN got moved to channel 179, everything else started going downhill. First of all, I cant watch gsn everywhere in my house or at others, which sunk my viewship a lot. Now the addition of StallNation and MORE POKER?!?!?! I actually am one of a very small group that likes Karn’s Feud. But I can see that most people dont like it. But come on, POKER?! Every night?!?!
GSN… get back in the game!
It’s about time they replaced Karn’s Feud. Too bad, GSN didn’t get to see the 2005-06 set. I
The prime time schedule really needs a-fixing. But they do have a good thing going with the poker shows, and the two new prime time originals (’Grand Slam’ and ‘Without Prejudice’) sound really promising. I think they should focus on finding enough viable originals to fill their prime time lineup, at least until they can make a big acquisition like syndie ‘Millionaire’ or ‘Deal or No Deal’. The stale reruns of ‘Weakest Link’, ‘Greed’, ‘Twenty One’, and ‘Dog Eat Dog’ aren’t cutting it, and neither is ‘Chain Reaction’. And they should have seen the writing on the wall with ‘Show Me the Money’ when it flopped the first time.
Although, I do have to wonder what’s going to happen with those two unaired episodes….
Good riddance to Show Me The Money, but I’ll miss Karn Feud. I just find O’Hurley so stuffy on it now…thankfully we will be seeing his To Tell the Truth soon, where he was much more comfortable.
Dog Eat Dog, though? Talk about overrun. That and Robinson Link need a break.
Chain Reaction can’t possibly hold on for much longer, and I have a really dubious feeling about Without Prejudice…..
I have no idea why GSN doesn’t pursue the rights to TPIR again, given that Bob is leaving the show (ostensibly) and people would probably like to see his older episodes after a few months of whoever it is that’ll be taking over.
GSN’s biggest scheduling problem is with the shows they already have: for some reason, even if they have every episode of a particular show (Pyramid, Password Plus, PYL, etc.), they never seem to show more that one year out of the run. It boggles my mind - they already have the episodes, and those who are watching the network would prefer not to see episodes they’ve already seen any more than is necessary.
GSN has one specific thing in common with TV Land: There’s waaaay too broad a base. Granted, the “suits” want numbers. So, they go for that “coveted” 18-34 demographic. But, how can programmers say they know what viewers want, when (generally speaking) those viewers in that demo don’t (seem to) know what THEY want.
As a DirecTV subscriber, I had been a loyal viewer of GSN (when it was GAME SHOW NETWORK). Over the years, they dropped the ball too many times: from letting the original contract for ALL the old Goodson-Todman lapse (costing the network the reruns to both the original and current versions of TPIR), and eventually relegating the B&W kine’s to one hour a week in the wee hours of the morning; to offering us such s**t as “Burt Luddin’s Love Buffet,” and a rather sophomoric version of “3’s A Crowd” that almost put the original in the same league as “Jeopardy!” by comparasin. Now, they’ve tried to diversify the brand, by including poker, blackjack, reality show reruns, and who-the-hell knows what else. If GSN can’t clearly define itself, then maybe it ought to take itself off the air, only to come back when it can CLEARLY define itself (same for TV Land, as long as we’re on the subject).
As a side note, I don’t really think that the topic for this article should be “Many GSN Schedule Changes”, seeing as “many” equals “two”. I thought that this was going to be a total cleaning house of GSN’s lineup (which, admittedly, they need).
I’m sorry, there was another schedule change on there, but I’m waiting for official confirmation before I publish it.
Yeah thats what I thought Tim. I got all excited, because I am tired of this current schedule.
I wonder what the other change is. Probably nothing good, but you never know.
Was I the only person who at least 50% liked Show Me The Money? (minus the dancing and whatnot)… We have GSN on at work all day long for our customers to watch (keeps them busy while waiting in line) and when our customers come in to make their house payments and they say they saw the same exact show a month ago… That means something.
They need to clean it up quite a bit… I am still pi**ed off that they moved classic Press Your Luck to 10:00am ET. Why not move it to 4:00 ET and then play the new version right after that at 4:30 ET? I enjoy the poker but I have to say it is becoming overkill esp when GSN is suppose to have World Poker Tour next year! I am so afraid they will run WPT into the ground.
Garbage
Showing
Nothing (at this time)
Things can change though…
1.Put Karn’s Feud on- in the morning (where it won’t be a major factor in the ratings.)
2.Put on NEW episodes of DED-with a weekly budget even GSN can afford (See-Without Prejudice and the orignal set must still exist somewhere.)
3. Burn off …Money in late night Saturdays-again Most people will have gone to bed by that time.
4. Bring back faster paced W! and RR.
5. More variety!
The more I think about it, I believe the other change Alex is talking about is O’Hurley’s TTTT coming. He hasn’t reported it yet.
captparis1 has some nice ideas. I don’t think they’re really getting rid of Karn Feud - it’s still airing at 5:00/4c unless I’m mistaken. They ought to put the Karn version in the morning (10/9c is good, wont conflict with TPiR), and air Dawsom at 5p and Combs at 5:30.
I may be minority here, but I really miss what GSN was all about when it was first aired. GAME SHOWS! I miss the classics, Tic Tac Dough, Joker’s Wild, Password, Tattletale, games that require pure luck strategy and excitement! To me they never get old! I had a falling out with GSN ever since they started airing horrific reality shows and poker! And the new game shows, including the network failures, air are terrible. As much I hate it, I don’t blame my cable system dumping GSN off it’s basic lineup. It’s become a shell of its former self and it pains to hear that its not improving at all.
Well, I am happy to see that Show Me the Money has been shown the door once again. I lost GSN off of my basic and standard cable lineup about two weeks ago, and do long for the reruns of old shows that are played in the mornings. The only problem I had was with the prime time lineup. First off, the newer shows have no variety, like someone else said. They are all word games. While word games are fun, there are so many of them you can schedule on one network at one time. The reason Wheel and J! have been so successful, in most cities back to back, because they are completely different shows that compliment each other. GSN needs to think about that. While they think that Chain Reaction could be a good pairing with Lingo, it really isn’t. I would more rather see Lingo paired with a quiz show, or a show like Whammy!. See, World Poker Tour won’t help the network. A network that gets 0.3 ratings for total day is on life support, and a network on life support does not deserve to get such a big pick-up. When Travel Channel, which also draws a 0.3 rating, but reached about 100,000 more homes than GSN, decided that WPT was not right for them anymore, I think GSN was the right fit. But, is it really the right fit in the state it’s in right now? I think GSN will drag the WPT down, and will thusly be brought further down with them. I remember when GSN used to advertise on other cable outlets, and when there was actually loads of buzz over the next true game show being produced. Now, since their most popular original is Lingo, they decided that all their game shows, except for one time tournaments, should be word games. It gets boring, and I am really happy I don’t have them anymore.
I’m almost at the point where I WISH GSN would go off the air for awhile. Let’s see where the whiners are then.
Very interesting they are taking a night off of Playmania. I wonder if ratings are beginning to really slip for the show. With 100 winners on a break and Quiznation now on 5 days a week soon, ratings must be hurting for the show.
Playmania lost a night Because they’ve been using the foolish clock way too constantly, they keep adding money when they’ve not taken one single caller. This is why GSN doesn’t care.
They should go back to the 2002-03 lineup with Russian Roulette, Friend or Foe and Whammy.
Oh wonderful!!! Another run through of Dog Eat Dog! So what cycle will this be? Does anyone have the episodes memorized word for word, it wouldn’t be that hard considering the overkill.
GSN doesn’t know what they want to be anymore. They keep throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks, and they’ve been doing it since the late-90s. They tried the originals, which didn’t work, so they bring back classic shows. They get tired of that, so they bring in more originals, in the form of casino and reality shows. Their ratings decline, so they bring back more classics. Honestly, I’m sick of the flip-flopping. I appreciate them trying to appeal to the classic game fans, but it’s getting to the point to where they’re cutting off their nose to spite their face.
Now we are getting to what the issue is. When we had cable, GSN was on basic for only PART of the day (7 AM–6 PM). Now, it’s only available on the “third tier.” Not many people subscribe at that level, so share is low and the Network panics.
I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but, from what I’ve seen in the past, it’s over.
Consider the following:
–These are the kind of networks Rupert Murdock (FOX owner) likes to scoop up to add to his empire. He’s kind of media’s Bill Gates.
–Other entertainment boards/wires have PM leaving for good following the 7/15 show. Some claim MY GAMES FEVER will move into that time slot in the fall (again, Murdock theory) with no change in format.
–Tomorrow we should get an earnings release from Optomistic. What I am hearing is it will be worse than analysits are projecting. Still need to follow up.
Keep in mind, this is another example of “fad programming.” ESPN dumps some of game prog. and an entire network for POKER. Fox Sports dumps The Sports List and I,Max for untimate fighting and POKER. Now, NBC is adding to its weekend sports lineup for the fall……..you guessed it, POKER. The way it’s going, when the BIG TEN network lanches next month, I am expecting them to figure out a way to have POKER as well.
Like I said, GSN should at least have the guts to release Jess and Shandi no while they have a chance of not having QN ruin their careers.
Alex looking at zap2it, Karn’s Feud will air at 11pm on Wednesday night. Also on the 18th(Wednesday morning) at 1:30am, there is a Half hour edition of Millionaire. Do you know anything about this, because this is confusing the heck out of me.
Scott, how can poker be “fad” programming if it’s been on for 3 or 4 years, now? GSN’s High Stakes Poker continues to be a ratings winner if its quick renewals mean anything.
I think an old saying describes my feelings best….
“IF it anint broke, DONT fix it”
Therefore as a loyal GSN fan (who has been around since the last days of Game Show Network”), the execs and GSN should return to the days where they were at their prime. And bring back viewers favorites as well as mixing up the programming so that more classics make it to air. And there are a LOT of classic programs that have been of GSN for many years.
Im sure all GSN viewers hate the crunching of the screen when the credits roll at the end of almost all the programs. This in my estimation is a disgrace to the cast and crew of all those shows ; and it doesnt give these men & women their due.
If GSN really wants to do these crunches, they should follow the path that TV land has and show whats up next or somethin, and then return the show back to normal.
GSN is too popular to come of the air itself any time soon. There are too many companies (Fremantlemedia, their parent company, Endemol etc,) that would hate for such an outlet that can broadcast their classics to end.
But like i said “IF it anint broke, DONT fix it”
Frankly, I think they need to figure out a way to get the Barry Enright games back on.
I don’t see why GSN has to overkill all these games. There are a ton of games to air, especially G-T games that can be run once a day on weekends, that would provide them a chance to have a fresh schedule with choices for all sorts of game show fans…classic and current.
I don’t like poker but I don’t mind it being on — it’s better than watching Dog Eat Dog for the 40,000th time. Why not show Liar’s Club and Tattletales back to back on weeknights instead of DED.
Why not show Tic Tac Dough and Joker’s Wild on weekends instead of 3 hours of Lingo?
Why not show TJW ‘90 on occasion? That wasn’t a terrible game — better than TTD’s revival.
Why not show Bullseye once in a while?
Why not show Go one weekend morning for 1/2 hour?
Why not do a documentary on big game show winners that you DON’T know about — Lucky Suit Hal from TJW, Kit from TTD, Tom Van Dyke on TJW 90.
There are so many things GSN could do — instead they broker on group think and consultants who probably aren’t Game Show fans at all.
As sacreligious as it sounds, maybe the best idea would be for Sony to rebrand the network (again), and assume a format similar to that of USA Network back in the 1980s and 1990s…air the game shows during the day and general entertainment (comedies, dramas) at night. Seeing as it almost seems like GSN has to rerun abuse everything just to fill schedule time, totally upheaving the network probably couldn’t be much worse than what they’re doing now (languishing in the gutter).
As I’ve seen a few people suggest, they could just swap letters in the acronym around and rebrand themselves as the “Screen Gems Network”.
My issue is they do not use what they have and go back to rerun abuse so bad I’m expecting them to update consalation and fee plugs a la nick ;)
They have a plethora of games to use…but they instead go back and waste money on flops, shows with short runs and of course bobby boden’s baby greed.
I agree that TPIR needs to be rebought and more originals made.
I liked karn feud so that suprises me it did so poor although one issue is they started at the beginning when the idiotic one strike winner of the round wins the game triple round was still in effect from the horrid Anderson version (how that survived 3 years I still dunno!)
Here are 4 things I’d do to save GSN
1. 8-9 pm slot create 2 5 a week half hour originals and put all your effort behind them. Lingo does exceptionally well in the 7-8 hour considering that it’s up against J! and WOF in many markets. No flip flopping, no thinking no tolerating skepticism…like 2000-2001 this is your baby and you are gonna live and die by it.
2. 9-10: Reaquire TPIR and stick it here…not sure if I’d go Olsen era though, I may do early 90s for a while for demographics with Olsen Era classics on weekends.
3. 10-11: Millionaire has done well…so stick it here…make a push for syndie millionaire and split the half hour with a well rested MGPM at 10:30 as things get stale.
4. 11-12: I would cut a deal similar to what saved Soap Network and to a lesser extenr Oxygen and that is get same day replay rights to a top rated show…As of now it would likely have to be the WOF and J! hour which is time slot problematic as NBC already does replays on CNBC for DoND and 1 vs 100 and the New TIPR would be redundant but this plan of attack worked well for CNBC, Soap Network (saved the channel), and to a lesser extent Oxygen with the Oprah and Ellen replays.
5. 12-1: Instead of quiznation (I agree the intentional tap dancing is really stupid and reeks of RIGGING) I would try to take on the NTN bar network with an interactive buzztime type trivia show (think Family channel’s Trivial Pursuit: the interactive game but with better techincal relibility and less prerecording) I think that would work better and get better ratings as I see the NTN quizzes all over the place in bars.
6. Bring back Black and white overnight…sorta. I would do vault shows for 1 week blocks for the overnight leading into the paid crap. A strong overnight earns some good backdoor advertising $$$
7. Aside from dropping the looping just one season…the daytime schedule aint broke, don’t fix it :)
8. Keep poker to the weekends. it does stronger there.
9. If you MUST do these piddly run shows…keep them to weekends and show them in a block schedule (that is when DED ends kick in 21, when 21 ends go to Robinson link)
10. Keep the dream alive…It’s been a rough 4 years but GSN still has potential to me…lingo is still strong and there are simple fixes here.
GSN can be fixed if 1. all new shows 7pm to midnight no reruns. 2. make more than 65 shows per season. 3. stop with reality shows, there is no such thing. we all know there is scripting involved. 4. there are plenty of shows that are ready to be remade from split second to jokers wild. try it you’ll like it!
Indeed. More originals in the 7-8 time slots and bringing more classics back, AND getting rid of the crap, (DED, the acronym is sooooo appropriate, because it’s dead, dead, “dead”) will make GSN an even better network.
Also, GSN would do themselves well to remake more classics. Yes, they’ve done Chain Reaction, but needless to say, we feel they can do better.
You should however take into account that, in a way, they are somewhat starting to go down the “more originals” route. Without Prejudice looks good, we ALL can’t wait for Grand Slam, and maybe Camouflage will turn out great as well. Also, there’s good ‘ol Lingo to fall back on.
I know GSN knows this, just like we all do, Great Production value + Good/Great Host + Smart Game Play = Great GameShow! Obviously, they don’t always employ this, (see CR), but GSN has had to change before, there’s no reason they couldn’t change now. At least that’s what I’m hoping.
My view is this:
A lot of the shows that are on GSN Now are just O.K. they should be a lot better than what they are. I’m indeed hoping that Camoulfage and Without Prejudice really make a mark for the network. But as far as the classic games– I have to agree. Some of those shows need to come back like Tic-Tac-Dough, Joker’s Wild, Bullseye, Wheel of Fortune Chuck Woolery, and Pat Sajak. Blockbusters is a great game, but I fear that it’s has come to overkill.
There has always been that question of ‘What about Scrabble and Sale of the Century’ and a bunch of other shows that have these hard contract deals to work out. How come they haven’t been further persued? As the laws of gaming goes: Great risks bring great rewards.
Right now, it’s just not looking good for GSN if they continue down the path that they’re going with this whole Richard Karn Feud and throwing too many old GSN Docs. that we already know the answer to.
That’s all i’m saying other than–
for the 2nd time i get to say in the style of William Shatner: “Show Me The Pink Slip”
As long as Les Moonves is head of CBS, GSN will not likely see reruns of TPIR. He will not budge on that issue.
With all the wishful thinking that GSN should take the Barry & Enright games out of of mothballs (ABSOLUTELY!) Why stop there? The suits at Sony ought to look into acquiring the library of games from the late Ralph Edwards’ estate (the original “Cross Wits” “Name That Tune”- the Tom Kennedy/Dennis James era, and let’s not forget “Truth or Consequences” from 1965-74); Since GSN has aired “Let’s Make A Deal,” why NOT “Split Second”? And, there’s Heatter-Quigley, who not only gave us the (original) “Hollywood Squares,” as well as “GAmbit” and “High Rollers.” Fremantle also owns the rights to Reg Grundy’s old shows-namely, “Sale of the Centruy” and “Scrabble.”
I think the big thing we need to do is get rid of Rich Cronin and get somebody would could take GSN back to when we actually enjoyed it. I had a scary feeling that when he took over from Bob Boden that things were going to go downhill. We’re already seeing way too much poker and horrible remakes of great games (Chain Reaction, Whammy). Think about when he first took over, I can remember when he put on crappy shows such as The Mole and for the love of God, Kenny vs. Spenny?! We got to start figuring out a way to get this no-talent president from ruining what was once a great network. Fight the power!!!
BTW, what does DED mean?
DED = Dog Eat Dog.
And don’t hate on The Mole. (Although it was one of those shows that had a very limited shelf life.)
Just to let you know mrzquiz, the original episodes of Split Second, High Rollers and even Gambit are mostly gone.
Name That Tune is also rumoured to be largely gone save for the late 70’s/early 80’s disco era, and besides, there’s the matter of music clearances. We’d likely end up getting Lange’s version, which wasn’t bad but nowhere near as good as Tom’s was during its heyday.
There is however a VERY clear, almost certainly master-quality clip of Cross-Wits from about 1977 or so on ralphedwards.com, which implies that perhaps that show really is intact (since the third episode with Greg Morris, Meredith MacRae et al exists in full at the Museum of Television and Radio, in master quality) and that clip places another existing episode at halfway through the run.
I really wanted to see the remaining couple of SMTM episodes that ABC never showed. They left off with a guy who was doing really, really well. I wanna know how much he won!
Maybe somebody knows… when a show gets yanked like that, the contestants still get their winnings, right? Or is there something in the agreement that says if the show doesn’t air you don’t get the prize?
And speaking of contestant agreements, that’s something I’d like to read about more on a game show blog. What people know about contestant agreements. We know contestants have to keep their mouth shut until the show airs, but there have to be all sorts of other little gotchas in the agreements. I’d like to know more about what the non-disclosure parts say.
Too much poker for me. I’m really sad that Lingo was moved from th 7-8 time slot and replaced with Camoufloge. Camou. is really hard and I don’t really enjoy it.
They shouldn’t have gotten rid of GREED on Fridays and replaced it with Lingo.Lingo doesn’t make sense.