Many GSN Schedule Changes
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.
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.)
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.