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.

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.

And don’t hate on The Mole. (Although it was one of those shows that had a very limited shelf life.)

BTW, what does DED mean?

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.”

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”

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.

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.

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”.

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.

“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”