Casey would waltz with a strawberry blonde

[austin_dern]

I don't have any idea why, but outside the Borders book store was a children's orchestra, which between the rows of performers and reasonably appreciative audience took up most of the room outside the book store almost to the corner. I can't tell you who they were or why they were playing, since every time the conductor got to announcing who they were, he turned around, so that he was solemnly informing the orchestra who they were.

Hey, 21 years ago today, it was the debut of the crossword game you've played all your life, but never quite like this ... Chuck Woolery in Scrabble. I was really into it, during the summers anyway. The fact they kept track of the fastest contestants in the bonus round gave me the first chance to see a form of evolution in action. The earliest contestants I remembered taking on the order of 45 seconds for the win; that got squeezed down to an average of 20 seconds as people learned how to play efficiently. I think someone once managed to get it in 13 seconds.

Strategy on Card Sharks never took anyone time to figure out. The Price is Right depends, outside the Clock Game, mostly on having a good sense of how much cans of tuna fish and new cars cost. The regular games in The $25/50/100,000 Pyramid had gotten to where almost every match ended up with a score of 21-20 before I started following the show. So this was the first time I saw that progression of skill.

Trivia: In May 1941 NBC set the advertising rate at WNBT, its New York City station, at US$120 for an hour of prime-time programming. Source: Please Stand By: A Prehistory of Television, Michael Ritchie.

Currently Reading: The Investigation, Stanislaw Lem.

Comments

[katrus.livejournal.com]

I always found it curiously soothing, when Chuck would drone the clue over and over again during the bonus round.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

That was a lovely bit, yeah. I miss Chuck doing game shows; he just has this perfect knack for it. Modern shows don't have any idea how the host should act, which is why they flop so quickly.

[reptilemammal.livejournal.com]

Ah yes the classic days I loved being home sick to watch game shows, what a joy. Yep none of those hosts nowadays really understand anymore what the true game show was all about. Ah well, getting older what can I say.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's sad thinking that I've lived through the golden age of daytime game shows. They're just all gone now, and future generations will probably never understand what it was like going from The $100,000 Pyramid to Scrabble to The Price is Right to Super Password to Card Sharks. (Actually, that lineup never happened, but it's the sort of thing one had.) Game Show Network just isn't the same.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Well, and the Price is Right also had the 'skill' of Plinko. Even the clock game had a strong element of price knowledge in it, though.. centainly makes for an advantage to know how much a 300-pill bottle of Centrum costs at MSRP.

Hmmm. I don't recall ever seeing the Scrabble game show. I can picture it with chuck wollery, a light-up game screen, electronic 'tiles'- but I could picture that perfectly without ever having seen it. "Chuck Woolery, Scrabble Game Show, 1984" and the mental image is set.

On that note, the Beat The Geeks final round almost always progressed to 2-point, 2-point, 3-point question for the contestant (and 3, 3, 3 for the geek). And we all well know Wheel of Fortune and the NSTRL-E strategy, which became so entrenched that they now give those letters automatically, plus three consonants and a vowel. (CDM-A and CDW-A, though, seem to account for 80% of selections nowadays..)

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, the Clock Game is the one where the contestant has to guess the price of (say) a sofa, and they know it's (for example) under $1000, and after each guess Bob reports whether it's higher or lower. Obviously you can win that game on pure skill, and a lot of contestants realize that.

If it helps you set the Scrabble stage, when the contestants would call out a tile (from the available selections, and in the regular game) the letter would slide back and forth across the word they were trying to make until it fell in, with this lovely badadada... badadada... sound accompanying it. I don't have pictures or screen grabs offhand, but I'm sure that skylerbunny has.

I never got into Beat the Geeks. Modern game shows just don't seem to know how to hook me.

You're right about the convergence of Wheel of Fortune talent, although it also gives a great chance to see if somebody actually watches the show before feeling smugly superior to it. The first stupid complaint they get is ``people would win the game right away if they just knew to call R, T, N, right at the start'' -- there hasn't been a contestant who didn't know the most common letters since 1976 -- and that contestants foolishly call out letters after it's obvious what the puzzle is -- since the game is won by money, not by letters, so it's a winning strategy to take advantage of an obvious puzzle to rack up your total.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, the Clock Game is more fast-math skills than any other game. Still, knowing if it's around $700 or around $900 can net you a good second and a half in The Clock Game, and that's a game that usually comes down to the wire. That's why the show is called The Price Is Right, after all. Soft-pitch for products in order to get 'prices'.

I enjoyed Beat The Geeks before the change in hosts, from Vaguely Daily Show Guy to Vaguely Andy Dick Guy. Same game, new host, unwatchable.

Exactly so on Wheel of Fortune. Playing to finish up the board.. but of course, lose a turn and Bankrupt can hit you.. so there's a pressure that builds there. Wheel of Fortune does have just enough of a chance element that way, I'd say.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the strategy of continuing to call letters once you've solved the puzzle is mostly a test of nerves and how closely you believe the Gambler's Fallacy (there hasn't been a Bankrupt in too many spins, I'm due). But that's part of where the fascination lies; when does the chance of losing -- and, if you've been picking off letters, giving the board to your opponent -- overcome your sense of the reward?

[skylerbunny.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't know. Wheel of Fortune just never seemed the same after the prize-buying at the end of the rounds went away. It made for a fun, goofy show. 'That' Wheel of Fortune has just gotten old enough now that you'll see comedy routines make fun of it, but no-one's actually seen a new Wheel of Fortune that has for probably two decades now.

I remember how mind-boggling it was on the very rare occasions they got to do four wheel spinning rounds in that era. That, and puzzles were simple. People, person, place, thing. No 'Before and after', 'Famous quotations from mechanized warfare' and 'Anagrams you can try at home'. It was simple, and it worked.

Besides, wasn't it fun to watch a contestant who had $228 left in their winnings 'account', who groaned and was forced to buy the hideous abstract painting of a dalmation which just happened to cost $197, rather than take the whole thing on Gift Certificate?

I haven't got the Scrabble sounds anywhere, but somewhere or another I've got one of the original 'shopping' pieces of music for Wheel of Fortune. Ask me about it sometime.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Wheel of Fortune was so much better when they had the buying of merchandise, as well as the categories that made actual sense. The classic days when you got three rounds, maybe four if they're quick, contestants turning around for the commercial break in the middle of a round, and contestants carried over are joys modern audiences probably won't understand. I remember the excitement one day when they got into a fifth round.

[reptilemammal.livejournal.com]

Yep buying I have to agree was best done. Oh yes and there were things that were like, man what I am going to do with that if I get it.
Ah the days of merchandisers giving their stuff away as opposed to having a dollar value.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You know, I wonder, how much did stores like Benjamin Franklin or Two Guys rely on game show promotion to keep themselves afloat ... I mean, you can't get the sort of warm, loving feeling Johnny Olson's readings would give to products these days.

[magnavixen.livejournal.com]

The mechandise-buying... hmmm. Amazingly, as someone who grew up on the buying rounds, and very much liked them, I must applaud that they did that. there is a faint.. quaintness about it, though, as with winnign furniture on The Price Is Right. Very much the sense of "This is what game shows were like before Who Wants To Be A Millionaire". WWtbaM? did change the face of gameshows somewhat... establishing big-money-winning as a modern gameshow requirement, making sets bigger and more grandoise...

I think that Wheel of Fortune changed appropriately in eliminating the buying rounds, to give contestants more money instead of dressers and ceramic dalmatians. While it's hard to feel sorry for anyone who's winning prizes, even goofy ones.. it did make the show better for contestants.

Categories, though, seem.. odd lately. I think they've just run out of persons, places, things, and phrases and have to get convoluted.

--G.R.R.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, Who Wants to Be A Millionaire revitalized the head-to-head quiz show genre; that's a different sort of game show to Wheel of Fortune, but it's not so far off of Jeopardy! -- but at a much more relaxed and personal pace, too. At least Millionaire proved that people do still want to see game shows; it's a pity the signs of regrowth in the field got mutated into ``reality'' shows.

But it was fun in Wheel of Fortune seeing people forced to do something with their remaining bits of prize money, even if it was forced to go to something ridiculous like the dalmatians. I seem to recall for a while it being allowed to put the remaining cash from one round ``on account,'' to be carried forward to the next, at risk of being lost to bankruptcy or a never-won following round. I don't know if that could be done with any amount or if it could only be what would otherwise go on a gift certificate.