It's been a long time since I mentioned Game Show Network's Black-and-White Overnight bloc. That's because it hasn't been all that interesting. On weeknights, they've been running old episodes of Password (which I find generally boring) and old episodes of What's My Line? (which they've run many times before). On weekends, it's Beat the Clock (which I find unwatchable) and more What's My Line? But things will soon be changing.
The week of September 20, Password gets bumped for a week of Winner Take All, a long-forgotten show which is most notable for the fact that it was the first TV game show hosted by Bill Cullen. (They're running two episodes hosted by New York radio personality Barry Gray, then three with Cullen.) At the end of that week, September 24, they'll be up to the last network episode of What's My Line? This was one where host John Daly signed in as the Mystery Guest.
September 25, the weekend What's My Line? reruns will be replaced by Play Your Hunch, a long-running show which was hosted for most of its run by Merv Griffin. Based on what I remember of it as a child and the few I've seen since, this was a pretty good show.
On September 27, Game Show Network will begin offering cable companies a West Coast satellite transmission of its programming. At the moment, it looks like this will not be available on Dish or DirecTV. Also on that date, the Black-and-White Overnight time will shift to an hour earlier. This will screw up those of us on this side of the country who TiVo Letterman from 11:35 to 12:37.
So what's going to replace What's My Line? on weeknights as of September 27? I don't know yet. Rumor has it we may get another run of I've Got a Secret or To Tell the Truth, both of which have aired before on GSN.
But enjoy the current What's My Line? reruns while you can. The one that's on tomorrow morning should be the 9/4/66 episode with Buddy Hackett on the panel and Joey Bishop as the Mystery Guest. Sunday morning's is from the following week with Warren Beatty as Mystery Guest. This was the first episode of the show broadcast in color but apparently only black-and-white kinescopes of the prime-time What's My Line? survive. In a week or two, I'll give you a Head's Up when they rerun the one with Judy Garland as Mystery Guest, which has a lot of history in it.