In this video clip I posted here recently, a young David Letterman spoke of being about to tape a pilot for a game show he would host. This brought an e-mail from David Feldman, the writer who pens those great Imponderables books…
That link to the David Letterman interview brought back some memories. The game show pilot that Letterman alludes to was shot just before I started working for NBC daytime in New York City, but one of my first duties when I started working in NBC Daytime Programming department was attending the focus group for The Riddlers. Here, minus the Elvira wraparound is what our group of women saw:
At the time, Family Feud was the hottest show in daytime, and the VP of NBC daytime was looking for a comedian who could create the kind of byplay with contestants that Richard Dawson accomplished on a daily basis. I believe we already had a holding deal with Letterman. Everyone knew he was a great talent and game-show hosting was unlikely to be his ultimate gig. Wheel of Fortune and Hollywood Squares were performing reasonably well for us, but Knockout and The New High Rollers were not. Since we were paying Letterman anyway, why not see if he could fulfill a need for us?
I remember how much fun it was to sit on the "police side" of the one-way glass and watch the focus group watching The Riddlers. There was a lot of laughter on both sides of the glass. Everyone knew the premise of the show was flimsy: The crucial element would be how much the audience liked the host, and whether Letterman's wisecracks would be perceived as affectionate witty banter or cruel sarcasm. As much as the audience laughed at Letterman, they were clearly taken aback by Letterman's banter, especially toward the "civilians" (celebrities were fair game). Combined with research indicating that the gameplay itself generated no interest, The Riddlers was destined for oblivion. But as copies of the pilot circulated around 30 Rock, Letterman's stock went up rather than down, and helped cement the idea of giving Letterman his morning show.
They don't seem to do it a lot these days but there was a time when the networks loved to sign "talent" (performers, writers, etc.) to holding deals and the following would happen: The talent would think, "Great! They love me and they're going to pay me a lot of money and because they're paying me all that money, they really have an incentive to find the perfect show for me!"
And then they'd do one or two failed pilots — or maybe none — and everyone at the network would lose interest in the person. The talent would wind up realizing that at a moment when they were hot and others might be bidding for their services, they'd accepted money to be taken off the market.
Letterman was an exception to that. A couple of guys at NBC liked him. Legend has it that Fred Silverman had to find someone to entertain at a big, important dinner and when no Big Star was available, someone suggested that Letterman kid. Dave did well and that led to Silverman putting on Dave's morning show which led to replacing Tom Snyder. I don't recall all the details but I do remember how close Dave came to being one of those gifted guys who disappears into a network deal and is never seen again. Leno almost did, too. I believe Jon Stewart actually did vanish into such a contract for a while there.
The Riddlers really does look like an unsold game show pilot to me. It was done by Bob Stewart and everyone else who was doing $10,000 Pyramid (or whatever denomination they were then up to) and I'll bet after it was dropped, Letterman started thinking that NBC didn't have a place for him. And if Bill Cosby had agreed to speak at Silverman's dinner, that might have turned out to be true.