This may seem like a fairly innocuous question but answering it's going to get me in trouble with some of this blog's most loyal readers. Mark Ingraham wrote me to ask…
If you haven't written about it on your blog yet, I was wondering what your favorite game shows of all time were? (Mine tended to be Bob Barker's The Price Is Right, The Joker's Wild, and even Tic Tac Dough…though anything with Bill Cullen was extremely watchable!)
I've always been a big fan of some (not all) game shows. The ones I've liked over the years have generally had two or more of the following qualities…
First, they have to feel like the outcome is in no way controlled. That lets out shows that have an "edited" feeling either because they're seriously edited or they somehow always turn out the way I'd want them to turn out if I were the producer. I lost my interest in Deal or No Deal and Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? because of that. I'm not saying they were rigged — I'm sure they weren't — but they sure felt edited and you could sometimes feel things had been built around the producers' hope for a certain dramatic ending.
Secondly, I like to see a show have respect for its contestants and to root for them, not laugh at them. In the past, you had a lot of shows that involved silly stunts or silly pranks or silly costumes like Beat the Clock or Truth or Consequences or Let's Make a Deal. Then you also had Treasure Hunt or a number of other Chuck Barris shows. The surest way to get on The Newlywed Game was for a couple to go into their audition and blurt out embarrassing things about each other and then start bickering. These days, the whole point of some shows for a younger audience is to "slime" people.
Thirdly, I like shows where the contestants have to have some smarts or cleverness. If I can answer almost all the questions, the show's too easy. Or if you can win by making lucky guesses, the show's of little interest to me. Obviously, I've always liked Jeopardy! and I really liked Press Your Luck because there was some genuine strategy involved. Press Your Luck was built on an interesting dilemma which we all face from time to time: When things are going your way, how long do you press your luck? When I was playing a lot of Blackjack, I spent a lot of time thinking about that.
Fourthly, if there are questions, they should be real questions of knowledge. "Who was the nineteeth President of the United States?" is a question of knowledge. This is not: "According to Spice Merchants Monthly, what is the most popular spice to put on pork chops?" They're not asking you what the best-selling spice is. They're asking you what one source (which you've probably never read) judged the most "popular" (by what measure?) A real question doesn't need an "According to…"
And lastly, I have to like the host or at least not dislike the host. There have been a few who were somewhat more important than the games they ran: Groucho on You Bet Your Life, Johnny Carson on Who Do You Trust?, Jan Murray on the original Treasure Hunt, maybe Richard Dawson on Family Feud…and I do like Steve Harvey on the current Feud.
I admired the hell out of Garry Moore on the old I've Got a Secret because that was a very unpredictable show and a lot of things went wrong on live TV and no matter what it was, he handled it. He was also real good at playing Straight Man for the panel and contestants. Steve Allen took over that show for its last few years and while there was much to admire in Mr. Allen, I think he had a way of turning everything he did into The Steve Allen Show.
Bill Cullen, I thought, could make even the worst idea for a game show work…and often did. (Anyone remember Blankety Blanks? Or Eye Guess?) Reportedly, at various times there were plans for Cullen to host a Tonight Show-type program but no such series ever materialized. I bet he would have been great at it.
I don't really watch The Price is Right but sometimes, I have it on because I admire the way they keep things moving and all the expertise that's involved in putting it together. If that show had never existed and you walked into a network today and pitched it, describing what they are able to accomplish taping two a day, you'd be told it was utterly impossible to mount a show that gives away so many prizes and that it would take three days to tape one hour of what you're describing.
But they manage to do it, it's never dull and — here comes what some will consider blasphemy — I like Drew Carey as the host more than I liked Bob Barker's last twenty-or-so years. Carey does not seem to be under the delusion that the audience is there to see him and that winning a car or $25,000 is of lesser importance.
I also liked The $XX,XXX Pyramid (whatever the dollar amount was at the time) when Dick Clark hosted it, Press Your Luck when Peter Tomarken hosted it and Jeopardy! when just about anyone hosted it. I also like old episodes of I've Got a Secret, To Tell the Truth and What's My Line? less as game shows than as time capsules for seeing celebrities of the past. I'll probably think of some more later and do a follow-up to this post.
