THE STRANGE QUIRKS W/ NBC DAYTIME GAME SHOWS

[megamanj1986]

Has anyone been noticing the strange quirks that happens on a lot of NBC Daytime GS's both the late '70s and throughout the '80s and early '90s?



Some I noticed was that a lot of times don't u sometimes hate it when you hear those audience chants and you hear a lot of those "wolf-whistling" noises and their infamous "YEEEEAH, OWWWW!!!"


Did all of the NBC Game Shows from 1978 to the early '90s always used an audience track or something? Did they even have a real audience?

[Don Howard]

[quote name=\'megamanj1986\' date=\'Mar 27 2006, 02:23 PM\']Did they even have a real audience?

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[/quote]
Oh, they most certainly had a real audience. Nearly every spring or summer from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s I made annual or twice-annual plane trips to California with the prime intent to watch game shows get taped. Often I'd room at a motel within five or ten minutes from NBC Burbank. There was a Jack-in-the-Box near by.
Sometimes there were a number of empty seats (some 1987 Blockbusters tapings come to mind) but we were there.

[JasonA1]

I will be nicer than most and explain that NBC's sweetening machine was the driving force behind those familiar reactions. It got the name Mother Mackenzie - something Dennis James would poke fun at on PDQ by saying "Mother Mackenzie is in the audience with us today" when the show in fact had no audience. As was often discussed before, and further explained by Don, they always used it to enhance the reactions, despite how many were actually in the audience.

It's ripe for parody though - they used to churn out the same audience yelling track for every spin of the wheel on WoF, which made it a cariacture. Almost a wink and nod to the viewer that a show was heavily sweetened. My favorite example is the track used a lot on SP. After you hear Gene intro the show, you could transcribe the events as such:

"It's Super Password!" Audience: "YEAH! OWWWW!"

-Jason

[SRIV94]

[quote name=\'megamanj1986\' date=\'Mar 27 2006, 01:23 PM\']Did all of the NBC Game Shows from 1978 to the early '90s always used an audience track or something? Did they even have a real audience?

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[/quote]
And before 1978, too.

Doug

[Ian Wallis]

When I was in the audience for Battlestars in 1983, the first of the two shows I saw had a full credit roll.  About 20 seconds from the end everyone in the audience stopped applauding.  Just before the next show, one of the stage hands relayed a message from the control room requesting the audience keep applauding right to the end..."even if your hands get sore!"

I wonder why they couldn't have just used Mother Mackenzie!    

Oh well...

[DJDustman]

I do have a question about the sweetening though, might be dumb, but alas, did they ever play the applause live during the show tapings?

[SRIV94]

[quote name=\'DJDustman\' post=\'114412\' date=\'Mar 28 2006, 01:34 AM\']
I do have a question about the sweetening though, might be dumb, but alas, did they ever play the applause live during the show tapings?
[/quote]
On occasion, there were some audience reactions that were genuine.  Didn't happen a lot, but there were moments.

The opening applause on the last few weeks of GSN's running of SP sounds like a mix of genuine and McKenzie.  Perhaps that's a credit to the audience reaction operator (surly guy, from what I understand :-) ) that it might actually be all McKenzied but doesn't sound it.

Doug

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'DJDustman\' post=\'114412\' date=\'Mar 28 2006, 01:34 AM\']
I do have a question about the sweetening though, might be dumb, but alas, did they ever play the applause live during the show tapings?
[/quote]

If it's how I understand your question, no they definitely didn't pipe the sweetening into the audience.  Not a good idea (and if someone in the audience held up their hand and said "On TV, it sounds like there are a lot of people here, but it's so small!", the warmup guy would call the MacKenzie an "amplifier", point up to the mikes up in the rafters and say something like "they take your response and put it through the MacKenzie to make it sound bigger").

Chris C. says that Mother MacKenzie was never piped through the stage monitors.  I would take his word for it on G-T shows, but there is an instance in print years ago of Chuck Woolery commenting about it coming through the monitors and an instance of Anne Meara on "Celebrity Sweepstakes" complaining about "that canned laughter" that would hint that some producers did put the sweetening through the stage monitors.

[megamanj1986]

I know that on Rafferty's Blockbusters, there were indeed some empty seats and audince tracks floating about.

Also, on Scrabble, during the Straddled Format-era on the first two years from 1984-86 (when there was no audince on camera in the intros), there could be hints of Audience Tracks on there, but I'm not sure, though.

So someone will have to clue me in on that one.

Peter Marshal on HS also referred to the audicne tracks as "MOTHER MACKENZIE" as well.

[Jimmy Owen]

I always thought Peter (and maybe even Dennis) was referring to Ida Mae McKenzie, the H-Q staffer.

[SRIV94]

[quote name=\'megamanj1986\' post=\'114519\' date=\'Mar 28 2006, 05:53 PM\']
Also, on Scrabble, during the Straddled Format-era on the first two years from 1984-86 (when there was no audince on camera in the intros), there could be hints of Audience Tracks on there, but I'm not sure, though.

So someone will have to clue me in on that one.
[/quote]
Trust me on this one--there were more than hints of audience tracks on SCRABBLE.  Even when you saw the real audience on camera on SCRABBLE, audience tracks were used.  It was pretty much that way for every NBC Burbank-based game show (can't speak for the NY ones).  And you can't just limit it to game shows--LAUGH-IN used audience tracks, Filp Wilson's show used them and SANFORD AND SON, CHICO & THE MAN and the first season of KOTTER (which taped in Burbank, they moved to ABC's facility starting with the second season) were all McKenzied as well.  And even when KOTTER jumped studios, that doesn't mean reactions were genuine. . .

Tune in next time, when I give a shocking exposé on the existence of the Easter Bunny.

Doug

[Don Howard]

[quote name=\'megamanj1986\' post=\'114519\' date=\'Mar 28 2006, 06:53 PM\']
I know that on Rafferty's Blockbusters, there were indeed some empty seats[/quote]
For the taping session I attended, there were some filled seats. It was like I was at a Cleveland Indians game back during the final years at Municipal Stadium.

[rugrats1]

I read somewhere (here, probably) that there was an NBC game show in the 1970s, which, on one episode, "Mother Mackenzie" went on the fritz and "applauded" during the entire show. Was this true?

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'rugrats1\' post=\'114628\' date=\'Mar 29 2006, 10:22 AM\']
I read somewhere (here, probably) that there was an NBC game show in the 1970s, which, on one episode, "Mother Mackenzie" went on the fritz and "applauded" during the entire show. Was this true?
[/quote]

The closest to that I can think of was during a technicians' strike in the 70s.  With supervisory personnel at all of the controls, there were more glitches than normal.  Most of the game shows decided not to use Mother MacKenzie or just use applause tracks during the strike.  In the case of "High Rollers," either Merrill Heatter or Bob Noah must've decided that they were going to use Mother MacKenzie no matter what, boats against the current and all that.  "HR" had just switched to the "Face Lifters" front game appropriation of "Double Exposure" and a player rolled a bad roll.  Instead of ending the game, the other player got to see the rest of the puzzle revealed one piece at a time and could buzz in and identify the puzzle at any time, a part where the studio audience should stay as quiet as churchmice.  Instead, the supervisor running Mother MacKenzie kept the audience-shouting loop running all through this.  This is one instance where they should've piped it through the stage monitors, so Trebek could say something like "could we have absolute silence in the audience, please?" and the guy could stop the loop.  But they didn't and this glaringly-obvious glitch happened.

[megamanj1986]

[quote name=\'SRIV94\' post=\'114541\' date=\'Mar 28 2006, 08:06 PM\']
[quote name=\'megamanj1986\' post=\'114519\' date=\'Mar 28 2006, 05:53 PM\']
Also, on Scrabble, during the Straddled Format-era on the first two years from 1984-86 (when there was no audince on camera in the intros), there could be hints of Audience Tracks on there, but I'm not sure, though.

So someone will have to clue me in on that one.
[/quote]
Trust me on this one--there were more than hints of audience tracks on SCRABBLE.  Even when you saw the real audience on camera on SCRABBLE, audience tracks were used.  It was pretty much that way for every NBC Burbank-based game show (can't speak for the NY ones).  And you can't just limit it to game shows--LAUGH-IN used audience tracks, Filp Wilson's show used them and SANFORD AND SON, CHICO & THE MAN and the first season of KOTTER (which taped in Burbank, they moved to ABC's facility starting with the second season) were all McKenzied as well.  And even when KOTTER jumped studios, that doesn't mean reactions were genuine. . .

Tune in next time, when I give a shocking exposé on the existence of the Easter Bunny.

Doug
[/quote]

The same can also go for Johnny Carson's shows when his shows moved to Burbank, right?