[quote name=\'Sjsuman3500\' date=\'Sep 25 2003, 11:42 PM\']
1) Who do you think is to blame for the cancellation of "Newlywed game?" (in my opinion, it is NEVER EVER Bob's fault--he really knows how to host this show and he is really good at it)
2) Gary Kroeger, Paul Rodriguez, or Jim Lange: who do you think is the worst host on the Newlywed Game? [/quote]
First of all, I don't ever recall Jim Lange hosting NG. He did host another show with married couples as contestants whose reruns I'd prefer to see a million times more than another NG revival...
As to the cancellation, if you mean the original ABC version, I'd say ABC probably because of the same alleged fatigue factor that prompted NBC to kill off some of their long-runners from the '60s.
But there's an interesting story most of you are probably unaware of, and for better or worse, it's become part of Central Iowa TV history: When the 1977 fall season opened, I was dismayed to learn that none of the Des Moines stations were wiling to try anything new in the 6:30 M-F Prime Access slot. The NBC station renewed their contracts on the previous season's checkerboard lineup (Muppet Show, Name That Tune, Hee Haw, etc.), the ABC station had My Three Sons reruns across the board, and the CBS station opted to go with The Brady Bunch four nights a week, with one night reserved for a public affairs call-in show. Everyone else was getting new first-run game shows or other new efforts, and I was embarrassed to see the stations I had running mostly mush.
Then in January 1978, the CBS station decided to retire the Bradys and substitute a strip game show (hooray!). Unfortunately, the show they chose was the syndie NG with more sexually-explicit questions. The station was flooded with calls and letters from angry mothers and the like, all saying in essence, \"How can you replace a nice, wholesome family comedy with a show that seemingly takes place in the bedroom?!\", and the protests were so overwhelming and stifling that the station actually dropped NG after three airings, riding out the season with reruns of The Honeymooners and then The Odd Couple. It made the front page of the Des Moines Register, prompting Barris associate Mike
Metzger to lament, \"What IS it about \"Dee Moines\"? Do we have to come up with special programming just for them?\" Having been with that market as long as I was before I moved, I tended to agree with him.
Eventually, they rescheduled NG in a late-late slot after the kiddies were supposed to be in bed. But after the initial furor died down, I wrote the station and gave them MY take on this whole mess. I told them that I was unhappy to see everybody get angry over taking off some dumb Brady Bunch reruns that I felt belonged at 3:30 in the afternoons and not at 6:30, but that I was also never high on Newlywed Game either...but only because it was dumb and never offered high-stake prizes. I asked why they couldn't have gotten something like Concentration with Jack Narz or Mary Tyler Moore reruns instead for that slot (they replied that Concentration was never offered to them and that MTM reruns were too expensive for the area and they weren't doing well in a number of places). So maybe a lot of fed-up viewers were resposible for the eventual fall of NG.
