[quote name=\'William A. Padron\' post=\'242455\' date=\'Jun 14 2010, 10:24 AM\'][quote name=\'Dan88\' post=\'242373\' date=\'Jun 12 2010, 08:15 PM\'][Didn't somebody say that ABC was thinking about extending Pyramid to an hour around 1975-76, but instead did Let's Make A Deal (which bombed so badly that the show ended up gone)?[/quote]
While I am not totally sure about that particular proposal (it may or may not be related though), I recall reading in some New York newspaper story circa 1977 that ABC-TV was trying to persuade executive producer Bob Stewart to move his production of The $20,000 Pyramid out of New York and to Los Angeles. Maybe ABC-TV could have thought of now having the show done in a different studio location, like their owned Vine Street Theater (TV-10). I remember seeing a poster for the program (as well as the rest of the daytime schedule's shows including Family Feud and Hot Seat) right outside that building while I was on a summer vacation there in 1976.
One reason that I read into the story was that the network was hoping that the show would then get better celebrity match-ups (including new stars to play the game), rather than the usual pool that Stewart was relying on. Stewart's response to the network, as said in the story at the time I recalled reading, that as long he was running Pyramid, the show would stay in New York. Now, of course, he slowly changed his mind when he opened his Los Angeles branch around late 1977, and while he would now make shows and pilots in California, Pyramid stayed in production in New York (with the last version as the $50KP edition) until the spring of 1981.
[/quote]
What's interesting is that when he did move west, for such shows as Love Experts and NBC Chain Reaction, it was pretty much the same stable of celebs that he had in NYC.