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Author Topic: 1971 article on game shows  (Read 1905 times)

geno57

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1971 article on game shows
« on: January 25, 2011, 03:30:45 AM »
I don't know if this has been posted before.  I found it while searching for something else.  The fun starts on Page 64.

http://books.google.com/books?id=5eICAAAAM...p;q&f=false

tvmitch

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1971 article on game shows
« Reply #1 on: January 25, 2011, 09:39:00 AM »
Very fun read. Also fun: the ad with a warning to overweight women who want to hit the slopes.
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Matt Ottinger

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1971 article on game shows
« Reply #2 on: January 25, 2011, 10:28:55 AM »
Took me a second to realize that he was examining ONLY those shows that were taping in New York at the time, so stuff like Hollywood Squares naturally wasn't included.  Interesting that for as much as he makes fun of the avarice associated with something like Sale of the Century, all the New York shows he profiled, including Sale, required some amount of smarts to play.  Meanwhile, on the other coast, you were agreeing or disagreeing with a celebrity, picking the door or the curtain, choosing a blind date or answering questions about "whoopie" with your spouse.  It's also an interesting snapshot of the period right before Pyramid and the Price-Joker-Gambit trio would change the face of daytime for the decade to follow.  

Being Cullen-obsessed, I was disappointed that this article came out right in the middle of the two-year period when Bill didn't have a game show of his own, the longest such gap of his career.
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BillCullen1

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1971 article on game shows
« Reply #3 on: January 25, 2011, 09:10:44 PM »
[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' post=\'255544\' date=\'Jan 25 2011, 10:28 AM\']Being Cullen-obsessed, I was disappointed that this article came out right in the middle of the two-year period when Bill didn't have a game show of his own, the longest such gap of his career.[/quote]

True. While he wasn't hosting a show of his own, Cullen was sitting on the TTTT panel, and that happened because Tom Poston turned down the job.

davemackey

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1971 article on game shows
« Reply #4 on: January 26, 2011, 09:59:40 AM »
The one story I never heard before was the Willie Stein-George Mikan story. Willie, then producing "To Tell the Truth", was looking for impostors for the legendary basketball star George Mikan, and he found what he thought was just the right 6'10" gentleman, only to be told that he was indeed the REAL George Mikan - to tell the truth!

Neumms

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1971 article on game shows
« Reply #5 on: January 26, 2011, 01:26:23 PM »
One question about old "$ale": could you buy more than one prize down below if you could afford it, and was the top prize then buying the lot, no cash?

Bob Zager

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1971 article on game shows
« Reply #6 on: January 26, 2011, 01:58:05 PM »
[quote name=\'Neumms\' post=\'255623\' date=\'Jan 26 2011, 01:26 PM\']One question about old "$ale": could you buy more than one prize down below if you could afford it, and was the top prize then buying the lot, no cash?[/quote]

From my best recollection, you could buy more than one prize at the end of the show if you had at least the combined total of the bargain prices of each item you wanted to buy.  

It was different from the more popular 80s version, and AFAIK, you could opt to continue playing for more and more prizes, but you still needed to accumulate quiz money earnings totalling the combined amount of the bargain prices of the prizes.  

There was no set price for buying everything, nor the option of risking them all for a cash bonus.
« Last Edit: January 26, 2011, 01:59:17 PM by Bob Zager »