Password Plus Mystery

[chris319]

I am reconciling my Password Plus episode list (proof of the lack of a life).

We had a four-show week due to preemption on 4/25/80. Did we have any other four-show weeks in the latter half of 1980?

I believe the on-line episode guides are not entirely accurate. My last show was #499 taped on Sunday, November 16, 1980 with Bert Convy and the ever-popular Judy Norton-Taylor. Assuming we taped five shows per day subsequent to the four-show week in May, my final episode comes out to #500, which is one too many. If we had a four-show week during that period, the show numbers work out correctly.

I recently saw a show slate on a tape at TVPMM donated by Tom Kennedy for show #514, videotaped on 12/6/80 and broadcast on 12/23/80 with celebrities Betty White and Dick Martin.

[chris319]

Mystery solved.

The on-line episode guide does not take into account that we taped four shows with Susan Richardson and Bill Cullen for air the week of May 12, 1980. This throws the episode numbers off by one. The on-line episode guide also omits a week of celebrity bookings: the week either before or after Della Reese and Bill Anderson. This puts the bookings off by one week. Many of the air dates are off as well. We were pretty diligent about sticking to the Monday through Friday celebrity cycle. Preemptions were easy to deal with; you simply have a four-show tape day.

[Jimmy Owen]

There was a week in 81 where "Wedding Day" with Huell Howser pre-empted Password Plus.

[thomas_meighan]

In a similar vein, I've been trying to tease out the correct air dates for Match Game '73; the now-archived matchgame.org guide has a two-week gap from August 13-24, 1973 which can be accounted for by Watergate pre-emptions*. During that year, if my calculations are accurate, the celebrity weeks ran on M-F cycles only during the first week (July 2-6, when there were no pre-emptions at all) and for several weeks in October and November up to Thanksgiving.

*The initial round of televised hearings ran from May 17 to August 7; the first few days were carried by all 3 networks before they began rotating coverage to cut advertising losses.

[Vahan_Nisanian]

Here are some other Password Plus mysteries, I wonder if any of you can solve:

On earlier episodes of the show, there's blue carpeting covering up what may have been the original scoreboards from the pilot episode (which was allegedly dubbed Password '79). There was also a small hole on Allen's podium that may have been used for one of two purposes: A scoring display to indicate the total of remaining points, or a window where the cards would have been fed down to a conveyor belt to give to both teams, that was aborted at the last minute.

Also allegedly, on the Password '79 pilot, Carol Burnett said "It's More than Password, it's Password Plus!" and the producers loved what she said so much that they decided to rename the series for the actual run as Password Plus.

Can anyone shed some light on these things?

[Matt Ottinger]

The on-line episode guide does not take into account that we taped four shows with Susan Richardson and Bill Cullen for air the week of May 12, 1980. This throws the episode numbers off by one.

This threw me off as well when I was trying to capture all the Cullen Password Plus episodes, and couldn't figure out why GSN was only airing four from that week.

[davemackey]

On earlier episodes of the show, there's blue carpeting covering up what may have been the original scoreboards from the pilot episode (which was allegedly dubbed Password '79). There was also a small hole on Allen's podium that may have been used for one of two purposes: A scoring display to indicate the total of remaining points, or a window where the cards would have been fed down to a conveyor belt to give to both teams, that was aborted at the last minute.

I believe Chris once said that the different-colored password wallets were on a lazy susan inside Allen's podium and the color in the little window indicated which password was in play.

[JasonA1]

Can anyone shed some light on these things?

The window on Allen's podium seems to come up twice a year. It's been covered in greater detail as far back as 1998. Here's a thread.

Password '79 was a working title. Carol Burnett's comment was allegedly in an office run-through. Chris provides comments on this as well, talking about the pilot, which was speculated in other threads to be an accounting formality. Other Goodson shows did test programs shortly before their proper debut (Mindreaders, Classic Concentration), so it could be one or the other.

-Jason

[Steve Gavazzi]

*The initial round of televised hearings ran from May 17 to August 7; the first few days were carried by all 3 networks before they began rotating coverage to cut advertising losses.

This is interesting to me...I knew the hearings caused some strange scheduling, but I hadn't realized they'd started regularly-scheduled hearings that early (which may simply prove that I don't know a whole lot about Watergate).  Looking at the TPIR timeline, the show was pre-empted on May 17 and 18 (a Thursday and Friday), as well as the following Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (the 22nd through 24th), then on June 6 and 13 (both Wednesdays), and then the entire week of June 25-29, as well as Monday, July 2.  Starting on Thursday, July 12, the show was pre-empted every third weekday through Tuesday, August 7; it was also pre-empted on the 8th, and then things went pretty much back to normal.

I don't know that this would help anyone else's research, but I'm kind of curious now about how long the coverage was running at different points during the summer.  Do all of these pre-emptions make sense, or might some of them have been caused by something else?

[Eric Paddon]

The pre-emption that led to the four episode Richardson-Cullen week later stemmed from news coverage of the Iran hostage rescue mission failure of April 25, 1980.

[thomas_meighan]

I don't know that this would help anyone else's research, but I'm kind of curious now about how long the coverage was running at different points during the summer.  Do all of these pre-emptions make sense, or might some of them have been caused by something else?

Some of the pre-emptions were predictable, others weren't. For the most part, on weekdays with pre-emptions, coverage was carried from 10AM to 12 noon eastern time, recessed for two hours, then resumed from 2-4 PM eastern time. This means, *in general*, that Password, Split Second, LMAD, Jeopardy!, The Who, What or Where Game and Three on a Match were not as subject to pre-emptions as morning or late afternoon games. But that's only a generalization; I'm sure there were days when the Senate didn't recess exactly at noon and some episodes listed in the New York Times for 12 noon weren't seen. In addition, I wasn't born yet so I don't have first-hand memories ;-).

The rotation plan wasn't exclusive; I believe that any of the networks could carry any portion of the coverage they wished. That's why pre-emptions were so heavy during the week of June 25-29; it was the week of John Dean's testimony and (if I recall the NYT listings correctly) all three networks pre-empted their 10-12 and 2-4 lineups for all five days. That also accounts for the one-week gap between the end of Hollywood's Talking and the beginning of Match Game.

The networks did make some attempt to carry the second round of hearings beginning in late September, but they did so at a much lower rate and by early October had pretty much ceded the field to PBS (except, of course, for major events like those in July/August 1974).

Things settled down during July 2-6; I did not see any indications of pre-emptions in the NYT schedule. The FAQ on G-R.net (which you do an *excellent* job on, by the way) does show TPIR airing on 7-2-73; it was the program originally scheduled for 6-27. Here are the dates on which CBS carried Watergate coverage after MG premiered:

July 12, 17, 20, 25, 30
August 2, 7
September 26
October 3

In addition, 10/11 had a pre-emption for a "Daytime 90" special, 11/22 had "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and 11/23 had "H.M.S. Pinafore".

I've checked the known Watergate coverage dates against the G-R FAQ and found three discrepancies: the NYT does show TPIR and MG airing on 8/8, 8/22 and 9/5. I have no way of verifying who is correct for these days. Thus my research into the MG 73 airdates is only preliminary at this time.

[chris319]

On earlier episodes of the show, there's blue carpeting covering up what may have been the original scoreboards from the pilot episode (which was allegedly dubbed Password '79). There was also a small hole on Allen's podium that may have been used for one of two purposes: A scoring display to indicate the total of remaining points, or a window where the cards would have been fed down to a conveyor belt to give to both teams, that was aborted at the last minute.

I believe Chris once said that the different-colored password wallets were on a lazy susan inside Allen's podium and the color in the little window indicated which password was in play.

Correct. This system was replaced by microswitches installed on the lazy Susan itself which activated lights at the producer table, telling Bobby which position it was in and thus which password Allen would grab next.

On earlier episodes of the show, there's blue carpeting covering up what may have been the original scoreboards from the pilot episode (which was allegedly dubbed Password '79).

Where exactly on the set was this? The scoreboards were always in the upstage wall, but they had to be moved higher up because the celebrities' heads were partially blocking them. The move was made before the first air episode.

We still have one unaccounted-for week of shows. There was a week of shows with Judy Norton-Taylor and Bert Convy (my last) numbered 495 - 499, then two weeks of shows before the Betty White/Dick Martin week, which we know from the slate included #514, taped on Saturday 12/6/80 for air on 12/23/80. Della Reese and Bill Anderson appeared either on shows 500 - 504 or 505 - 509. Who appeared on the missing week and was it before or after Reese/Anderson? My last day of employment at G-T was Friday November 21 and they did not tape the weekend of November 22 - 23 (they also had Blockbusters to tape during that time).

[Steve Gavazzi]

I've checked the known Watergate coverage dates against the G-R FAQ and found three discrepancies: the NYT does show TPIR and MG airing on 8/8, 8/22 and 9/5. I have no way of verifying who is correct for these days. Thus my research into the MG 73 airdates is only preliminary at this time.

According to the show's records, August 8 was pre-empted by Spiro Agnew, and August 22 and September 5 were pre-empted by Nixon.  These are specifically noted in a list I have that consists mostly of Watergate hearings, so I'd assume they weren't scheduled in advance like the other ones were.

[Vahan_Nisanian]

To Chris:



At about 1:53 into this video, look carefully at the small squares to the extreme left and extreme right of the shows' logo. The ones that are covered up by the blue carpeting. These may or may not have been the original scoreboards from the Password '79 pilot.

[clemon79]

These may or may not have been the original scoreboards from the Password '79 pilot.

Indeed, they may or may not have been.