My first memory of GSN was just before April 15, 2002, as I remember seeing debut promos for Whammy! I stayed home from school on that big day, and frequently watched the original Hollywood Squares plus Win, Lose, Or Draw and pretty much everything else on the lineup. Unfortunately, my cable provider decided that GSN and MTV2 should share a single station on their lineup, and switched to the latter at about 6:02 PM (shortly into The $100,000 Pyramid).
Unfortunately, I didn't tape much of anything from GSN -- the only thing I've been able to find among my tapes is about 25 minutes worth from March 20, 2003 (last segment of a 1986 New Newlywed Game, full episode of Whammy!, first segment of Wintuition).
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As for the Dark Period, I see it as a grand time in GSN's history because it meant they had to dig around for other stuff to air when they lost almost all of the Goodson-Todman library. And for six months, they aired a lot of stuff that I'd wager they wouldn't have otherwise.