Quickest producer to make 65 episodes?

[Matt Ottinger]

A discussion at QuizBusters prompted this question.  We just finished our season, and the station producers are quite proud of themselves at getting the entire schedule of 63 shows (due to some forfeits, we only ended up taping 61) done in a little over two months.  We taped four shows a night every Tuesday, and also on alternate Mondays.  And while that's a decent pace, I told them that in the real world, there were producers who worked a LOT faster than that.

I know there are stories of knocking off entire seasons of 26-30 shows for weekly syndicated series over the course of a weekend.  But I wondered if anybody know of a condensed taping schedule for a 65-episode (13 week) daily series, which would probably more closely resemble our production schedule for comparison purposes.

[tvwxman]

Marc Summers told me once that "Trivia Unwrapped" was 60 eps shot in 8 days.  Thats' gotta be a contender.

[Matt Ottinger]

Marc Summers told me once that "Trivia Unwrapped" was 60 eps shot in 8 days.  Thats' gotta be a contender.

Yeah, that's exactly the sort of thing I wanted to take back to them.  Thanks!

[TLEberle]

A discussion at QuizBusters prompted this question.  We just finished our season, and the station producers are quite proud of themselves at getting the entire schedule of 63 shows (due to some forfeits, we only ended up taping 61)

That would explain why when I went to search for "Quizbusters 2407" or whatever the number was, that it wouldn't come up in Google.

And to answer MattO's question, the '89 version of Jackpot did 130 episodes in 17 straight days, for 7.6 episodes per day.

[JepMasta]

I have heard stories that Dick Clark and the Pyramid crew would often bang out 10 episodes in a single day during the early days of the franchise...Man was a MACHINE!

[chris319]

That's true about Bob Stewart taping 10 Pyramids in a day.

[Kevin Prather]

Regarding Pyramid, how frequent were the tape days? Once a week? Twice? More? Less?

[BrandonFG]

Regarding Pyramid, how frequent were the tape days? Once a week? Twice? More? Less?

Don't know why three a week stands out in my mind. I'm going off what I remember reading in Jefferson Graham's Come On Down, but that was close to 20 years ago...

[pyrfan]

Regarding Pyramid, how frequent were the tape days? Once a week? Twice? More? Less?

When I was in the audience for the Clark versions in 1987, they taped five shows on Thursday and 10 on Friday. The Thursday sessions were for the 25K, and all 10 of Friday's were for the 100K, but Johnny Gilbert said in the warm-up that the first five on Fridays were usually 25K episodes.


Brendan

[mmb5]

Celebrity Bowling knocked out the entire season over a weekend, 9-9-8 I believe.

[Jay Temple]

Regarding Pyramid, how frequent were the tape days? Once a week? Twice? More? Less?

When I was in the audience for the Clark versions in 1987, they taped five shows on Thursday and 10 on Friday. The Thursday sessions were for the 25K, and all 10 of Friday's were for the 100K, but Johnny Gilbert said in the warm-up that the first five on Fridays were usually 25K episodes.


Brendan

This leads me to wonder whether the $100K shows frequently involved one of the two celebs who had just done the $25K shows. ISTR a similar arrangement for taping MG7x and MGPM.

[DrBear]

Random Question from somebody who really doesn't know that much about production - say you have set up a five-show or (gasp) 10-show production day on a show that straddles, or has returning champs...

If you hit show 4 (or 9) and it's a clean break, a champion retires or you're at the end of a pairing on Pyramid when nobody is coming back, would you stop the taping for the day so that you could start a new session with new contestants, instead of forcing a contestant to come back?

[Matt Ottinger]

If you hit show 4 (or 9) and it's a clean break, a champion retires or you're at the end of a pairing on Pyramid when nobody is coming back, would you stop the taping for the day so that you could start a new session with new contestants, instead of forcing a contestant to come back?

Having never worked in such a scenario, I could not answer that with any professional experience.

However, the correct answer is:  No way in hell.

Contestants are pretty much your most disposable commodity, and they're eager to do whatever then need to in order to play.  Meanwhile, you've scheduled your time and your staff for X shows, and you take a financial bite if you don't get X shows made.

[Fedya]

This leads me to wonder whether the $100K shows frequently involved one of the two celebs who had just done the $25K shows. ISTR a similar arrangement for taping MG7x and MGPM.

Wasn't MGPM a weekly at this time?  In that case, they'd tape six shows: one week of daytime, and then the syndie.

[clemon79]

However, the correct answer is:  No way in hell.

Contestants are pretty much your most disposable commodity, and they're eager to do whatever then need to in order to play.

This. I'll point out this is an industry that would prefer a Mobster piss themselves than stop tape.