Author Topic: Game Show Terrors (Read 34126 times)

JMFabiano · « **Reply #60 on:** January 30, 2013, 12:48:04 PM »

To this day, I\'m not entirely comfortable with the Warner Bros\' \"WB\" badge - the way it was all angles and came shooting straight at you. DUCK, RABBIT, DUCK!

You must\'ve seen \"Lumber-Jack Rabbit\" at least once in your life.

Ah yes, I think I saw that as part of the WNEW/WNYW package of LT shorts, that didn\'t help my phobia of the WB \"twang\" zooming shield.

mrchips · « **Reply #61 on:** January 30, 2013, 12:49:49 PM »

I\'m only old enough to have caught the last season or so of Barker Truth or Consequences in first run but was terrified of ol\' Beulah the Buzzer. Around that same time, along with the previously mentioned effects surrounding Cliffhangers and Hurdles losses, there was the Secret Square sounder. That was duck-and-cover time!

Outside of game shows, Lincoln-Mercury\'s \"Sign of the Cat\" campaign. I fled the room to escape that mean ol\' cougar! XD

Fedya · « **Reply #62 on:** January 30, 2013, 01:54:43 PM »

Dinah Shore always made me uncomfortable for some reason.

BillCullen1 · « **Reply #63 on:** January 30, 2013, 05:16:15 PM »

Dinah Shore always made me uncomfortable for some reason.

I think Burt Reynolds felt the same way after they broke up.

Anyway, my game show terror was that \"tacky buzzer\" on the nighttime Hollywood Squares. I eventually got used to it. It was always funny when it sounded on Paul Lynde.

Casey Buck · « **Reply #64 on:** January 30, 2013, 05:47:19 PM »

For a while, mine was the \"dit-dit-dit-dit-dit\" end-of-round sound on Jeopardy. Whenever Alex said \"a minute to go\", I had to leave the room.

As for closing logos, the Worldvision Enterprises logo was a little scary to me, because of the white flash, and the whooshing sound.

JMFabiano · « **Reply #65 on:** January 30, 2013, 06:22:15 PM »

Outside of game shows, Lincoln-Mercury\'s \"Sign of the Cat\" campaign. I fled the room to escape that mean ol\' cougar! XD

And going back to game shows but related to the above, this didn\'t scare me but it could be startling: the Buick hawk popping up above the logo in \"new car\" plugs for the B-E shows.

Now let\'s take this to another subject: RECORD LABEL FEARS. Since we are talking about felines, I thought of this subject, as it allows me to nominate: the Riva lion...

http://www.nationmaster.com/wikimir/images/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2f/Riva.jpg

ObGameShows: Another big cat from the record labels, that of Scotti Bros., would be seen at the end of WordPlay.

TimK2003 · « **Reply #66 on:** January 30, 2013, 10:06:15 PM »

Had I been around in the 50\'s, I probably would have been avoiding \"Choose Up Sides\" with Gene Rayburn.

That show came up on the last VCR tape I watched and that big-headed Mr. Mischief character hanging on the wall with Don Pardo providing the squeaky voice felt a little creepy even to this day!

/And yes, add me to the Mercury Cougar roaring on the sign phobia as well. Forgot about that one!

Unrealtor · « **Reply #67 on:** February 01, 2013, 09:39:00 AM »

Nothing game show related ever frightened me, but I was scared by local station sign-offs. Not the actual sign-off message itself, or even the national anthem, but the impending color bars/tone combination or just the loud static. However, the national anthem films would send me running because I knew what was coming next. Tests of the Emergency Broadcast System were a bit nerve-wracking as well, and again that was because of the loud noise. I had no idea about the cold war/nuclear bomb implications that were originally behind the EBS.

The \"program change\" messages would usually get to me, especially coming from the then-WNEW 5 in New York, and especially when a show was cancelled/removed from the schedule, and Tom Gregory or whoever said it \"will NO LONGER be seen...\" And the Technical Difficulties slide/elevator music/announcements too...really creepy stuff!

When I was growing up, EBS tests were at 10:00 AM, just in time to interrupt the opening of The Price Is Right. (Actually, they still are at 10:00ish occasionally, but by the time it filters down from Texas Homeland Security to KEYE, it\'s usually about the time the price of the first one-bid is revealed.) I didn\'t understand that \"If this had been an actual emergency...\" was a euphemism for \"If nuclear holocaust was imminent...\" but I knew enough about the words \"actual emergency\" to know I didn\'t want to hear that noise in any other context.

The other thing along those lines was that whenever the cable company lost the signal from a station, they had an automated system that would switch to a computer system that would spell out a message about \"THIS STATION HAS CONCLUDED ITS BROADCAST DAY\" character by character, hold it for a few seconds, and then clear the screen and start again. (I assume, now, that it was configured to be able to show multiple messages if necessary, but seldom (if ever) had more than that.) Our PBS station was run on a shoestring budget at the time, so that message appeared fairly often when something broke down. It felt a little creepy to see it in the middle of the day even when I was a kid--the sense that nobody was home even though someone should be.

SuperMatch93 · « **Reply #68 on:** February 01, 2013, 01:52:42 PM »

Though not strictly game show related:

^{wigga wigga wigga wigga}^wigga

VIACOM

trainman · « **Reply #69 on:** February 01, 2013, 10:40:41 PM »

When I was growing up, EBS tests were at 10:00 AM, just in time to interrupt the opening of The Price Is Right.

Sounds like they were doing it wrong -- Emergency Broadcast System tests were supposed to happen at various times, between (if I recall correctly) 6:00 A.M. and sunset, and could be done during commercial breaks, without interrupting programming.

The current Emergency Alert System, of course, is a different matter entirely.

chris319 · « **Reply #70 on:** February 01, 2013, 11:16:16 PM »

On September 11, 2001 the Emergency Alert System in the New York metro remained silent. Not a peep. It\'s a good thing there were no emergencies that day.

PYLdude · « **Reply #71 on:** February 02, 2013, 03:49:23 AM »

The current Emergency Alert System, of course, is a different matter entirely.

True this. My TV provider will break into the system to do an EAS test. Sometimes multiple times within an hour. Can\'t change the channel, your remote is useless.

clemon79 · « **Reply #72 on:** February 02, 2013, 01:49:13 PM »

True this. My TV provider will break into the system to do an EAS test. Sometimes multiple times within an hour. Can\'t change the channel, your remote is useless.

TiVo does this too. (Including if you are watching a recording. And, annoyingly, when it\'s over, it doesn\'t return you to it; you have to restart it yourself.) I\'ll be curious to see how Windows Media Center handles them.

Adam Nedeff · « **Reply #73 on:** February 03, 2013, 03:34:22 AM »

Just spotted this thread. I have no memory of this, but my brother tells me I ran out of the room any time TPIR did Danger Price with the skull and crossbones.

PYLdude · « **Reply #74 on:** February 03, 2013, 03:58:38 AM »

I used to get scared of the Cliff Hangers guy falling off- so much so that for a brief period whenever TPIR would come on, I would unplug the TV and run off screaming. I was seven, and I knew no better. What can I say?