40 years ago today, NBC Concentration came to an end

[Loogaroo]

You could jigger it so the winner is the player who makes the last match. Granted, you get a bit of Fire Drill Syndrome, but at least it prevents the foregone conclusions you\'d have from runaway games.

[TLEberle]

As hard as it was for me to work out the rebuses when I was young, the feeling of triumph when I solved one was a big deal. You lose that if it becomes All Star Blitz or Battlestars with memory.

[clemon79]

You could jigger it so the winner is the player who makes the last match. Granted, you get a bit of Fire Drill Syndrome, but at least it prevents the foregone conclusions you\'d have from runaway games.

 

I\'m not sure what you mean by \"Fire Drill Syndrome,\" but it offends me as a comedian for one person to do all of the heavy lifting, get down to the last four squares, be wrong from blind bad luck, and hand the game over as a result. I\'ve already seen Merv Griffin\'s Crosswords and don\'t feel the need to see it again.

 

And that\'s really the problem with this entire notion: y\'all (and by \"y\'all\" I mostly mean \"Jimmy\") are trying to take the one thing out of Concentration that doesn\'t make the whole game a fairly random exercise, given two players with a couple ounces of intelligence. Now, if you want Concentration to be a fairly random exercise, great, Glub knows there\'s a market for fairly random games, but at least try to do it in a way that isn\'t (in Tim\'s case) unsatisfying, or (in Jimmy\'s case) outright bad TV.

[TLEberle]

The fire drill was a bit of chaos added to Make the Grade. I loathe use of syndrome as shorthand or metaphor, but it had the possibility to shuffle the game just before the end, just like on MGC.

[clemon79]

The fire drill was a bit of chaos added to Make the Grade. I loathe use of syndrome as shorthand or metaphor, but it had the possibility to shuffle the game just before the end, just like on MGC.

 

Oh, the minigame that reassigned podiums, yeah, I vaguely remember that.

[Winkfan]

Of course, the following Monday Baffle and $10,000 Pyramid debuted.  I remember seeing promos for the debut of Pyramid - some of them featured Jack Klugman and Tony Randall and were quite amusing.

So did Hollywood's Talking (that's for you, Geoff); and some soap opera that calls itself The Young And The Restless. Speaking of the latter; with the additional MG '7X coming to GSN next month, we'll see some of the early Y&R cast (Brenda Dickson, Jamie Lyn Bauer, to name a few) on the MG panel.

Cordially,
Tammy

P.S. I mentioned this before, but Concentration's demise marked the beginning of the end for NBC's glory days in the game show field. But a new era would take its place.

[wdm1219inpenna]

To not include a rebus for a player to solve would be like having \"The Price is Right\" without the Showcase Showdown or the Showcases at the end of the show.  The rebus was the essential part of this game.  It was an awesome added play-along feature, in addition to playing along from home trying to make matches on the board.  Watching 30 minutes of people doing nothing more than making matches would lead to a very quick demise.  The rebus is absolutely essential.

 

Matching prizes only worked for the \"Classic\" format from 1987-91 for the bonus game.  Still, I would liked to have seen it where rather than have 8 cars, have 1 car to play for, have 8 different money amounts on the board to match in 35 seconds.  For each match made, it would reveal 2 parts of a 15 part rebus.  To win the car, you would have to solve the bonus round rebus.  Obviously, the more matches made in 35 seconds, the more of the puzzle that would be revealed.  At the end of 35 seconds, if the player couldn\'t solve the rebus, if I produced the show, I would give them the option to forfeit any bonus cash accumulated during matches made in the bonus game in exchange for revealing one more piece of the 15 square puzzle, and that piece would be the square that hid the one unmatchable money card.

[clemon79]

To not include a rebus for a player to solve would be like having \"The Price is Right\" without the Showcase Showdown

 

Um, not sure how to break this one to you...

[alfonzos]

Yeah, the big C is, and always will be, my favorite game show. I really don\'t care to see it revived. It was fun a challenge while it lasted. Let sleeping dogs lie.

[BillCullen1]

The folowing Monday after Concentration\'s cancellation, Clayton was heard announcing The $10,000 Ptramid.  A friend of mine who used to go see Pyramid  told me that Clayton told him G-T offered him the Concentration job, but he turned it down because he did not want to commute or move to Califiornia. So Jack Narz got the job.

[40onTheBlue]

I\'ve always wondered what, if any, influence G-T\'s licensing of Concentration may have had upon the end of the original NBC version. Did G-T\'s purchase offer come before or after the show\'s final broadcast? Starting their revival just five months after the end of the first series seems rather quick. Surely there must be a documented story of how the syndicated version came to be.

[Jimmy Owen]

Check americanradiohistory.com for the back issues of Broadcasting for the timeline, but Jim Victory acquired the rights from NBC to mount a new Concentration in May or June of 73 and hired Goodson-Todman to actually produce the show. Jim Victory had been an employee of the CBS and later the NBC syndication divisions before the Justice Department forced the divestment of said divisions. Concentration was Victory\'s first offering as a syndicator on his own. G-T produced the show, but Victory commissioned the production.


 

[TLEberle]

I wish I could claim to be this clever but if the rebuses had to be excised from the game I would take a page from Survivor\'s reward challenge:

The thirty squares have prizes, wild cards and whatever extra geegaws the producers want. Upon making a match the contestant chooses to take the prize or the point value attached to the prize (I envision this as one-, two-, or three-stars, it could easily be anything you desire). The player who reaches the finish line on her turn wins the game, everything in her column and gets to play again. If players play out the entire board whoever has more points wins the game.

[Jamey Greek]

  March 23, 1973. That was the date the rebuses came to an end for a while

 

  After over 3,700 episodes, NBC aired the last episode of Concentration. It went through three regular hosts - Hugh Downs, Bob Clayton and Ed McMahon. The show\'s final rebus was YOU\'VE BEEN MORE THAN KIND, which was a thank you from Norm Blumenthal et al to its fans. As the show ended, Auld Lang Syne was played (it was also played at the end of the last Howdy Doody Show in 1960). The show held the record for the longest run by a daytime game show until The Price Is Right broke the record (and then some) in 1987. In addition, Concentration had two runs on NBC primetime: in 1958 (with co-creator Jack Barry) and 1961 (with Downs after Barry was banished from TV after the scandals).

 

  Concentration would later return in the form of the 1970s syndicated show and the 1987-1991 Alex Trebek-hosted Classic Concentration (plus a 1985 pilot). 

 

  Personally, I was hoping that Concentration would return in 2008 for the show\'s 50th anniversary. When that didn\'t happen, I thought that it would be back in 2009 so it could join TPIR and TTTT as the shows that have appeared in new episodes in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s.

 

  With NBC in FIFTH place in primetime, maybe the execs can roll the proverbial dice and bring Concentration back, but with many people unfamiliar with rebuses, will we ever see two contestants trying to solve them again? Or will we see some other type of puzzle in its place?

 

   Brian

 

Concentration almost came back in 2000 but Jeff Zucker and co. picked a third hour of the Today Show

[NickintheATL]

Concentration almost came back in 2000 but Jeff Zucker and co. picked a third hour of the Today Show

 

I\'m sorry, but what\'s your source for this?