What if Match Game didn't leave its timeslot in 1977?

[TLEberle]

And it was given an answer, as legit [sic] as it might be. (in my case, not very.)

[Ian Wallis]

 

 When MG moved back to afternoon, a good number of stations didn\'t clear it anymore.

 

That\'s true.  It moved from 3:30 to 11AM in Nov 1977.  When CBS quickly decided it wasn\'t working in that time slot, they moved it back to the afternoons in Dec, but to 4 PM.  Many stations aired syndicated programming at that time and tape-delayed the show until the next morning (the 9:30 time slot was a popular one for tape-delayed shows).  Since Match Game was a hit with the after-school crowd, this audience was no longer available on those stations.  Still, the show ran four and a half more years (a year and a half on CBS, plus three years syndicated).

 

I\'m not sure they could have got very much more out of it - it kind of ran its course by 1982.

[BrandonFG]

Did they ever recycle or modify questions on the syndicated version?

[whewfan]

Yes, they recycled questions quite a bit in the syndie version, something Roger commented was one thing that was killing the show. On the syndie version, one thing they eliminated were the questions leading to the answers \"tinkle\" and \"boobs\". While those types of questions weren\'t THAT frequent, I\'m sure the panel was tired of those sort of questions, much less the audience.

[aaron sica]

some soap opera expanding to an hour probably would have knocked it off anyway, morning or afternoon

 

Yes. The 3:30-4:00 timeslot, after MG, was occupied by reruns of \"All in the Family\", then \"M*A*S*H\", then \"One Day at a Time\", until Y&R expanded, then GL filled 3:00-4:00. It\'s possible \"Match Game \'80\" would have kept the slot until then, and then died a slow death after.