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.