Article: "8 Game Shows That Were Devastatingly Bad"

[Twentington]

I cannot stand Dating Game or Newlywed Game, but I can recognize whatever cultural impact they had, either in longevity or in being the progenitor of the long form dating-reality format.

Not to mention the "70's kitsch" department. Exact reason I can't stomach the Barris shows.

And yeah, that is a hastily researched list. Scrabble was the exact moment I lost all cred in this list.

[whewfan]

Scrabble?!!! REALLY?! The original Scrabble had a nice run, the revival of the show... not so much, because of the lower stakes involved, and I personally wasn't a fan of the new music. The set was okay.

With Yahtzee, it wasn't just that the dice rolling was a bit dull (although they DID make it a bit TOO easy to potentially get a Yahtzee, which is why the show went bankrupt) but the question writing was trying to be Match Game, and they didn't even come CLOSE. The questions had too many possible answers for a lot of matches.

[TLEberle]

Scrabble?!!!

I don't know about anyone else but I'm reminded of the guy who went bonkers over the WB mascot, and not in a good way. (Protip: you only need one punctuation mark to convey your point.)

With Yahtzee, it wasn't just that the dice rolling was a bit dull (although they DID make it a bit TOO easy to potentially get a Yahtzee, which is why the show went bankrupt)

Double fisted Shenanigans, Officer Barbrady.

[whewfan]

Yeah, that was particularly badly chosen phrasing. Especially considering High Rollers made four separate series out of it (2 network, 2 syndicated).

So they obviously must've been doing something right, no? Especially considering that no High Rollers series made it to three years. (Always found that strange for some reason)

High Rollers also had very well written questions and a fast pace. Trebek's High Rollers could've had a longer run, Wink's version was enjoyable too, but some of the mini games took too much time to play.

[TLEberle]

but some of the mini games took too much time to play.

Such as?

[Mike Tennant]

High Rollers also had very well written questions

Well, not every version did: http://userdata.acd.net/ottinger/gshghp/Inside/High.html

[PYLdude]

High Rollers also had very well written questions

Well, not every version did: http://userdata.acd.net/ottinger/gshghp/Inside/High.html

Yeah, who the hell wrote those?

[The Ol' Guy]

You gotta figure that any piece like this is 99% opinion, because often these writers are either too young or not willing to do some research on shows that were truly disasters. And by that, we could possibly all agree that any show that lasted less than 13 weeks daytime or less than 5 or 10 shows in prime time truly fit the term disaster, such as Back That Fact or 100 Grand. If the writer is not using time frames as a criteria, it boils down to shows he thought were bad...and all of us have our own lists of those, which would probably make for a more entertaining article than this one.