Game Show Fans 50 Greatest - Results

[clemon79]

And if that happens, Jeopardy wins. All the Price and Wheel fans vote J! #2, and all the J! fans and trivia folks give the A&Q game the #1, and it's no contest.

Except this assumes that the J! fans don't throw #2s and #3s at Price and WoF. I still think it skews the top of the poll HEAVILY towards "who can mobilize their community the best?" But then I don't care about who wins the NIT, either.

but don't participate here because they're, well, an asshole

I'm an asshole. What's your point?

Purely as a thought exercise, I'm utterly fascinated by what would happen to the list as the scope of voting expands beyond the slowly shrinking walled garden of the Game Show Forum née alt.tv.game-shows

In a utopia, yes, I agree that this would be an interesting exercise if you could get the sample size big enough to offset the obsessed.

[JasonA1]

on show-specific boards like Golden Road and J! Board and Buy a Vowel.

Problem here is that unless you get a sufficiently large sample size (and you won't; there just aren't enough of us), you have now guaranteed that these three shows are the top 3.

I would co-sign on this. Even if those fans are fans of game shows in general, if they only found out about the poll on a community devoted to one show, as opposed to here, there's a high chance they'd vote disproportionately high for those shows. When Golden-Road did their arm of the best pricing games ever list, I doubt they wanted our votes folded in, because as game show fans first and not Price fans first, we'd vote for more "mainstream" games vs. their community. (Which goes into my next point....)

Know what I'd really, genuinely love to see: Throw open greatness voting.  Game show fans on Facebook, on Reddit (...)  And if they can't think of fifty, then let them do twenty or twenty five.   I'm genuinely interested to see what a greatest/favorite list looks like when left immune to twenty years of feedback loop and to folks who maybe don't have the entire history of the genre on VHS/DVD/HD.

I guess, but I thought the whole point of our exercise was to see what game show fans (particularly on this board) thought the best 50 were, as opposed to the unwashed masses/TV Guide writers who haven't seen much beyond Wheel, Jeopardy, et al. I think it would be interesting to a point, but I wouldn't want to do such a poll at the expense of this exercise - perhaps in addition to. It's like asking Star Wars fans to rank the movies in the series, but then folding in votes from people who don't know what an Ewok is. I would first be more interested in increasing the number of people on this board who participate before we get (for lack of a better term) less informed opinions in the mix. To build off from another quote you made re: Bullseye, this list interests me because the average voter is somebody who knows what both versions of Wipeout are.

I'm more imagining a scenario where you have the Chris Lemon and Matt Ottinger and Chelsea Thrasher votes next to the votes of all of my LLama friends, next to votes of my friend from work who has a DVR timer for Match Game and watches it in binges, next to the votes of people who do passionately love and know about the genre, but don't participate here because they're, well, an asshole - next to the vote of, say, a Bob Boden or Aaron Solomon type who's in the industry, but is at best only loosely tied to this segment of the fandom in 2016 and who obviously has other things going on in his life.

I'm surprised we only had 48 ballots, because I actively campaigned people in real life & in different (but still general) game show venues online. I know I had a hand in getting about 4-5 additional people to submit.

My top fifty included both Gong Show and Love Connection (...) Plus a series whose most famous run was outright rigged in Twenty One, a comedy vehicle for Groucho Marx (You Bet Your Life), and quite a few shows to have their first runs after 1995 (Debt, 5th Grader, Cash Cab, The Chase, the two reality competitions I'd intended to include but accidentally drafted out, Deal or No Deal, etc).   The same list where I omitted forum favorite Whew - a very fun game whose evangelism for the show stops and starts within this community and that ultimately I get frustrated when I think about the format of. Blocking is at *such* a disproportionate advantage, and adding celebrities to the mix was not a good thing - almost never is.

I had Gong Show pretty high on my list. In contrast to most of you, though, I had trouble finishing mine because I started reading back "greatest" in my head. I didn't want to fill it out with shows I merely liked, I wanted them to have some kind of value. For example, I liked Debt well enough, but was something that derivative worth being considered "greatest?" That line of thought was the impetus for my putting College Bowl in. Yeah, I'd never really watch College Bowl on my own, but it did so much for young people (as I said in the results). I'm not condemning a vote against Whew, but IMO, at least it had something to offer beyond re-skinning familiar devices as the aforementioned Debt and 5th Grader did.

-Jason

[Prizes]

Much as I love Chelsea's idea, aside from the issues of bias from the respective fandoms, is also the overlap. There are a fair share of users like myself, JJ, Chelsea who peruse the various forums with regularity. How would we fix this? One vote per person, perhaps? Even then, we run into Chris' very real problem of the number of people/small sample size.

With specific respect to my page, not sure a whole ton of folks could name 25. Yeah, we've got fans of the genre, but it's because transforming more into a show guide/advice/support page, oftentimes by new members who are awesome folks, but don't care about shows that aired 30 years ago, aside from maybe something PYL. Furthermore, it's more than likely known by these folks the phrase of 'Big bucks/no whammies!' is somewhat colloquial, forget Larson, let alone Randy, Jenny, etc.

Would've voted in this, but found it like 5 hours before closing, and personally needed more time than that. Should be said, despite my page's show, Jeopardy! would be my #1, with Pyramid and Password as a close #2 and #3. After all, like many here, I prefer the genre on the whole to a specific show.

When Golden-Road did their arm of the best pricing games ever list, I doubt they wanted our votes folded in, because as game show fans first and not Price fans first, we'd vote for more "mainstream" games vs. their community.

As someone who admins GR these (yeah, yeah, trying to fix those issues) I honestly really appreciated the input here for voting, just to see what each site looks for, values, in a compare/contrast sort of way for psychoanalysis.  It also let me know how people view the individual games as somewhat mini game shows on their own (this forum) and how they worked within the schema and history of Price (Golden-Road). So long as they're well-supported reasons, it's fascinating to me why people picked what they did.

[Joe Mello]

Call me crazy if you must but I felt the concept of a race against time to prevent everything you could win, as well as yourself, from going off the side of a building to be a fascinating one.

I liked the show because it was CHOCK FULL of content for an hour's time (and I like Jericho, period, and anyone who disagrees is a STUPID IDIOT <clap, clap, clapclapclap>), but having to disclaimer the conveyor belt at the top of every show really ruined the gimmick.

Downfall wasn't on my list, but I'll concede that it was the best in the world at what it did.

[PYLdude]

Not that anybody cares, but the obsessive compulsive proprietor over at a certain blog few people take seriously chimed in on our list and came up with one of his own.

[gromit82]

Know what I'd really, genuinely love to see: Throw open greatness voting.  Game show fans on Facebook, on Reddit, on show-specific boards like Golden Road and J! Board and Buy a Vowel. 

I'd prefer if we could re-open this message board to allow people with legitimate interest in discussing game shows to join. I know why this board was closed to new members, but it would be a mistake to assume that everyone who isn't here, but would like to be, is just a troll who wants to refer to Hot Potato as "hat putato."

[gromit82]

Not that anybody cares, but the obsessive compulsive proprietor over at a certain blog few people take seriously chimed in on our list and came up with one of his own.

Which suggests to me, at least, that there are other people (not necessarily the person you're referring to) who would be interested in joining and participating here.

[TLEberle]

Not that anybody cares, but the obsessive compulsive proprietor over at a certain blog few people take seriously chimed in on our list and came up with one of his own.

1) You're correct.

2) What was his overall champion: I'm Telling, Hollywood Connection, Headline Chasers or Mindreaders?

[PYLdude]

Not that anybody cares, but the obsessive compulsive proprietor over at a certain blog few people take seriously chimed in on our list and came up with one of his own.

1) You're correct.

2) What was his overall champion: I'm Telling, Hollywood Connection, Headline Chasers or Mindreaders?

If I read it correctly, it was 500 Questions.

I'm pretty sure I didn't since his list was difficult to decipher.

[TLEberle]

Of course it was. The actual answer was even better than the joke.

[PYLdude]

Of course it was. The actual answer was even better than the joke.

What was it? I really don't wanna go back there.

[clemon79]

If I read it correctly, it was 500 Questions.

I wonder, if you add up all of the worldwide versions of that show, if even THEN they have asked 500 questions.

[TLEberle]

Of course it was. The actual answer was even better than the joke.

What was it? I really don't wanna go back there.

I'm presuming that it was 500 Questions, because I asked you what the answer was and you said that's what the answer was.

[PYLdude]

Of course it was. The actual answer was even better than the joke.

What was it? I really don't wanna go back there.

I'm presuming that it was 500 Questions, because I asked you what the answer was and you said that's what the answer was.

Oh. I thought you had gone there and found a more discernible copy of his list.

[TLEberle]

Honest to Pete I try to devote as little energy as humanly possible to Casey Abell, may his name be forever blotted out.