Game Show Fans 50 Greatest - Results

[beatlefreak84]

I'll be brave and admit that I put both Survivor and Amazing Race on my list.  I ranked the former fairly high (it was in my top 20), but the latter was near the bottom of my list.  These were the only two "reality" game shows I had on my list.

Although I know these shows fall in that "gray" area of what many might consider a game show, I've always looked at both as game shows because the focus of each show is on the game, not the voyeuristic stuff.  It is possible to win each game solely by being good at challenges (look at physics teacher Bob from a few years ago) and not just with backstabbing and conniving.  This is in contrast to a show like Big Brother, which, although is a show I greatly enjoy, focuses way more on the social conflicts and relationships between players and not as much on the game.  This is also a reason why I didn't put Love Connection on my list.

Even Jeff Probst, in an article I remember reading about a decade ago, called Survivor basically a game show played on an island and strongly disagreeing with it being called a "reality show".

The fact that Survivor has been on the air consistently for well over a decade, still pulls fairly decent ratings, and, at its heart, is a very enjoyable game to watch being played is why I ranked it so high.

Just FYI, my definition of a game show has always been a television show consisting of contestants playing a game for some sort of prize.  But, the focus of the show must be on the game and shouldn't just be a reality show with a game element (e.g., The Bachelor), and it should be a game that (most) anyone could audition for, and be cast to play.

I'm sure people will poke holes in that definition, but that's why, according to that definition, I put these shows on my list.  YMMV, of course.

Anthony

[TLEberle]

Thank you for revealing yourself and for sharing your reasoning. I agree some places, disagree others, but there y'are. If it's mine to do, I order them Survivor > The Mole > The Race > Big Brother.

[Matt Ottinger]

I'm also curious about people's reasoning for counting (or not counting) The Amazing Race and Survivor as game shows.

I really wish we were civilized enough to accept that there's really not a fight to pick.  I have personal reasons why I wouldn't consider Survivor and Race game shows, and that's clearly the majority opinion around here.  But if you want to think they are game shows, I don't think you're committing a sin against nature.  And if you've decided they are game shows, it also seems perfectly logical to consider either one of them to be the best of what the (broader) genre has to offer.  Again, most of us don't feel that way, which is why they end up being ranked so low on the overall list.  That's precisely the point of the exercise.

[PYLdude]

But here's the problem. You had quite the shitstorm stirred over this same discussion ten years ago. As in it drifted past the mere point of simply criticizing his choice and devolved into personal attacks.

[Kevin Prather]

I'll just throw a devil's advocate out there. I'd rather call shows like Survivor and Big Brother game shows than reality television, because their premises couldn't be farther from reality, in my opinion.

[Unrealtor]

I'm also curious about people's reasoning for counting (or not counting) The Amazing Race and Survivor as game shows.

I really wish we were civilized enough to accept that there's really not a fight to pick.  I have personal reasons why I wouldn't consider Survivor and Race game shows, and that's clearly the majority opinion around here.  But if you want to think they are game shows, I don't think you're committing a sin against nature.  And if you've decided they are game shows, it also seems perfectly logical to consider either one of them to be the best of what the (broader) genre has to offer.  Again, most of us don't feel that way, which is why they end up being ranked so low on the overall list.  That's precisely the point of the exercise.

I wish we were all civilized enough to not accuse other people of being uncivilized and trying to pick fights when they simply don't remember that it turned nasty the last time the discussion was had. If that's the case, then I'm fine with avoiding having it again. I was genuinely curious as to why some say they are game shows and some say they aren't, and all I remember of the last 50 Greatest was "that was a thing we did once," and I haven't made an effort to review it.

[parliboy]

Let's all agree to stand down on civilization.  We're all trying to be civilized, and we're so unused to it that it feels kinda weird. Nobody is trying to make it personal about anybody else.

As for myself, I don't want to approach it from the perspective of arguing whether a given show is a game show.  That die was cast by the pollsters by allowing the votes to be accepted, and so no take-backsies.  Besides, there were other votes cast besides the first-place votes, so that discussion would be very counter-productive.

I do, however, wonder why someone believes that those shows are the two that are the best shows of the genre.  What makes them special?  Is it the longetivity?  Is it the locale?  Is it the production quality?  Is it the gameplay?  Is it the proverbial "million damn dollars"?

I do hope against hope that our most contrarian voters will reveal themselves, if only to have the discussions from an academic perspective. I also understand why they might view the general tone of the place and nope the hell out of that idea.

[Clay Zambo]

Speaking of

...Power of Ten...

...have y'all heard the fascinating Planet Money podcast with its head writer and EP?

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/07/27/487654380/episode-714-can-a-game-show-lose

[JasonA1]

Another show I"m surprised to see drop is Truth or Consequences.  I had it in the 30s.  I fondly remember the syndicated version in the early '70s and I thought its long run would pull it into the top 50.

I've tried to watch Truth of Consequences, and I get the sense it's a product of its time. I think it was popular because it was something the TV audience wanted back then. Other shows did what they did - House Party, Candid Camera, This is Your Life, etc. - so I never got the feeling while watching it that it left a great legacy to TV, it was just part of a trend. ToC gets remembered in mainstream game show lists & articles because it had a history, but not because it was a wonderful show, IMO. For fans at large in a vote like this, who seem to value good competition, it has trouble finding a spot.

I also had Celebrity Sweepstakes on my list, but with only two episodes of it around most of the series is just hazy memories at this point, so I can see why it wouldn't make it.

Celebrity Sweepstakes is another one that fell off my list deliberately. I've been lucky enough to see more episodes of this lately (for instance, there was that documentary on comedian Billy Braver made recently, and the full episodes surfaced with some people in LA). In many of the shows I watched, the audience seems stuck on one celebrity as the longshot, and the contestants keep betting on that one star. One contestant inevitably makes a windfall, while the other keeps using them to catch up. The effect is one star out of six doing much of the talking (90% of the time with no attempt at a zinger) while the scores end up something like $1,080 to $8. I did enjoy episodes where the answers were verbal, because they moved faster, but I didn't get enough of those before the ballot to say it deserved a top 50 spot again.

One show I had ranked quite high is Break the Bank, and it's slightly disappointing to see it drop so far this time around.  As Matt said last time - this was "the one that got away".  The show had high ratings during its network run but was cancelled in favor of the network expanding the soap operas to 45 minutes.  It probably should have had a much longer run than the 15 weeks it got.

I forgot to check into this show once I got access to ratings data, and your comment piqued my interest. For starters, we're talking about 2:30 PM, when CBS had on Edge of Night and NBC had Doctors. Before Break the Bank, ABC had a number of shows try to go against the soaps. Big Showdown largely had trouble keeping up with its competition. Edge of Night began losing viewers around the time Rhyme & Reason took 2:30 on ABC. Rhyme won the time slot for its first 8 weeks on the air, then lost to Doctors for the next 8. Eventually, CBS puts Guiding Light on at 2:30 instead, while expanding As the World Turns to an hour. Both moves help CBS.

The Neighbors took Rhyme & Reason's place and went neck & neck with Doctors - but both shows lost to Guiding Light. Break the Bank comes on and averages a loss to both shows over the first 9 weeks of its run (pulling a 26 share to the soaps' 32 & 27). Then, Break the Bank starts to gain ground over Doctors. On July 12, Hot Seat and Family Feud premiere. Two weeks later, with Break the Bank still losing to Guiding Light, but now beating Doctors more decisively (29 share to 25), One Life to Life expands as you said, and Bank goes bye-bye.

Barring any notable exceptions I'm forgetting, these are the days when a network ordered a show and kept it on for the length of the deal. So while history shows Hot Seat would have been the better show to bounce off the schedule, I think it was a matter of bad timing for Break the Bank.

That said, with regards to the top 50, I couldn't pick Break the Bank as a candidate for "greatest." Points for its cool music, set & game mechanics, but minus many for entertainment. Hollywood Squares wasn't a wall-to-wall house of fire for comedy even in its heyday, but Break the Bank struggled to get even one memorable zinger per show. The shows without the forfeit-the-box-automatically rules are hard to watch.

As for Go, I agreed with Clay - I like the game mechanic, but Go itself was not a good enough show to merit a rank from me this time around.

-Jason

[calliaume]

I forgot to check into this show once I got access to ratings data, and your comment piqued my interest. For starters, we're talking about 2:30 PM, when CBS had on Edge of Night and NBC had Doctors. Before Break the Bank, ABC had a number of shows try to go against the soaps. Big Showdown largely had trouble keeping up with its competition. Edge of Night began losing viewers around the time Rhyme & Reason took 2:30 on ABC. Rhyme won the time slot for its first 8 weeks on the air, then lost to Doctors for the next 8. Eventually, CBS puts Guiding Light on at 2:30 instead, while expanding As the World Turns to an hour. Both moves help CBS.

The Neighbors took Rhyme & Reason's place and went neck & neck with Doctors - but both shows lost to Guiding Light. Break the Bank comes on and averages a loss to both shows over the first 9 weeks of its run (pulling a 26 share to the soaps' 32 & 27). Then, Break the Bank starts to gain ground over Doctors. On July 12, Hot Seat and Family Feud premiere. Two weeks later, with Break the Bank still losing to Guiding Light, but now beating Doctors more decisively (29 share to 25), One Life to Life expands as you said, and Bank goes bye-bye.

I'm glad someone finally looked the ratings information up.  I'd always assumed that the "it was third in the ratings in 1975-76" stat was through EoTVGS, which was fine except that season ended five weeks after Break the Bank premiered.  This makes a little more sense.

In any case, as someone who actually watched the show regularly during its run, I can say on my behalf that, yes, I was definitely sucked in by the theme and cool set.  As a 13-year-old, I thought the game itself was derivative of Hollywood Squares, but it was an okay way to pass a half hour.  I was properly disappointed when it was cancelled, and thrilled when it came back - although it obviously didn't make much headway in the New York market (6 PM Saturday nights on the then-independent WNEW), and Barry's version of the show just didn't do it for me.  When I finally got around to watching a few episodes on GSN and YouTube, I realized why -- there are only so many ways you can have two stars give two different answers to the same question without the second one sounding insincere, stupid, or peevish.  It also didn't have the humor of Squares -- there really weren't any zingers.  I think the show got a raw deal on ABC, but I'm not sure how long it would have lasted even if one of the other networks had picked it up.

[jjman920]

I'll just throw a devil's advocate out there. I'd rather call shows like Survivor and Big Brother game shows than reality television, because their premises couldn't be farther from reality, in my opinion.

To be fair, the premise of most reality television is far from reality.

I don't think it's that big of a deal to consider Survivor or Amazing Race game shows. They are competitions played for a grand prize and are perhaps less scripted than some of the fare that populates Bravo and E. To rank them higher than some of the classics that defined the genre is hard for me to swallow. Perhaps it's the traditionalist in me, but some of the studio games that build just as much or more excitement while allowing me to play along score so much better for me. I didn't put either of those shows on my list because the ones I have on my list I have enjoyed more than either of them, however if I did do a full 100, they would've been included.

I'll also spill that my #50 game not listed here was Whose Line Is It Anyway? An improv show built around a fake game doesn't sound like much of a game show to me, but I felt that they were playing for the prize of who had the funniest idea in that moment to get the most laughs. I view the show that way every time I watch, in addition to laughing to those jokes they make.

[BrandonFG]

I didn't include either one...I remember this causing more of a [poop]storm on ATGS, but I digress. For the life of me, I don't know why it caused such caustic arguments, but it did. Yes, there is a gray area, but Survivor and Amazing Race do offer mini games as part of the competition. That's not making me rush to compare it to TPiR, but I could at least understand the argument on why they deserve inclusion. It's similar to what Jefferson Graham said about Love Connection when he wrote Come on Down: "It's not a game show, but everyone thinks it is..."

IIRC, part of the reason this caused such a debate is because it wasn't a traditional in-studio show ("shiny floor" shows, as GSN tried to call them). If that's the case, then Diamond Head Game shouldn't be considered a game show either.

TL; DR: call it what you want. Your answer is technically not wrong whether you consider it a game show or reality show.

[CoreyArcher]

I do, however, wonder why someone believes that those shows are the two that are the best shows of the genre.  What makes them special?  Is it the longetivity?  Is it the locale?  Is it the production quality?  Is it the gameplay?  Is it the proverbial "million damn dollars"?

I personally don't consider Survivor or The Amazing Race to be game shows (something like "reality competition" seems more appropriate), but, if I did, I could see myself considering Survivor for a top 10 ranking on the 50 greatest list. At its best, Survivor is a pretty fascinating little microcosm of everything that is wrong with the way people relate to each other. On the other hand, I never found The Amazing Race remotely interesting.

[TLEberle]

TL; DR: call it what you want. Your answer is technically not wrong whether you consider it a game show or reality show.

Vigorous co-sign. I have way more important things in my life to be worried about than where in the Venn diagram of TV a particular show falls, and if someone here wants to be belligerent in throwing his or her (aw, let's be real fair, it's a he) that's his dime and we can adjust our opinion accordingly. I do take umbrage with the "perhaps less scripted" line, but I can have that conversation with JJ. I'd rather hear why you think that a show is good, bad or indifferent than what category it fits.

[Jimmy Owen]

Used to be that if it had an announcer and fee plugs, it was a game show.    "The Talk" will often have knockoffs of game shows, but no one would consider it a game show.  If the show calls itself a game show, it's a game show.