Scrabble Announcer Question

[Argo]

Hi Everyone,

Quick question here about the announcing on Scrabble. Was Jay/Charlie live in studio at all, or were their announcements pre-recorded? I've been watching a lot of Scrabble youtubes lately and even the opening spiels (after the home viewer word) sound exactly the same throughout their run or at least multiple episodes. Also, I haven't seen an episode where Chuck interacts with Jay or Charlie either. If the announcer was pre-recorded, was this the case on SotC too? I'm not familiar with the RG productions.



Thanks

[JasonA1]

For at least a good chunk of the run, the only part of the Scrabble intro that was live was the clue itself. Even "It's a 6 letter word, and the clue is..." was pre-recorded, as evidenced by some masters where that's clearly in one channel, and the clue read is in another. But there's a YouTube clip below where a contestant talks about Charlie Tuna, and they cut to him. There's also episodes where Chuck makes light of the prize about to be described, and Charlie reacts directly or laughs. My favorite from the mass posting of Scrabble on YouTube was during some special week, and as Chuck tries to throw it to the prize, Charlie dryly instructs him on the mic to "open the envelope first" for the home viewer tie-in.

It's been covered here before that much of SOTC with Jay Stewart ended up pre-taped because of his condition at the time, with only the Fame Game reads being live.



-Jason

[Chief-O]

Not to mention that Charlie got some brief camera time during the credit roll on the finale---



(at 21:20)

I'd have to think that Charlie (and Jay at $ale?) were still on-site for warm-ups....not to mention those few live reads. I'm not sure how the "Scrabble" intro graphics were produced, but they seem like they'd *have* to have been pre-produced...therefore allowing for Charlie's voice to be "rolled in" along with the graphic.

[danderson]

I was thinking the same thing.

I wonder if they changed that pretaping policy when Don Morrow came in on SOTC. Maybe, but Grundy liked to pretape stuff.

[TimK2003]

I always suspected some pre-recording and/or recycled recording.  Never liked the generic intro out of commercials when Charlie would say "Now back to Chuck Woolery with 'today's winner'.

[Argo]

Awesome. Thanks for the info. I assumed it would have been discussed before. Scrabble and SoTC just seem to have that stale feel to me. Just seemed like something was pretaped if not all of it.

Thanks for the clips too. Probably saw them before but didn't pay too much attention to them before.

Thanks

[Chief-O]

Awesome. Thanks for the info. I assumed it would have been discussed before. Scrabble and SoTC just seem to have that stale feel to me. Just seemed like something was pretaped if not all of it.

Can't speak for "Scrabble", but "$ale" certainly had that "edited"/not live feel. I did notice that prize skits (shopping round/Winners Board) were reused if a specific previously-featured prize was brought back out later on....it wouldn't have made sense for Jay to do live reads each time they rolled in those skits. Same for the main portion of the intro; since it was the same rattle for the whole week, Jay could've just done it once, with the champion intro (and possibly Jim's intro?) being read live. This would be quite similar to how Rod Roddy did his "So You Think You Got Troubles" intros....(go to approx. 7:40)

[Bob Zager]

It's been covered here before that much of SOTC with Jay Stewart ended up pre-taped because of his condition at the time, with only the Fame Game reads being live.

When you say his "condition," was Jay Stewart ailing for some time?  After his SOTC run, he later announced the short-lived Blackout series (preceded by Johnny Gilbert).

[SamJ93]

Stewart had suffered from depression for some time, exacerbated by both his daughter's suicide in 1981 and his chronic back pain (which he claimed had developed due to hauling heavy trays down stairs for many years on Let's Make A Deal).

[Win a Pile]

What I remember from having been in both shows' audiences:

Scrabble: Charlie was there doing the warm up and read the contestant intros & prize plugs live. Most of the opening, but not all, was pre-taped.

Sale: The first part of the opening was pre-taped. The only part Don Morrow did live was the Perry intro and you can tell it varies from day-to-day if you listen closely. I would guess, early in the show's run, Jay did the opening live as the prize bargains seemed to vary each day. Don did his own warm-up which was, to be nice, not his specialty.

[danderson]

For some reason, I've always liked the way Don Morrow did the Reg Grundy spiel, better than Charlie Tuna. I'm not saying that Jay Stewart did the Grundy spiel better, but maybe that's my preference