Help Needed on 80s Syndicated Shows

[Matt Ottinger]

A researcher friend is working on a massive project, and part of that project is learning as much as he can about the guest lists from a variety of fairly obscure 80s shows.  So naturally, he's asked me to turn here for help.

He specifically wants to know which cities' TV Guides might have listed the celebs for the '80s syndicated shows below. Feel free to share any information you have, and if you have a lot and would rather send the info to me, I'm at ottinger60@gmail.com

3rd Degree
The Last Word
The New Liar's Club
Relatively Speaking
Sweethearts
Take My Word For It
Triple Threat
Win, Lose or Draw
Yahtzee

[Robair]

That could be a real toughie. These shows were all from an era when TV Guide was transitioning from a full-service listings mag to a grid format. Not helping matters any were the facts that TVG had to print a VCR-Plus code for every danged show, and you had no real "set-top guide" built into your cable; and that there were also so many channels TVG had to track. And this was before the rise of the subchannels.

New York-Metro never ran synopses for anything non-network from 6AM to about 6PM or so in the late 80's, but those of you who do have TVGs from that era, check 'em out. Ya never know.

[ivoryman1986]

Of all the shows you listed Matt, the only one that you'll have an easier time to ID the weekly celebrity guests is Win, Lose or Draw, there is a week or 2 of the first season of Win, Lose or Draw that GSN didn't rerun as they went ahead to rerunning all 3 WDW weeks, including on the week where the host getting soaked from falling down the boat in the opening. I wonder who the guests were on that WDW week.

[Blanquepage]

Take My Word For It

I would definitely start with San Francisco.

[aaron sica]

3rd Degree
Win, Lose or Draw

I can help with these two, at least. WLYH-15 (found in the Southeast PA Edition and Central PA editions) carried 3rd Degree at 7pm, so there should be some celeb listings for that.

WCAU-10 from Philadelphia and WNEP-16 in Scranton both ran Win, Lose or Draw sometime during 7pm-8pm hour from 1987-88 (WNEP at least through the beginning of the 1989-90 season), so you should be able to find celeb listings there. 10 can be found in both editions I mentioned above plus Philadelphia Edition, with WNEP-16 able to be found in at least Central PA, PA/NY, and Johnstown-Altoona.

[BrandonFG]

I have a few 1986-87 TV Guides from the Dallas/Fort Worth market. The Win, Lose, or Draw entries didn't mention guests, while other shows like Pyramid did, and there's even a synopsis for the Lingo premiere. Was there a rhyme or reason to which shows TVG would've listed celebrities for, or would that have come from the show producers?

[Ian Wallis]

I think I know who may have asked for this!

I have TVGuides from many different areas from the time frame of most of those shows.  Part of the problem (as others have mentioned) is that many of those shows weren't seen in a large number of markets, and for most of the ones that were, TVGuide didn't list the celebrities.

Win, Lose or Draw should be fairly easy to obtain though.  I have a handful of NYMetro and LAMetro editions that list celebrities for it.  There's also a station in the Tampa-Sarasota edition (Ch. 32 in Lakeland) that carried it in 88-89, and celebrities are listed for it, in the edition I have anyway.

Triple Threat was a rare (for the late '80s) once-weekly syndicated show.  It was usually seen on weekend afternoons.  I've never seen celebrities listed for it in any edition I have.

TVGuide in the '80s wasn't like it was in the '70s

[Ian Wallis]

I have a few 1986-87 TV Guides from the Dallas/Fort Worth market. The Win, Lose, or Draw entries didn't mention guests, while other shows like Pyramid did, and there's even a synopsis for the Lingo premiere. Was there a rhyme or reason to which shows TVG would've listed celebrities for, or would that have come from the show producers?

I think a lot if it had to do with the time of day it was on.  By the later '80s, TVGuide had a policy where any syndicated show that aired before 4PM, no synopsis was given (I guess this was to save space as the number of stations and cable networks increased).  I remember looking at some old issues previously, and I have several where some of the shows are listed, but no celebrities are because it aired in the early morning or early afternoon.  For any city that aired any of these shows between 7-8 PM, the odds are much better that celebrities would be listed.

[BrandonFG]

That makes perfect sense. Thank you.