Vintage game show books on archive.org

[TLEberle]

My surprised face— :|

[SuperMatch93]

Bumping this to add another book I found on here the other day: Millionaire Moments by Chris Tarrant.

Here's something he mentioned about the case of money in front of the Hot Seat which I never knew:

In those days we had a glass case right at the front of the set, containing £1,000,000, to remind everybody, by its sheer bulk, of just how large an amount of money this was. I was always worried about the moment of opening the case to hand over the money because, although we’d practised it numerous times in rehearsals, it always seemed to me that there was every chance the money would go flying all over the place. Imagine the shambles; there could even have been a stampede among the audience, stuffing tenners down the front of their trousers and doing a runner. If I was in the audience I’m sure that’s what I’d have done. In fact after the second series we dropped this idea altogether and settled for just writing out a cheque for £1,000,000 to anyone clever enough to give me fifteen correct answers.

[Kniwt]

It's not archive.org, but from worldradiohistory.com comes the 1997 Encyclopedia of Daytime Television. Not exclusively game shows, but everything I tried looking for is in there.

Noticed a couple factual errors, not unusual for a pre-internet work of this nature. The biggest one seems to be assuming that Sajak's "Press Your Luck" pilot was related to real PYL.

https://worldradiohistory.com/BOOKSHELF-ARH/History/Encyclopedia-of-Daytime-Television-Hyatt-1997.pdf

[Casey Buck]

Pardon the bump, but TV Game Shows by Maxine Fabe (1979) just got added last week!

[SuperMatch93]

Pardon the bump, but TV Game Shows by Maxine Fabe (1979) just got added last week!

Nice! I've wanted to read this for years.

Anyone know what game Fabe referred to when she said "Extra Digit?" It's probably something really obvious, but it's not coming to me.

[Mike Tennant]

Anyone know what game Fabe referred to when she said "Extra Digit?" It's probably something really obvious, but it's not coming to me.

The first thing that came to my mind was Squeeze Play, but I see it's also on the list.

[Kniwt]

Pardon the bump, but TV Game Shows by Maxine Fabe (1979) just got added last week!

Harumph, there goes the resale value of the copy I bought for 99 cents at Waldenbooks (!) In 1981.

[BillCullen1]

Anyone know what game Fabe referred to when she said "Extra Digit?" It's probably something really obvious, but it's not coming to me.

The first thing that came to my mind was Squeeze Play, but I see it's also on the list.

My guess would have been Double Digits, but that game was long gone by then. Maybe Professor Price but I highly doubt it.

[tvmitch]

On page 38, she mentions that Battlestars contestants received $800 worth of parting gifts. Having wondered the actual amount of these gifts, was that the norm for most shows of that era? Most credit rolls I remember seeing offered the Lee Press-On nails, Ragu spaghetti sauce and pizza mix, and the Hawaiian Tropic towel.

It probably depends on the show. Just as an example, I remember Whew! parting gifts to be some pretty hefty stuff. Plus, there's the possibility of returning champs accumulating parting gifts; do I need (an excuse) to break out the Bob Harris video again?

Many of the Whew! parting gifts we've seen so far would have been top-level Head Start prizes on Narz Concentration.

[BrandonFG]

On page 38, she mentions that Battlestars contestants received $800 worth of parting gifts. Having wondered the actual amount of these gifts, was that the norm for most shows of that era? Most credit rolls I remember seeing offered the Lee Press-On nails, Ragu spaghetti sauce and pizza mix, and the Hawaiian Tropic towel.

It probably depends on the show. Just as an example, I remember Whew! parting gifts to be some pretty hefty stuff. Plus, there's the possibility of returning champs accumulating parting gifts; do I need (an excuse) to break out the Bob Harris video again?

Many of the Whew! parting gifts we've seen so far would have been top-level Head Start prizes on Narz Concentration.

I’ve noticed that too watching Buzzr. Very nice consolation prizes for your time.

[tpirfan28]

Anyone know what game Fabe referred to when she said "Extra Digit?" It's probably something really obvious, but it's not coming to me.

The only games of note potentially missing from the list would be Shower Game and Telephone Game based on dates, but neither of them involve a extra digit.

[Adam Nedeff]

TOTAL GUESS, just to be clear: The TPIR staff used to submit a memo to CBS every time they were about to unveil a new pricing game, I've seen some of these memos. They'd be submitted to the network before they had fully locked down the name. ("Now...and Then" was originally called "Inflation".)

Since you couldn't just go to Price is Right Fan Wiki in the 1970s, she had to obtain a list from somewhere, and she may have asked a show for such a list, and the show just went through their stack of files and thoughtlessly punched out a list of names for her from the old memos. "Extra Digit" might just be Squeeze Play's original name before they noticed how the mechanism looked.

[SuperMatch93]

TOTAL GUESS, just to be clear: The TPIR staff used to submit a memo to CBS every time they were about to unveil a new pricing game, I've seen some of these memos. They'd be submitted to the network before they had fully locked down the name. ("Now...and Then" was originally called "Inflation".)

Since you couldn't just go to Price is Right Fan Wiki in the 1970s, she had to obtain a list from somewhere, and she may have asked a show for such a list, and the show just went through their stack of files and thoughtlessly punched out a list of names for her from the old memos. "Extra Digit" might just be Squeeze Play's original name before they noticed how the mechanism looked.

That sounds plausible. I've seen one of those memos, which listed "Pick-A-Pair" as an alternate name for Take Two.

[Fedya]

It's Optional wasn't played for cars at the time?

[calliaume]

We can also consider the possibility she was just plain wrong.