Match Game-Hollywood Squares - Why two hosts?

[Sodboy13]

Match-Up. Always pick A and hope the celeb catches on.

Maybe I'm not remembering correctly (it's really early for me as I type this) but I thought I had heard that the order that the celeb heard wasn't always the order the contestant had on the screen (ie. their order was continually shuffling).  Can anyone confirm this?
Ryan.

This is also what I've heard over the years, though I can't point to a solid confirmation of it offhand.

[Neumms]

I wonder what was the impetus for bumping the Audience Match runner -up awards to 200 and 300.

If the player got skunked, did they give them $100 so they could play the Head-to-Head?

[TLEberle]

No. The wheel would start with $500 or $1,000 as a base value.

[parliboy]

If the player got skunked, did they give them $100 so they could play the Head-to-Head?

[JasonA1]

Match-Up. Always pick A and hope the celeb catches on.

Maybe I'm not remembering correctly (it's really early for me as I type this) but I thought I had heard that the order that the celeb heard wasn't always the order the contestant had on the screen (ie. their order was continually shuffling).

The Match Game '90 bible said the order was "sometimes" shuffled for the contestant. (It also said the choices weren't displayed until Ross finished the question, which helped explain the pacing of that round.) It was suggested here a contestant could still pick the choice that was alphabetically first, and game the system, but the chances of that becoming a known/repeated behavior would be slim IMO.

-Jason

[PYLdude]

I wonder what was the impetus for bumping the Audience Match runner -up awards to 200 and 300.

My hunch: the new amounts made it so a spin of a Double always did you better than winning 10x of the prize just above it.

-Jason

Makes sense; numbers are random, sure, but all the same with the lucky spin you could win up to six large as opposed to a straight five large without it.

MG90 was my first exposure to Match Game, and I quite enjoyed it. I still quite enjoy it. And I have no issue with it being played for cash. Don’t get me wrong, I think the race to 6 format works as well, but call me crazy, I always felt that the idea of each match having payoffs and each panel member playing in both rounds was better for the gameplay.

Far as Match-Up went, I have said I liked it as a new little wrinkle in the game and I still feel that way. And having it as the thing that decides the game as opposed to the luck of the draw that the question choice was makes things a little more interesting. I don’t know if you really need to have two, considering how short the first one is, but it’s something that I would enjoy seeing if it was brought back to the show in some form.

[Otm Shank]

Sorry to now add a tangent to a tangent, but in that episode linked above, they had a midweek replacement celebrity for some reason. And since the intro is preproduced, they announced the original celebrity and not the replacement. EDIT: Ah, nevermind. She was in character.

Then, there was a slight edit on the second question of the first round where the celebrity's card was already revealed (apparently something-not-for-daytime was said in the buildup).

Then in the round 2 matches, probably the then-record-setting triple "OOPS!" I watched a lot of this version since my schedule allowed, and I only remember seeing a censored answer once.

Not to mention the fact that they should have thrown out the H2H match, on account of a homophone. Ross never spelled out the word so that it was unambiguous.

And there was a dog on the set? This was definitely a weird one.

[aaron sica]

MG90 was my first exposure to Match Game, and I quite enjoyed it. I still quite enjoy it

Same, although with both ABC stations we had electing to have news at noon and not bothering to reschedule/cast off to another station, viewing of it was far and few. How I wish I would have saved it, but I had someone fill a tape with the first 6 episodes (original airing w/ commercials). Some very generous soul has uploaded practically the entire run to YouTube; it's on my to-do list to binge.

[Bryce L.]

MG90 was my first exposure to Match Game, and I quite enjoyed it. I still quite enjoy it

Same, although with both ABC stations we had electing to have news at noon and not bothering to reschedule/cast off to another station, viewing of it was far and few. How I wish I would have saved it, but I had someone fill a tape with the first 6 episodes (original airing w/ commercials). Some very generous soul has uploaded practically the entire run to YouTube; it's on my to-do list to binge.

I'm amazed said soul hasn't gotten C&D'd; he's got every circulating episode of the 1973-1982 era, and is filling out MGHS now.

[wdm1219inpenna]

Watching MG/HS Hour, you wonder if Jon had ever watched an episode of the Match Game or Hollywood Squares before, or ever realized what made those shows successful. These are supposed to be funny games. And the sort of humor was not the rather tame wordplay and puns that Jon tries to do on every single episode.

If they had to have two hosts for this show, the least they could have done was find someone who had a similar sense of humor to Gene's, to at least make the show flow a little better tone-wise.

I don't know if Jon ever watched a Match Game episode, but he did appear as a panelist as "Bowzer".  In fact Buzzr had an episode of Match Game just today with him occupying the first seat on the upper tier.

[GameShowGuru]

The best case scenario for this show would have been for Gene to host the whole thing himself.

Jon Bauman just does not seem like a professional Goodson-Todman host. I especially cringe each time Hollywood Squares ends and he attempts to recap the game and analyze where the losing contestant went wrong. It's just awkward and not entertaining; I'm surprised no one told him to stop that!

Funny you said that, because according to Gene, after each taping (or at least after each taping day), he was debriefed by the producers and told what he did right and (more often) what he did wrong.  I guess his game recap and over-analysis of the contestants' wrong answers was glossed over.

[whewfan]

I can imagine him getting hosting tips for maybe a few weeks worth of shows, but you have to figure after a while, there was little they could do to make him any better. I do think Jon made more efforts to move the game along, but some celebs just didn't know how long to "vamp" before sounding like they're just wasting time. The original HS gave each star 45 seconds and no more. Jonathan Winters was maybe one exception, as it takes him a while to warm up as a character, and his ramblings are hit and miss. Peter just figured they could edit him however they please.