Accidentally aired pilots

[BrandonFG]

What may have been a pilot for Win Ben Stein's Money aired during the first season.  There were small changes compared to what made it to series, the biggest difference being a tie with Ben in the Best of Ten was worth $5000 instead of an additional $1000.

Pardon the detour, and also pardon a trip into the "not your money" department, but the $1000 never made sense to me.  You tie, you get half.

I’ll continue this detour, because even at 16 I thought that was BS.

[carlisle96]

We all know the story of the 1990 pilot of To Tell the Truth airing to the east coast.  There's also the Caesar's Challenge pilot which may or may not have aired.  I've got another one:  All-Star Secrets.

My local Canadian TVGuides have been in boxes in my parents' basement for over 40 years.  Finally, for the first time in 40 years I've had the time to start going thru some of them again.  I had a habit for a while of writing little notes beside the actual listings themselves if something was off.

In looking at the All-Star Secrets listing for Jan 29, 1979, I wrote:  Robert Reed, Dody Goodman, Arthur Godfrey, Lee Meriwether and Charles Nelson Reilly.  I also wrote a quick note about a secret for Charles involving bells.  In looking at online episode guides, this listing is from the pilot. 

When I originally wrote that I had no access to pilot information, so I can only conclude that NBC must have aired one of the pilots that day - at least to the East Coast.

Thought it might be of interest.

What is the story behind the TTTT pilot? Did the tape get thrown in with the rest of the tapes meant for air or is there something a bit sexier?

[mmb5]

GSN, and probably some other places I can't think of now, had a habit of doing that. They'd tape a couple episodes, figure some things out, and change course for the remainder of the run, burying the "test" results late in the airing season. To wit, Idiotest had a different bonus round with 5 questions in 60 seconds, rather than one test both players tackled. The first two taped episodes of Whammy! had the players start on 0, rather than with $1,000.

And I managed to find my old website that detailed some of the other Cram rules. "The Rant" had 10 ideas to match vs. 8 words or phrases, and teams started with 0 points. In one round 2 variant, the player answering Graham's questions had to stand on a question mark to do so. That resulted in a lot of dead air vs. the later way of doing things where they alternated no matter where they were standing. And they had another version where the 10-points-per-question was only scored if the team managed to do 2 things right in the stunt, with a bonus of doubling all the question points if they played the stunt perfectly.

-Jason

IIRC (it's been 20 years), Graham did the buzzing.

[Kevin Prather]

What may have been a pilot for Win Ben Stein's Money aired during the first season.  There were small changes compared to what made it to series, the biggest difference being a tie with Ben in the Best of Ten was worth $5000 instead of an additional $1000.

Pardon the detour, and also pardon a trip into the "not your money" department, but the $1000 never made sense to me.  You tie, you get half.

I’ll continue this detour, because even at 16 I thought that was BS.

I guess I never thought anything of it because A: That $1000 meant you were knocking on the door of half anyway, and B: The object is to beat Ben, and tying is not beating, so they could just as easily invoke the Wonka Rule. I definitely understand the counterargument though.

[Ian Wallis]

What is the story behind the TTTT pilot? Did the tape get thrown in with the rest of the tapes meant for air or is there something a bit sexier?

All I know is the pilot was accidentally aired on the East Coast feed.  By the time it got to the West Coast, the correct episode was aired.

In my area, both NBC affiliates I can receive pre-empted the premiere for the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon.  I didn't even find out this happened until several years later!

[That Don Guy]

I'm pretty sure ABC aired the pilot for You Deserve It in its run. There were two rules differences in the pilot; the rounds were 10-25-50-75-100K instead of 10-25-50-100-250K, and if you didn't get one right, the next round was worth the same amount rather than always increasing (which would explain one problem with the rest of the episodes: if you use all ten clues in a round, the puzzle prize becomes zero, so why bother even having a tenth clue?).

[gameshowfan2001]

Sorry if this is going off-track, but did Russian Roulette have an unaired pilot? There's a press photo online of Mark and 4 contestants, but the audience chairs are empty. My theory is it's either a pilot or they at least just did a photo shoot with people who were available.

[Jeremy Nelson]

Kinda technical, but several years back when Netflix had Jeopardy reruns, they uploaded a playlist which contained every season premiere up to that point. However, instead of the Season 1 premiere, they (accidentally?) uploaded the '84 pilot.

Really wish they'd do that again.

[chris319]

In 1978 G-T did a pilot called "Spellbinders" for NBC. It didn't sell and the pilot never aired. Same with "Puzzlers" in 1980. This is how pilots generally worked.

Password Plus, Mindreaders and Blockbusters had already been greenlit when we started to tape the first shows. However, in those cases the first show taped never aired as it was designated the "pilot". This was a little confusing and we figured the network did so for accounting reasons. IIRC in those days the networks budgeted for three game-show pilots per quarter (I could be off on that).

[colonial]

Kinda technical, but several years back when Netflix had Jeopardy reruns, they uploaded a playlist which contained every season premiere up to that point. However, instead of the Season 1 premiere, they (accidentally?) uploaded the '84 pilot.

Really wish they'd do that again.

It happened again when J! reruns premiered on Pluto TV, but I believe the glitch was fixed in future airings.


JD

[Adam Nedeff]

What is the story behind the TTTT pilot? Did the tape get thrown in with the rest of the tapes meant for air or is there something a bit sexier?

All I know is the pilot was accidentally aired on the East Coast feed.  By the time it got to the West Coast, the correct episode was aired.

Just an accident and nothing more. One coda to this--Richard Kline found out the pilot was airing because his mother called him to say "I thought you didn't get that job..." The next day, Mark Goodson sent him a fruit basket and a check for $10,000; I don't think he was in any way obligated, but Goodson basically gave Kline a week's salary for hosting the show because that pilot aired.

[Jamey Greek]

When Prime Video briefly had SIR86.  One of the episodes was the pilot.

[rebelwrest]

What is the story behind the TTTT pilot? Did the tape get thrown in with the rest of the tapes meant for air or is there something a bit sexier?

All I know is the pilot was accidentally aired on the East Coast feed.  By the time it got to the West Coast, the correct episode was aired.

Just an accident and nothing more. One coda to this--Richard Kline found out the pilot was airing because his mother called him to say "I thought you didn't get that job..." The next day, Mark Goodson sent him a fruit basket and a check for $10,000; I don't think he was in any way obligated, but Goodson basically gave Kline a week's salary for hosting the show because that pilot aired.

Even though it was an accident, it probably created an obligation to Richard Kline.  I bet in the contract to host the pilot, there was language that specifically said this was NOT FOR BROADCAST, so this would be a breach of contract. Even if Richard would not consider going for payment, I think his agent would have.  Mark Goodson was smart enough to realize this and sent a check for $10,000 to hold off any future lawsuit(s).

[JasonA1]

When Prime Video briefly had SIR86.  One of the episodes was the pilot.

I think that was yet another case of a show burying its early-taped episodes during the airing cycle. That episode still had 2 couples, but some differences in how they played. There were photos in Broadcasting & Cable of Joe hosting with 3 couples, as in the UK, which would strike me as more pilot-like.

-Jason

[Allstar87]

When Prime Video briefly had SIR86.  One of the episodes was the pilot.

I think that was yet another case of a show burying its early-taped episodes during the airing cycle.

Supporting that theory, the couple that won the game on that episode just so happened to be one of the couples on the debut.