Shows you fell out of love with

[colonial]

Wink's TTD was a must-watch for me growing up because of the possibility that games could go on forever and there was the possibility of a "super champion." Looking at it now, are the questions on the easy side? Yes. But this was, to me, a precursor to modern J! -- a show where a champion can win 10, 20, 30 times and garner tons of attention.


Back to J! for a minute -- it's not that I want every contestant to pick clues top to bottom. It's more that modern contestants are the human equivalent of lemmings. If one contestant "Forrest bounces" and hunts for Daily Doubles, then everybody does it. Several years back, we had a situation where every contestant seemed to be playing for ties, calculating Daily Double bets and Final J! wagers to maximize the chance that a tie could happen, etc. Eventually, the show brought in tie-breaker questions to end this strategy. Today's show strategy seems to be "do what that other contestant did."


JD

[Ian Wallis]

What's been said about the three B-E shows is true, but doesn't every producer do this to a certain degree?

When I first saw All-Star Blitz, it struck me as very similar to Hollywood Squares - especially in question style.  Some might even throw Battlestars in there too.

Even G-T did this...there are a lot of similarities with the panel shows What's My Line, I've Got a Secret and even The Name's the Same.  I'm excluding To Tell the Truth because that game play was very different.

Coming up with new ideas is a challenge, so it wasn't usual just to come up with variations on the same theme.

[JasonA1]

As we've been discussing this - I do wonder how Bullseye would have been with Jim Peck hosting.  Jim Lange isn't my cup of team for most anything I've seen him in, but Peck brought a much more energetic pace to Joker - I could see him doing the same for Bullseye.

Good thought. Shorter questions, since a game had so many, would have helped, too.

One way I'd fix it -- other than chucking the format and using the set to play B&E's pilot Double Cross -- would be to re-spin and get a new contract if both players miss the same question. At least you'd be using the big set piece some more. Or, to help differentiate it from Joker and add some tension, put lightning in the front game that causes you to lose your turn, like the crosses on Double Cross.

Did I mention they should have just played Double Cross?

-Jason

[mystery7]

What's been said about the three B-E shows is true, but doesn't every producer do this to a certain degree?

The thing that made B&E's situation unique was that all three of their copycat shows were on at the same time, probably even two back-to-back in some markets. Merrill Heatter had a few months between Squares and Battlestars, and a couple years between the second run of Battlestars and All-Star Blitz. And even then, Blitz had the word puzzle as a diversion.

Bob Stewart, arguably the king of this, took a more "modular" approach - a little bit of this format, some of that one and it's a whole "new" ballgame, as evidenced by how elements of Jackpot worked their way into the Twisters pilot (which was more a game of shuffleboard than baseball, but I digress).

Goodson-Todman's approach was a little different: for Secret, Allan Sherman basically convinced them to play What's My Line for laughs, and everyone was in on the joke.

[Casey Buck]

Bob Stewart, arguably the king of this, took a more "modular" approach - a little bit of this format, some of that one and it's a whole "new" ballgame, as evidenced by how elements of Jackpot worked their way into the Twisters pilot (which was more a game of shuffleboard than baseball, but I digress).

So, Bob Stewart is the Taco Bell of game show producers.