This Week's Game Show TV Milestones (Part 1)

[AH3RD]

JULY 11, 1966

The Newlywed Game, a naughty new Chuck Barris-produced relationship game show emceed by erstwhile KRLA DJ Bob Eubanks (coming on strong on the heels of Barris' earlier triumph, The Dating Game), had its debut on ABC Daytime. Legend has it that CBS pre-empted Password for a news special covering a press conference featuring Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on the same day as ABC's premiere of Newlywed.

As a cornerstone of ABC's daytime schedule, the game ran for 8 ½  consecutive years and 2,195 episodes its first time out (1966-December 20, 1974), making it the 23rd-longest-running television game show in history. Shortly after its daytime debut, ABC added Newlywed to its prime-time schedule (January 1967), where, along with The Dating Game, it helped The Alphabet Network secure its prime-time game show dominance for five years. It would resurface many, many times in syndication, the last such occurence happening in 1997.

For 10 years following the cancellation of the original ABC daytime series, The Newlywed Game held the record as ABC's longest-running daytime game show in its history; that is, until 1984, when Family Feud took the crown with its 9th and last season on The Alphabet Network.

Every original ABC Newlywed episode has survived, but has kept a pretty low profile on Game Show Network (which emphasizes heavily on the syndicated versions), for many early shows are unairable due to color deterioration. (The show originaly debuted in black and white, with the switch to color occurring less than a year later.)

[aaron sica]

[quote name=\'AH3RD\' date=\'Jul 6 2003, 07:40 AM\'] JULY 11, 1966


Every original ABC Newlywed episode has survived, but has kept a pretty low profile on Game Show Network (which emphasizes heavily on the syndicated versions), for many early shows are unairable due to color deterioration. (The show originaly debuted in black and white, with the switch to color occurring less than a year later.) [/quote]

From one Aaron to another.....I love your synopses like this, but reading your section about the show originally airing in B&W made me think of something I've always wondered....

First I must say that, to me, the 1960's were fascinating to me as far as TV goes as it was the biggest decade of change as far as the format shows - At the beginning of the decade goes, very few shows were telecast in color; by the end, almost (if not EVERY) show was telecast in color.

So my question is.....What was the first game show to telecast regularly in color, and what was the last to make the conversion?

[PeterMarshallFan]

I think Concentration was the last, not switching until aound 1970-1971.

[Jimmy Owen]

As far as daytime shows, TPiR and \"It Could Be You\" were in color by the summer of 1960. \"Play Your Hunch\" and \"The Jan Murray Show/Charge Account\" in the fall of 60.  Of course all of these shows were on NBC which wanted everyone to buy a new RCA color TV.  The other networks wanted RCA to fail, so they were very slow to get around to colorcasting their shows. TPiR went back to B&W when it switched to ABC. \"Concentration\" went  color in the fall of 1966.