Where would new panelists come from?

[zachhoran]

[quote name=\'adamjk\' date=\'Apr 27 2004, 09:34 PM\']

Bowzer? Jimmie Walker? Bob Barker? Who is it.

No need to get snippy now Zach. It's Bob. I just wanted to see if anyone could guess who it was. I didn't mean any harm. It was just a game is all. [/quote]
 Do you think Bob would do another game show as a guest? Reportedly he doesn't like being a celeb guest on game shows these days, as IIRC he declined to be a square on one or both of H2's Game SHow Weeks. He hasn't done one without his TPIR cast by his side since Davidson Squares in 1987.

[GS Warehouse]

[quote name=\'adamjk\' date=\'Apr 27 2004, 10:02 PM\'] There's one person who if Match Game were ever to be revived(soon), could be one of the handful of people to appear on more on then one version of MG, and this person would likely be the only one on the revival to have been on the original 70's run. This person wasn't a regular per se, but the person appeared a few times per year on the daytime and nighttime versions (at least through MG 79, though the person did appear twice during the syndie years, both times during the first season)
Can anyone guess who I am speaking of? [/quote]
 I'm hedging between Vicki Lawrence and Marcia Wallace--two women I couldn't never tell the difference between in my misspent younger years.

[adamjk]

Look at the post above you.

[Jay Temple]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Apr 27 2004, 01:26 PM\'] To expand on that comment from the always-insightful Mr. West, there's a difference between Goodson's pseudo-stars and other people's pseudo-stars.  The Goodson camp knew how to find and/or nurture bright, funny people who could play their games and look like they were having fun doing it, regardless of how far up the celebrity food chain they had climbed.

For a long time, those people came out of the NYC theater scene.  Folks like Anita Gillette, Alan Alda, Bert Convy, Florence Henderson, Elaine Joyce, Larry Blyden, Orson Bean, Peggy Cass and countless others were "discovered" as TV panelists after a stage credit or two.  In some cases, they became stars.  In others, their legit careers never took off.  But once their ability to play games had been established, they were "in".

Today (or even back then under almost any other packager) the object is to get people that the public knows, regardless of whether they know how (or have any interested in learning how) to play the game. Heatter-Quigley could get away with that because they almost never gave the celebrity anything particularly challenging to do.  With Goodson (and later, with an independent Bob Stewart) a celebrity had to know what he or she was doing, or else risk looking foolish.

The last time that a panel was chosen for its game playing rather than its celebrity was probably TTTT'90. (David Niven Jr, anybody?)  Everything since, including Match Game '98, O'Hurley's TTTT, Oxygen's IGAS and those abortive WML? pilots (to say nothing of lesser stuff like You Lie Like A Dog)appear to have simply picked entertainers and assumed they'd be entertaining.[/quote]

Matt, you mentioned one person without even pointing it out.  John O'Hurley was a good host of TTTT, and he's played Pyramid well too.  There's every reason to believe he'd be just as good as a panelist.  I'll qualify that:  He would be good on true "panel" shows, like TTTT or WML.  He wouldn't embarrass himself on MG or HS, but he wouldn't be the highlight of the show, either.

And that's why panel shows don't work today.  The end.

If you mean that recent shows haven't worked, I agree with you.  If you mean that they cannot work, I'm a little more optimistic than you.  I think if someone did what we've discussed, such a show would work.  (Note to packagers:  Bill Cullen was a pretty funny guy in his own right.  Lesson:  Hire people who can play the game, and the laughs will follow.)

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'Jay Temple\' date=\'Apr 28 2004, 12:45 AM\'] If you mean that recent shows haven't worked, I agree with you.  If you mean that they cannot work, I'm a little more optimistic than you.  I think if someone did what we've discussed, such a show would work.  (Note to packagers:  Bill Cullen was a pretty funny guy in his own right.  Lesson:  Hire people who can play the game, and the laughs will follow.) [/quote]
You're right, I absolutely should have said "haven't" worked rather that "can't" work.  In fact, while everybody else is coming up with $1,000,000 Celebrity Red Rover, I would KILL to be able to mount a solid, classy and still funny version of What's My Line?

Also, Curt Alliaume asked:

Getting back to the subject at hand, it's dubious anyone would take a chance on putting two, three, or four relatively unknown people on a panel, no matter how bright they are. What's My Line?'s mainstays were a New York-based gossip columnist, a New York-based radio personality, and a publishing executive. Anyone think that would fly today?

It's been proven time and time again that TV creates stars and doesn't necessarily need proven famous faces to drive shows.  I have no idea who my regular panel would be (except to know that they'd be based in NYC), but I'd be on the lookout for the most entertaining people I could find, from whatever field they might work.

[Clay Zambo]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Apr 28 2004, 08:40 AM\'] In fact, while everybody else is coming up with $1,000,000 Celebrity Red Rover, I would KILL to be able to mount a solid, classy and still funny version of What's My Line?

... I have no idea who my regular panel would be (except to know that they'd be based in NYC), but I'd be on the lookout for the most entertaining people I could find, from whatever field they might work. [/quote]
 Yes, but if you killed, you'd likely get caught, and then they'd take the show away from you, and after you got out of the hoosegow on some technicality you still wouldn't be able to wrest control from the new staff and you'd have to content yourself with making the rounds of AM-radio talk shows.  You wouldn't want that, would you?

Now, as to your NYC bias--which I heartily endorse, by the way--is that because you figure theatre-trained folks think quicker on their feet, or because you know where you could get a pretty good music supervisor in a heartbeat? (By the way, isn't it time for a new set of cues on Quizbusters?

As to panelists--back in our hypothetical world--I'm fairly sure that Trading Spaces' Ms. Davis would play a good, intelligent game (cf her well-reasoned commentary on the recent Iron Chef, as would Good Eats' Mr. Brown.  (And by all means, let's do drop the faux-familiarity of the first name basis!)

Yours most cordially...

[tommycharles]

What about Bergeron? Not that he would be willing to do it in the first place necessarily, but he would make a great panelist. I think he's got that competetiveness in him that you need on WML.

And Matt - if you do get to mount your What's My Line, you should leave a rotating panel spot open for "Game Show Forum member du jour" ;-)