Game show resurgence:

[Ian Wallis]

The difference between the game show industry and elections in Florida: In the game show industry it's illegal to rig the outcome.

Given present situations with competitions such as Survivor and American Idol, is it such?

(One of the unpleasant offshoots of the likes of those two shows are a number of people proposing this is Charles Van Doren II.)

It's been discussed on these boards before, but in the case of "Survivor", Mark Burnett has said that he doesn't think he has to follow the same rules as a regular game show.  That doesn't necessarily mean that he's rigged any of them, but there were those allegations during the first "Survivor" that he convinced two people to change their vote from Rudy to a lady named Stacey.  If this is true, I think he stepped across the line.  

I don't think "Survivor" is as real as some people might think (with all the editing and producer involvement with the contestants, you just don't know what's gone on behind the scenes), but maybe they should pass the law making it illegal to "manipulate" the outcome of a reality show too.

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'MSTieScott\' date=\'Jul 21 2004, 11:06 PM\'][quote name=\'tvwxman\' date=\'Jul 17 2004, 09:35 AM\'] Question for the game show experts in the biz...where is Liar? [/quote]
I'm no expert, but from what I saw of Liar, I'm assuming it's dead. The only way I saw it going to air was if CBS decided it was an inexpensive alternative to summer reruns.

Actually, I was surprised it even made it to pilot -- didn't we recently learn that To Tell the Truth was pretty much a dead concept in this day and age? (Not saying that's a good thing, mind you.)[/quote]
The major differences between "Liar" (which did run one [?] series in the UK) and "TTTT" were more contestants, an elimination process throughout the entire show and the studio audience deciding who's real instead of a panel.  Also, the truth-teller doesn't have to have done something of note to be the Central Character--meaning that we have something related, but not exactly "TTTT"--although the fact that Fremantle owns both titles makes it an instance of legal copying.  And I don't know if the people at TalkBack in the UK had "TTTT" in mind when they came up with "Liar."

[Fedya]

[quote name=\'Ian Wallis\' date=\'Jul 22 2004, 08:04 AM\'] Also, it does allow them to air episodes out of order and save the most memorable for November and February sweeps.  In the case of "Pyramid", it allows them to schedule the most well-known celebrities for those periods. [/quote]
 Wouldn't a good celebrity booker get the best celebrities to play on those episodes scheduled to air in sweeps weeks even if the episodes ran in production order?

[Jay Temple]

Good point, Fedya.

I don't think KJ will cause a boost in game-show programming.  However, if this had happened a few years earlier, there's a good chance that some shows that did go into production (Pyramid, principally), would have had returning champions.