Author Topic: GSN wasn't the first to "pitch the niche" (Read 28140 times)

Matt Ottinger · « **Reply #75 on:** August 26, 2004, 09:40:33 PM »

Pacdude, I love you. Your programming is top notch and there's no question that you are a refined, intelligent and mature game show fan. (And remember, "fan" is simply short for "fanatic".) Now that I've gotten THAT out of the way...

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A televised event where the focus of the show is for two or more players/teams to compete in a game or competition with a set of rules and a set target for some sort of prize.

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (at least the syndicated version) and The $64,000 Question are not game shows because they involve one person at a time playing against the house.

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A game show is usually an original creation using a format not found elsewhere, however, exceptions have come from board games.

Hollywood Squares, Tic Tac Dough and Wheel of Fortune are not game shows because they use a pre-existing format other than a board game.

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A game show places its focus mainly on the game, with usually only a minimal amount of time no more than 15% of the total time of the show placed on the contestants or the rivalry between said contestants.

As Casey already mentioned, You Bet Your Life (to say nothing of Who Do You Trust, Two For The Money, etc) are not game shows because they spend much more than 15% of their time on the contestant interviews.

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Sports shows are not seen as game shows under this definition because their formats can be found elsewhere (a football field, a casino, a racetrack).

Gambit and Dealer's Choice are not game shows because their formats can be found in a casino.

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Reality shows and dating shows are not seen as game shows under this definition because the focus on reality shows is the contestants and reactions thereof, and not specifically on the game.

This line doesn't make any sense unless you've already got a preconceived notion as to what constitutes a "reality show" or a "dating show". The Dating Game and The Bachelor have almost exactly the same premise, only one took fifteen minutes to play and the other took a dozen or so hours. Are both game shows? Neither? As for "reality shows", Fear Factor and Beat the Clock have essentially the same concept, only one was done by Goodson-Todman in a studio and the other was...um...not. NBC would rather than you considered Fear Factor a reality show than a game show. Is it?

My point is that the more complicated and convoluted (and lengthy) that your definition is, the more loopholes you create.

MSTieScott · « **Reply #76 on:** August 27, 2004, 12:35:38 PM »

[quote name=\'CaseyAbell\' date=\'Aug 26 2004, 11:17 AM\'] The Feds use the phrase "a purportedly bona fide contest of intellectual knowledge, intellectual skill, or chance." [/quote]
I've read through that before, and unless I'm missing something, isn't it possible to find a loophole in which you can rig a show that supposedly rewards contestants for performing only physical stunts? For example, if I created a version of "Beat the Clock" without any question-and-answer or unscrambling elements, and deliberately planned it so likeable contestants completed their stunts (through multiple takes, if necessary) and unlikeable contestants purposely failed their stunts, I wouln't be doing anything illegal, because it isn't a "contest of intellectual knowledge, intellectual skill, or chance." Only physical skill.

--
Scott Robinson

CaseyAbell · « **Reply #77 on:** August 27, 2004, 12:52:27 PM »

Yep, I noticed the "purely physical stunt" loophole, too. But this is really dicey because rigging a show like Beat the Clock would clearly violate the spirit of the law. And you might get hung on that "chance" thingie. After all, you can at least argue that chance plays a part in physical contests.

These are only the legalities, of course. Rigging a stunt show or any other kind of "purportedly bona fide" televised contest would be a p.r. nightmare if discovered. Even a vague odor of rigging can attract lots of irritating media attention, as the Survivor producers learned to their discomfort.

On this general topic I noticed an interesting post from Terry Teachout's arts blog (summarized to avoid fair use issues):

Reality programming might continue to dominate TV until there's a serious rigging scandal. Not just questions involving staging, but an outright rig with a pre-determined winner. Some desperate producer will want a popular winner, just as Twenty-One did with Charles Van Doren. When this happens, the fallout will probably contaminate all reality shows. After all, they're supposed to be "real."

Me again: anything is possible, and someday somebody might rig a reality show from top to bottom. But with the horrible example of the game show rigging scandal before them, I can't believe that most reality producers would even consider tampering with the proceedings so blatantly. My guess is that reality, like so many other kinds of programming, will diminish in a much less spectacular way as tastes simply change (how boring!) It didn't take a sensational scandal to end the reign of westerns on TV. People just got tired of watching them and started watching something else.

michaellinn · « **Reply #78 on:** August 27, 2004, 04:05:54 PM »

I think reality TV is just a fad for now, but could stay popular for a while yet. I, personally, don't care for many of the reality shows. Right now, it seems to be the "cool" thing, but I consider what I like myself to be "cool." I grew up in the '70s and remember when variety shows were all over the networks' line-ups. "Donny & Marie," "Sonny & Cher," "Flip Wilson," "Tony Orlando & Dawn," "The Captain & Tenille," "Carol Burnett," etc. Now we don't see any variety shows anymore. (By the way, I liked many of these shows, and am hoping for "Donny & Marie" to make it out on DVD.) But I assume variety shows died out as westerns did (as Casey noted). Then Saturday mornings were full of cartoons and kids' shows on all the networks--no news programs. Game shows were seen on the networks during the daytime. However, network game shows, variety shows, westerns, and Saturday morning kids' shows, apparently, were just fads that didn't stick around, although we have several channels now that take us back to enjoy what used to be a big part of network TV.

Tony · « **Reply #79 on:** August 27, 2004, 05:11:12 PM »

Re: "michaellinn"'s post,

Saturday morning cartoons have not all disappeared from network TV, contrary to your assessment. While it is true that news programs now take up the first 2 hours, and many stations choose to air infomercials instead of the cartoons, they are still to be found. Of course, most of them are also shown on cable, and every single network except UPN (only because they have no such block) have farmed out at least part, if not all, of their blocks to either corporate sisters (as is the case with ABC, CBS, and The WB) or outside program suppliers (NBC and Fox).

ObGameShow: Several cartoon voice actors have appeared on many game shows. To attempt to create an exhaustive list of them would, IMHO, be futile.

michaellinn · « **Reply #80 on:** August 27, 2004, 08:58:05 PM »

I didn't say that Saturday cartoons have all disappeared from the networks. I said they filled up the networks' schedules on Saturday mornings back in the '70s, with no news programs, unlike nowadays. And I'm not talking about cable. I'm talking about the three big networks back then--ABC, CBS, and NBC--that would schedule a full slate of children's programming and even have Friday night preview specials to introduce all the new stuff to the kids each fall. Oh, cartoons can be still found, of course, but it's not like it used to be. By the time the '90s got here, cable TV would basically take over kids' programming, and the networks weren't interested much anymore with a full schedule of cartoons and kids' shows on Saturday mornings. An excellent book to read about this topic is "Saturday Morning Fever," by Tim and Kevin Burke. I don't mean to go off-topic with this, but I felt it fits in with the subject about the demise of network daytime game shows.

aaron sica · « **Reply #81 on:** August 27, 2004, 09:05:31 PM »

[quote name=\'michaellinn\' date=\'Aug 27 2004, 08:58 PM\'] I don't mean to go off-topic with this, but I felt it fits in with the subject about the demise of network daytime game shows. [/quote]
You're right, though, it does fit in with the demise........CBS, NBC, and ABC used to stack their Saturday schedules chock full of cartoons and kids' shows.....CBS even used to program up to 2 p.m. up until the mid-1980's!!! Now, it looks like this:

CBS 7am-12pm, 3 hours of kids' shows with 2 hours of "Saturday Early Show" in there.
NBC 8am-12pm, 2 hours of teen shows with 2 hours of "Saturday Today".

Even ABC, the last holdout, starting September 4th, airs a Saturday version of GMA (an hour long, I believe)..

Jimmy Owen · « **Reply #82 on:** August 27, 2004, 09:06:17 PM »

There are so many options with kids programming these days. Not to mention the cable channels, kids DVDs are a good investment, because the kids want to watch the same shows over and over and over. I would venture to say FCC guidelines are the only reason any over-the-air broadcaster still offers kid's shows.

michaellinn · « **Reply #83 on:** August 27, 2004, 10:57:18 PM »

[quote name=\'aaron sica\' date=\'Aug 27 2004, 08:05 PM\'][quote name=\'michaellinn\' date=\'Aug 27 2004, 08:58 PM\'] I don't mean to go off-topic with this, but I felt it fits in with the subject about the demise of network daytime game shows. [/quote]
You're right, though, it does fit in with the demise........CBS, NBC, and ABC used to stack their Saturday schedules chock full of cartoons and kids' shows.....CBS even used to program up to 2 p.m. up until the mid-1980's!!! Now, it looks like this:

CBS 7am-12pm, 3 hours of kids' shows with 2 hours of "Saturday Early Show" in there.
NBC 8am-12pm, 2 hours of teen shows with 2 hours of "Saturday Today".

Even ABC, the last holdout, starting September 4th, airs a Saturday version of GMA (an hour long, I believe)..[/quote]
Yes, I enjoyed the daytime game shows on weekdays in the summer and any other time that I didn't have school. I mean, I was crazy about them. Same with cartoons and kids' shows on Saturdays. And I still like those old '70s toons and shows, even though I'm not a kid anymore.

aaron sica · « **Reply #84 on:** August 27, 2004, 11:03:50 PM »

[quote name=\'michaellinn\' date=\'Aug 27 2004, 10:57 PM\'] Yes, I enjoyed the daytime game shows on weekdays in the summer and any other time that I didn't have school. I mean, I was crazy about them. Same with cartoons and kids' shows on Saturdays. And I still like those old '70s toons and shows, even though I'm not a kid anymore. [/quote]
I enjoyed the game shows in the summer and offtimes from school...."Dream House", "Price is Right", and many others while off in the summer...Not to mention I fell in love with many sitcoms when the networks would air reruns of them too...

pacdude · « **Reply #85 on:** August 28, 2004, 12:30:01 AM »

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Aug 26 2004, 08:40 PM\'] My point is that the more complicated and convoluted (and lengthy) that your definition is, the more loopholes you create. [/quote]
Point taken. I tried my best, but meh, you can't really do it, I guess.

To be honest, that was a legal definition. And we all know they suck.

Trying to encompass every single game show into a single definition is pretty much impossible. (I'll do it as a research paper, just lemme quote all of this :-D) I guess saying "if it's a game, and it's a show, that makes it a game show" isn't enough, but saying "if a and b and c and d but not e or f are in it, then it's a game show" is too much because you exclude out way too much.

Therefore, I should say that "game shows are sometimes in the eye of the beholder." If you wanna say that the Super Bowl is a game show, by all means, call it a game show. If you wanna say that Survivor isn't a game show? By all means, don't.

This could go deeper and more philosophical, but I just had the honor of Matt saying he was a fan of mine.

Excuse me while I fan myself.

Jimmy Owen · « **Reply #86 on:** August 28, 2004, 06:30:07 AM »

In considering whether a show is a game show, I think it goes back to the intent of the producers of a show. I don't think Mark Burnett wants anyone to consider his "creations" game shows. Michael Davies embraces the name. That is why I have asked if the Travel Channel, ESPN, etc. call their card tourneys game shows. I don't think they want the shows labeled "game shows." Next question, with the home redecorating shows starting to decline, how long before the card shows burn out?

Don Howard · « **Reply #87 on:** August 28, 2004, 01:13:37 PM »

[quote name=\'aaron sica\' date=\'Aug 27 2004, 08:05 PM\'] Even ABC, the last holdout, starting September 4th, airs a Saturday version of GMA (an hour long, I believe).. [/quote]
They are? Wow, am I out of the loop. That's one of my favorite game shows ever. Couldn't stand that one model (Joan Lunden) but Charlie & Diane are da bomb! Who's going to host the weekend edition of this classic game show? Will it be played for higher stakes? Will there be returning champions? And if Morton Dean isn't hosting, I'm not watching!

aaron sica · « **Reply #88 on:** August 28, 2004, 01:35:03 PM »

[quote name=\'Don Howard\' date=\'Aug 28 2004, 01:13 PM\'] [quote name=\'aaron sica\' date=\'Aug 27 2004, 08:05 PM\'] Even ABC, the last holdout, starting September 4th, airs a Saturday version of GMA (an hour long, I believe).. [/quote]
They are? Wow, am I out of the loop. That's one of my favorite game shows ever. Couldn't stand that one model (Joan Lunden) but Charlie & Diane are da bomb! Who's going to host the weekend edition of this classic game show? Will it be played for higher stakes? Will there be returning champions? And if Morton Dean isn't hosting, I'm not watching! [/quote]
I believe they're changing the title to "The All-New Super $100,000 Good Morning America".

Jimmy Owen · « **Reply #89 on:** August 28, 2004, 02:46:48 PM »

I stopped watching GMA after Jim Peck wrapped up his week as guest host.