What Might Have Been

[Don Howard]

According to the trade magazines, we might have seen the following in the mid 1990s:
Family Feud starring Dolly Parton
Match Game starring Charlene Tilton
$ale of the Century starring Robin Leach and featuring no instant bargains (what would have been the freakin' point?)
and the one that I believe would have been a hit or at least a so-so...
Liars' Club starring Ed McMahon

The top three (the middle one especially) would have made The Newlywed Game starring Paul Rodriguez look like Masterpiece Theatre.

[mystery7]

And something tells me Feud and Match would've run back-to-back on a lot of stations. Uy.

[Chelsea Thrasher]

The question that everyone has to ultimately ask themselves is, simply:  Which is worse, no game shows or several poor to bad game shows?

[Robert Hutchinson]

[quote name=\'Don Howard\' date=\'Dec 23 2004, 11:00 PM\']$ale of the Century starring Robin Leach and featuring no instant bargains (what would have been the freakin' point?)
[/quote]

"I'm hosting a crappy game show AND I DON'T KNOW WHY!!"

</DanaCarvey>

[Craig Karlberg]

[quote name=\'Seth Thrasher\' date=\'Dec 24 2004, 01:03 AM\']The question that everyone has to ultimately ask themselves is, simply:  Which is worse, no game shows or several poor to bad game shows?

[snapback]68459[/snapback]

[/quote]


And if you take away WOF, J!, & TPIR!(the 3 biggies), the mid 90's would've sucked anyway.  Personally, I prefer a blank game show slate there,  However, thanks to WOF, J! & TPIR, there was something to watch.

[Tim L]

Honestly, without seeing a pilot for any of these shows who's to say if any of these would have been a hit or not?..I say this knowing full well some you may have seen one if any of these got that far..and even then, Improvements might be made before full production took place.

Tim Lones

[JMFabiano]

And wasn't there a 1997 Card Sharks pilot too? From my memories, dunno if it was a bigger "CaSINO" than the one we eventually got...on one end there was NO Money Cards.  On the other hand, I don't remember dilemma videos being used in the main game!  

J. <-- wonders if he'd mind FF much had Dolly been on it.  She is a favorite singer, so I might be biased...but she does have a sense of humor too.  And on a more shallow level, she's easier to look at than Louie was :-)

[GameShowFan]

Cherry picking here...

Match Game starring Charlene Tilton

I didn't see the pilot tape, but friends of mine who did (and Chris knows who!) stated flatly that this show set game shows back 20 years.

Liars' Club starring Ed McMahon

Shoulda been. I saw two live run-throughs of this show, and it sang to me. The only real change was the game itself became two sets of comedian teams playing for the studio audience. Ed was remarkably good at hosting the show because he knew how to stay out of the way of his comics.

And wasn't there a 1997 Card Sharks pilot too? From my memories, dunno if it was a bigger "CaSINO" than the one we eventually got...on one end there was NO Money Cards. On the other hand, I don't remember dilemma videos being used in the main game!

Yup, yup, yup, with Tom Green (Sports On Tap) as host. Dreadful. I was at the taping, and was going to give it a chance until one of the "dilemma videos" gave a false correct answer. ("Well, normally I'd say <correct answer>, blah blah blah, but I'll really say <incorrect answer>." Took the steam right out of the audience.)

'Brian

[BrandonFG]

A few weeks ago, someone mentioned the Feud pilot having the families sit on couches, which just sounds utterly weird. Did this really happen?

It just reminds me a lot of the 1996 season of Newlywed Game, where the couples sat on couches (instead of those cozy restaurant booths). And the fact that both the 90s NG and the early seasons of Feud were produced by the same person, I was just wondering if those two had any correlation.

[Robert Hutchinson]

[quote name=\'GameShowFan\' date=\'Dec 24 2004, 02:03 PM\']I was at the taping, and was going to give it a chance until one of the "dilemma videos" gave a false correct answer. ("Well, normally I'd say <correct answer>, blah blah blah, but I'll really say <incorrect answer>." Took the steam right out of the audience.)
[/quote]

I'm not sure I've parsed that correctly. Do you mean that the audience reacted to what they thought was the right answer, only to find that it was being rejected by the person in the video?

[ChuckNet]

A few weeks ago, someone mentioned the Feud pilot having the families sit on couches, which just sounds utterly weird. Did this really happen?

Dunno if that was how the pilot worked, but the original plan for the current version was something like what you described, w/the WWE announcer (whose name I can't remember) behind the mike.

Chuck Donegan (The Illustrious "Chuckie Baby")

[Matt Ottinger]

I have seen the Charlene Tilton Match Game pilot and the Tom Green Card Sharks pilot, and both were beyond dreadful.  Tilton's Match Game was stunningly, laughably, I-can't-believe-it bad.  Card Sharks was just awkward and ill-conceived.

While it's certainly fun to wonder "what if?", the execution of those two efforts, as well as a few other busted pilots from around that era (Pyramid, for example) would suggest that maybe it was a pretty good idea for game shows to go lie down for a while.

[BrandonFG]

Would watching either the MG or CS pilots be a fate worse than actually going to the M98 or CS01 room(s)?

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'fostergray82\' date=\'Dec 27 2004, 01:00 AM\']Would watching either the MG or CS pilots be a fate worse than actually going to the M98 or CS01 room(s)?[/quote]
There is a perverse entertainment value to the Tilton pilot in the staggering badness of it all, so I wouldn't use it to punish anybody.  The Card Sharks pilot, on the other hand, would be painful to endure.

[chris319]

Tilton's Match Game was stunningly, laughably, I-can't-believe-it bad.

Can you share some details with us?