This Week's TV Game Show Almanac

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DECEMBER 30, 1963

Let's Make A Deal, a Monty Hall-Stefan Hatos-produced game show which has been termed "The Marketplace Of America," had its debut @ 2:00 p.m. (EST) on NBC Daytime. One of the most popular television game shows of the 1960’s and 1970’s,  Let's Make A Deal is the show where contestants buy, sell, or trade anything and everything from Aardvarks to Zithers. Lawyers, doctors, plumbers, and even Beverly Hills housewives dressed as kumquats and turnips hoping to trade a hard boiled egg for a Cadillac. What would be behind the Curtain… A Car or a Zonk (a worthless, ridiculous prize)? Sometimes when a Trader had decided to “take The Curtain,” emcee Monty Hall offered to buy it back again… $1,000… $2,000… $3,000 not to take The Curtain!

Traders never knew how high he would go. Prizes were disguised so that Traders were never sure whether a garbage can, for instance, contained a mink coat or just garbage, or which of three envelopes contained $1,000. The decision-making was exciting and suspenseful. Would it be a Car or a Camel? A First-Class Trip to Hawaii or a Live Cow dressed in sunglasses and feather boa? Would model Carol Merrill point out the features of a new Refrigerator or would announcer Jay Stewart be dressed as an old granny in a Giant Rocking Chair?

Part of the time, contestants played various games relating to the price of small items, pricing items of greater and greater value or matching the prices to the items, for example. Contestants began playing those games on Let's Make A Deal in the 1960’s.

Near the end of the show, Monty asked those who had already played if they wanted to keep what they had, or trade it for a chance at The Big Deal Of The Day. The first two Traders who decided to risk their cash and/or merchandise for a chance at a grand prize got to choose between Door #1, Door #2, or Door #3. There were no Zonks in The Big Deal, but it was possible to trade down. After the Big Deal until time ran out, Monty just couldn't stop making Quick Deals! One of the most famous... “I’ll give you $50 for a Hard Boiled Egg.”

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[AH3RD]

Run-throughs for Let's Make A Deal began in November of 1962. The Pilot Episode was taped for NBC on May 25, 1963 and was for presentation purposes and never broadcast (until GSN unveiled it in 2002). The series went into production in late 1963.

At the beginning of the series, contestants were dressed simply in street clothes, but that would change quickly, according to Hall: "About a month into the show, a woman came to the show and brought a sign that said ‘Roses are red/Violets are blue/I came here/To deal with you,’" Hall told author Jefferson Graham. "And I picked her. Well, for the next couple of weeks we had signs flourishing like crazy [the show was probably live early in the run], and then somebody started wearing a crazy hat to attract my attention. Then it went crazy. They all started wearing all sorts of things." Thus, the concept of wearing costumes on LMAD was born.

LMAD completed a magnificent 5-year run on NBC December 27, 1968, and defected to ABC Daytime the following Monday, exactly 5 years to the date of its premiere on NBC and in the same timeslot, too! The Peacock Network would soon regret its decision to drop LMAD; the game was a huge cash cow for NBC, and its cancellation resulted in a loss of revenues and ratings for the network.

Let's Make A Deal has the distinction of siring three primetime spinoffs: one on NBC (May 21 - September 3, 1967), one on ABC (February 7, 1969 - August 30, 1971), and one in syndication (September 18, 1971 - May 28, 1977), which helped coin the phrase "Primetime Access" and lay the groundwork for several other network daytime game shows to spin off their own nighttime syndie editions (weekly or daily). The ABC Daytime run of LMAD ground to a halt on Friday, July 9, 1976 (after The Alphabet Network made a fatal mistake in moving it to 12 noon); one of the shows to debut the following Monday was Family Feud! The nighttime syndie version lasted a season longer, having switched from ABC Television Center to the gambling capital of the world, Las Vegas (at The Riviera Hotel), with the addition of a Super Deal, which gave The Big Deal winner a chance to trade up even more. A total of 4,700 shows (according to Monty) was produced for Let's Make A Deal.

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But, like the old saying goes, a great game show never dies (or stays dead for long):  Let's Make A Deal saw many resurrections: in Canada in 1980, in syndication in 1984 (as The All-New Let's Make A Deal Show), and on its old network, NBC, in 1990 (emceed by Bob Hilton at first, then a very grey [blond?!] Monty Hall afterward). Classic episodes of LMAD have seen repeats on The Family Channel in the 1980s, and in 2001,  Game Show Network retained the rights to air 1,300 surviving classic episodes (undoubtedly from the 1971-77 syndie version), beginning with 35 of the best LMAD episodes in a Let's Make A Deal-a-thon, a five-day launch media event from Monday, August 27 through Friday, August 31, from 8:00 p.m. – 12:00 a.m. ET., and with shows in a regularly scheduled air time of 8:30 p.m. ET, Monday through Saturday, beginning Saturday, September 1. GSN has since ceased rerunning LMAD.

(Sources of info: The Let's Make A Deal Homepage)

 

DECEMBER 31, 1962

The Match Game, a new celebrity game created by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, had its debut live @ 4:00p.m. (EDT) on NBC, hosted by Gene Rayburn and announced by Johnny Olsen.

The original MG bore little resemblance to the version we would all come to know and love. Two three-member teams competed, each consisting of a celebrity and two civillians. Gene would ask a simple question, such as "Name the word you think is used most often in everyday speech" or "Fill in the blank: To a rich man, ______ dollars is nothing." Each member of each team would write down an answer. If two members of a team matched, they recived 25 points; should all three match, 50 points were awarded. The game continued until one team reached 100 points or, if both teams tie at 100 or more, whenever the tie is broken. The two players of the winning team split $1 per point won.

The winning team then played the "Audience Match," where they tried to predict how a previous studio audience (or, occasionally, special groups like 100 men, 100 teenagers, etc.) answered similar questions. Each member had a guess at each question, with the team winning $50 for each match (for a top possible payout of $450).

Concluded...

[AH3RD]

The debut celebrities were Arlene Francis and Skitch Henderson. Sometimes during the run, six celebrities (hint-hint!) would face off against each other for charity; the first such occurrence happening during the week of January 6, 1964, with stars Henry Morgan, Bennett Cerf, and Robert Q. Lewis playing for The Boy Scouts, and Joan Fontaine, Peggy Cass, and Betty White playing for The Girl Scouts.

The Match Game went on to its reward on September 20, 1969, after a hefty 7-year, 1,760-episode run on NBC. Sadly, what with it being a live show, a mass inventory of the videotapes became a tragic victim of The Peacock Network’s unfortunate inability to preserve many of its daytime shows, and as a result they have been wiped clean; only 11 episodes, including an original 1962 pilot featuring Peggy Cass and Peter Lind Hayes, are known to still exist today: 9 in The Library Of Congress, 1 in Museum of Television and Radio, and 3 in the trading circuit.

Fortunately for us faithful viewers, the last was not heard of Match Game, and so it has resurfaced in many updated incarnations many, many times over the years…the most popular and beloved one, as we well know, being its second, Match Game 7X,  beginning on CBS Daytime July 2, 1973 and remaining on for 9 years, in daytime and nighttime!

(Sources of info: Match Game.org and The Match Game Homepage: The '60s)

 

DECEMBER 31, 1987

The $25,000 Pyramid experienced its first of two cancellations on CBS Daytime, following a 5-year, 1,339-episode run, with guests Anne Marie Johnson and Robert Hegyes. When its replacement, the Bob Goen-hosted Jay Wolpert Production Blackout, left much to be desired, The $25,000 Pyramid, by popular demand, returned to CBS after 13 weeks, thus making it the only game show in TV history to be replaced by another game and then in return replace that same game!

[BrandonFG]

Question regarding the 60s MG...did the show ever go to color, being it ran until 1969, and if so, when did it go color?

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'fostergray82\' date=\'Dec 27 2004, 04:13 PM\']Question regarding the 60s MG...did the show ever go to color, being it ran until 1969, and if so, when did it go color?

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It seems to me that they were color from the beginning, and if not from the beginning, they went color fairly early into the run (like within the first couple of years).  It's just that the few remaining kinescopes were made in black-and-white.

And by 1966, everything on The Full Color Network was in full Living Color, with the other two coming along by the next year.  As pointed out before, "Concentration" was the straggler before 1966 because Norm Blumenthal had a strange aversion to not spending his bosses' money to convert the show to color.

[Don Howard]

If I may add one more:
DECEMBER 29th 1986
Wordplay makes its opening telecast starring Tom Kennedy. As seemed to be typical when an emcee was hosting a show for The Peacock Network and had hosted one for that network in the past, after Charlie O'Donnell introduced Tom and he gave the audience his usual robust "Hello there!", he said that it was "great to be back on NBC".
That's one of many shows that should have had a much longer life as I never believed Win, Lose Or Draw was that good.

[mmb5]

[quote name=\'uncamark\' date=\'Dec 27 2004, 05:32 PM\']
It seems to me that they were color from the beginning, and if not from the beginning, they went color fairly early into the run (like within the first couple of years).  It's just that the few remaining kinescopes were made in black-and-white.

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One of the episodes at the Museum of Television and Radio is a color tape from 1969 with Fannie Flagg and Tony Randall.


--Mike

[zachhoran]

12/28/81(23 years ago today)-Pat Sajak's first show as host of Daytime WOF airs on NBC

[Don Howard]

[quote name=\'zachhoran\' date=\'Dec 28 2004, 07:01 PM\']12/28/81(23 years ago today)-Pat Sajak's first show as host of Daytime WOF airs on NBC

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Woolery left?

[The Pyramids]

One of the episodes at the Museum of Television and Radio is a color tape from 1969 with Fannie Flagg and Tony Randall.
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In New York or Beverly Hills?

[dzinkin]

[quote name=\'PaulD\' date=\'Dec 28 2004, 10:16 PM\']One of the episodes at the Museum of Television and Radio is a color tape from 1969 with Fannie Flagg and Tony Randall.
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In New York or Beverly Hills?

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Both -- the tape collections are identical.  One has some shows readily available for viewing that the other may not (and vice versa), but IIRC people here and in ATGS have reported seeing the show at each museum.

[The Pyramids]

[quote name=\'Don Howard\' date=\'Dec 28 2004, 10:06 PM\'][quote name=\'zachhoran\' date=\'Dec 28 2004, 07:01 PM\']12/28/81(23 years ago today)-Pat Sajak's first show as host of Daytime WOF airs on NBC

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Woolery left?

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Funny. Seriously when I was watching the 'Lingo' finale I noticed Chuck's nice suit. I could perfectly imagine him dressed the same in 2004 on the set of 'Wheel' with every other thing about the show as it is now.

[Don Howard]

[quote name=\'PaulD\' date=\'Dec 28 2004, 10:22 PM\']when I was watching the 'Lingo' finale I noticed Chuck's nice suit. I could perfectly imagine him dressed the same in 2004 on the set of 'Wheel' with every other thing about the show as it is now.

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Chuck and Susan could both come back to stay as of tomorrow and I would welcome them back with open arms. The focus group of one has spoken.

[Ian Wallis]

And by 1966, everything on The Full Color Network was in full Living Color, with the other two coming along by the next year. As pointed out before, "Concentration" was the straggler before 1966 because Norm Blumenthal had a strange aversion to not spending his bosses' money to convert the show to color.

NBC was the first network to really push for color.  Shows like "Bonanza", which began in 1959, were in color from the very beginning.  Many daytime games from the late 50s-early 60s on NBC were in color.  In fact, when "Price is Right" moved from NBC to ABC in the mid-60s, it actually had to revert to black and white because ABC wasn't broadcasting that many shows in color - it was too expensive for them to do so.