American Dream Derby taped finale on Monday

[alfonzos]

This is an article from Sunday's Los Angeles Times sports page:

Cable television channel GSN, formerly known as the Game Show Network, is scheduled to televise the finale of "American Dream Derby" on Monday at 4 p.m. from Santa Anita.

In this reality horse racing show, the first of its kind, a field of 12 contestants, after undergoing a crash course in horse training and handicapping, has been pared down to eight. Now someone is set to take home the grand prize of $250,000 and a stable of eight thoroughbreds.

" 'Dream Derby' has a lot of bells and buzzers," GSN President Rich Cronin said. "It's a lot harder doing this huge event than producing game shows. We're dealing with very high-strung animals. They kick, they bite, and they're difficult to clean up after. But enough about the contestants."

[sshuffield70]

[quote name=\'alfonzos\' date=\'Feb 22 2005, 01:24 PM\']This is an article from Sunday's Los Angeles Times sports page:

Cable television channel GSN, formerly known as the Game Show Network, is scheduled to televise the finale of "American Dream Derby" on Monday at 4 p.m. from Santa Anita.

In this reality horse racing show, the first of its kind, a field of 12 contestants, after undergoing a crash course in horse training and handicapping, has been pared down to eight. Now someone is set to take home the grand prize of $250,000 and a stable of eight thoroughbreds.

" 'Dream Derby' has a lot of bells and buzzers," GSN President Rich Cronin said. "It's a lot harder doing this huge event than producing game shows. We're dealing with very high-strung animals. They kick, they bite, and they're difficult to clean up after. But enough about the contestants."

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And enough about Cronin.  Bring back game shows!

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'sshuffield70\' date=\'Feb 22 2005, 03:01 PM\'][quote name=\'alfonzos\' date=\'Feb 22 2005, 01:24 PM\']This is an article from Sunday's Los Angeles Times sports page:

Cable television channel GSN, formerly known as the Game Show Network, is scheduled to televise the finale of "American Dream Derby" on Monday at 4 p.m. from Santa Anita.

In this reality horse racing show, the first of its kind, a field of 12 contestants, after undergoing a crash course in horse training and handicapping, has been pared down to eight. Now someone is set to take home the grand prize of $250,000 and a stable of eight thoroughbreds.

" 'Dream Derby' has a lot of bells and buzzers," GSN President Rich Cronin said. "It's a lot harder doing this huge event than producing game shows. We're dealing with very high-strung animals. They kick, they bite, and they're difficult to clean up after. But enough about the contestants."

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And enough about Cronin.  Bring back game shows!

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As I've said before, if it wasn't for Rich Cronin, GSN would've become something else a lot sooner.  He kept the wolf from the door for 2 1/2 years and I can't imagine anyone else doing any better.

Until the circumstances of how American commercial television presently works, Cronin did the best job possible.  For his corporate masters, it wasn't enough and they demanded change.  He's trying to do what will draw the viewers that advertisers want and therefore draw advertisers and make his bosses happy.  So far, outside of the casino shows, it's not looking all that good.

It says something about the difficulties of the game show genre that it took almost 20 years of national cable television to get an all-game-show channel on the air.  Those difficulties have always been there and are not going to go away any time soon.  Under the circumstances, any bits of enjoyment we get from GSN should be appreciated--since you're not going to get them anywhere else.

[Jimmy Owen]

Before GSN came along, we had USA and CBN/FAM with an assist from Lifetime and Network daytime TV.  GSN put those guys out of the game show business, so it would be nice if they would stay true to the original vision.

[Dbacksfan12]

[quote name=\'Jimmy Owen\' date=\'Feb 22 2005, 04:17 PM\']Before GSN came along....Network daytime TV. [/quote]
By the time GSN launched, Price was the only show on network TV.

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'Jimmy Owen\' date=\'Feb 22 2005, 04:17 PM\']Before GSN came along, we had USA and CBN/FAM with an assist from Lifetime and Network daytime TV.  GSN put those guys out of the game show business, so it would be nice if they would stay true to the original vision.

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Personally, I think that USA was on its way out of game shows before GSN started (and GSN wasn't in enough homes to be considered any kind of competition until long after USA was out of the daytime game show business).

Granted, USA lost some of its repeat programming to GSN, but they were moving towards more original programming in the first place--and a different management team a few years later would've probably made the same decision to put the programming money in prime time and not waste it in daytime.

The last years of FAM before the Fox takeover did show a new friendliness towards game shows (how could they not be with Bob Boden in charge of daytime?), but even then Boden was interested in new programming instead of repeating old programming, as well he should be.