APRIL 20, 1979
Match Game 79 aired for the last time on CBS, after 6 years and 1,445 episodes (with 10 leftovers still in the can). The last MG7X celebrity panel this week was comprised of Fred Grandy, Brett Somers, Charles Nelson Reilly, Connie Stevens, Bill Cullen and Marcia Wallace.
The end began in 1977, when CBS made the fatal decision to move Match Game 77 to the morning @ 10 AM (EDT), to serve as a follow up for the hour-long The Price Is Right. The resulting declining ratings prompted CBS to return Match Game 77 to the afternoon, but the damage was irreparable, as it continued to decline in ratings in its last 2 seasons on the network.
Match Game 79 was replaced a week later by a popular new game show, the Burt Sugarman production Whew!, which, in turn, replaced another Goodson-Todman mainstay, The Price Is Right, which scooted back into the morning position, @ 11 Eastern/10 Central, where it remains to this very day. Match Game transferred to daily syndication that very fall as simply Match Game (without, alas and alack, the tried-and-true 2-digit year designation in the title), where it remained until September 1982. (The weekly nighttime Match Game PM would continue its run through September 1981.)
