Some thoughts on "tweaking"

[DrBear]

A lot has been said in this forum about how Goodson-Todman would "tweak" a format to get it just right. Sometimes, the tweaks were obvious; sometimes they weren't.

The current B&W Overnite run of the original To Tell The Truth shows what they can do with a good game, and interestingly, it comes shortly after What's Going On?, which needed more than tweaking.

At base, they're both offshoots of the successful What's My Line? as both involve educated guessing of a problem. (As did about a dozen other G-T shows.) But the situations were different. What's Going On? had two major flaws. One was that it was too general, and the other was, as mentioned here, that it was too ambitious for technical abilities of the early 1950s. "Tweaking" wouldn't have helped here; this game needed major changes, from host to format.

But with TTTT, Bob Stewart brought in a game that was so good, it was still being played the same way in 2001. All that needed to be tweaked was a bit of the gameplay - the questioning and how votes were revealed. And we're seeing that happen in recent outings.

First, the panel had more than one chance to question the impostors. Now, it's one general round and then a "final question." I'm not sure when it will go to the familiar format but it should be soon.

It's also interesting to see little fillips being added — Bud Collyer's "don't you forget to tell the truth" signoff after a weak gag of the panel giving fake names for the first few shows, the showing of the affadavit over the contestants being done briefly, the contestants standing in place on the platform rather than walking on as the music plays, and the like.

And they're just getting to one big change — having the panel explain their votes, rather than Bud just reading them off.

None of these are major, but the changes made the game more enjoyable, and they've stuck with every version so far.

[whewfan]

WML had a few tweaks with the format too over the first few weeks...

The first show had John Daly seated adjacent to the panel. The contestants signed in on a large pad of paper instead of a chalkboard. The panel itself was all local journalists. Only Dorothy Kilgallen would survive through most of the run of WML.
The "wild guesses" were also there. The first show also had one major problem... it was devoid of humor, and there was no comic relief on the panel.

It wasn't long until comic relief was added to the panel, including Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, Fred Allen, and numerous others. Mark Goodson also had writers supply panelists with questions that wouldn't help guess the occupation of the guest, but would get large laughs. Once the scandals surfaced, Goodson feared his supplying questions would be misinterpreted as "rigging", but at this point, the well established panel of Dorothy, Arlene and Bennett and others were well versed enough with the game to keep it entertaining.

The wild guess and extra look at the contestant was eliminated, mostly because almost nobody guessed an occupation on a wild guess. The panelists never took that portion of the game seriously anyway, so it was wisely eliminated.

The mystery guest portion originally worked just like the rest of the game, where the panelist questioned until getting a "no" answer, but Goodson realized this often lead to one panelist getting lucky and guessing the mystery guest without giving the rest of the panel a chance. This would be unfair to the mystery guest and the panel. So, they changed the questioning to one question per panelist in turn until they got 10 "no" answers. Sometimes the "no" answers weren't counted if they knew that there wasn't much time left in the show.

During the Bruner/Blyden run, Soupy Sales proved to be very apt at guessing mystery guests, whether it was recognizing something in the voice, or some other logic. Soupy was later told he HAD to be honest about how he was able to nail the identity so quickly. To avoid too much of this, Gil Fates introduced "Fate's Law", meaning that one incorrect guess of a mystery guest and you were out of the game. Not all mystery guests were under "Fate's Law", but Bruner or Blyden would warn "Fate's Law prevails" when needed.

[Gromit]

[quote name=\'whewfan\' date=\'May 15 2005, 08:31 PM\']The wild guess and extra look at the contestant was eliminated, mostly because almost nobody guessed an occupation on a wild guess. The panelists never took that portion of the game seriously anyway, so it was wisely eliminated.

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I always felt it was the opposite reason it was changed, that they were guessing correctly too often. Of course some of that perception is sped up because of the daily showings.

It was always horrible tv, when someone would toss out "I think he juggles chimps!", then an awkward "Well, actually you're right" followed by a "Thank you, go home, next contestant please".

[Dbacksfan12]

[quote name=\'Gromit\' date=\'May 17 2005, 02:57 AM\']It was always horrible tv, when someone would toss out "I think he juggles chimps!", then an awkward "Well, actually you're right" followed by a "Thank you, go home, next contestant please".
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In this situation, what was protocol for a prize? Did the contestant get anything?

[davemackey]

[quote name=\'Modor\' date=\'May 17 2005, 04:05 AM\'][quote name=\'Gromit\' date=\'May 17 2005, 02:57 AM\']It was always horrible tv, when someone would toss out "I think he juggles chimps!", then an awkward "Well, actually you're right" followed by a "Thank you, go home, next contestant please".
[/quote]
In this situation, what was protocol for a prize? Did the contestant get anything?

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John would flip the cards to give the contestant a few bucks.