The great glut of games of 1975 began its very gradual but eventually very telling wane at 4:28pm on this date thirty years ago (11/26/1975).
Up to now, usually when a game show was cancelled, there was some mollification as that meant a new game would quite likely premiere in its time period or at least in some vacant spot on the daytime schedule created by this cancellation.
But when You Don't Say was pulled its replacement was The Edge Of Night having just moved over from CBS.
The expansion of As The World Turns to a full hour of compelling drama was not so terrible as the thirty minutes it inherited was courtesy of the move of The Edge Of Night.
However, Give-N-Take was dumped to make way for reruns of All In The Family.
Mercifully, 3 For The Money was discontinued two days later to allow for the temporary 1-hour format granted to Wheel Of Fortune so at least a game took its spot on the NBC grid.
Soon further soap opera length extensions and sitcom reruns would displace our beloved games. Sanford And Son, Chico and the Man, The Jeffersons, Alice, Diff'rent Strokes and others.
I kept the local pin store in business when Break The Bank was sacrificed for One Life To Live and General Hospital to become 45-minute shows as I continually stuck those pins in Fred Silverman voodoo dolls.
How did we get to that lowly state? Programmers who detested games? Petitions by misguided soap opera fans? How? I ask.