GSN Ratings Tanking...

[Chelsea Thrasher]

[quote name=\'Mr. Armadillo\' post=\'167025\' date=\'Oct 16 2007, 06:12 PM\'] Doesn't practically the entire Central time zone get Jeopardy at 4:30 and Wheel at 6:30 or something similar?
 [/quote]

Only in some instances.  I've seen quite a few markets that air Jeopardy at 6:00, with Wheel following at 6:30.

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'Gromit\' post=\'167154\' date=\'Oct 17 2007, 05:21 PM\']
I still think that GSN needs to re-learn the concept of Variety.[/quote]
Yes, they definitely need to ink deals for more boff skeins.

[Eric Paddon]

What I hope the extended run of NYSI and Trivia Trap will mean is that once a short-lived show in this overnight slot gets through its run, GSN can then showcase another short-run title that they can get through in six months to a year and kind of do it in a "here's your one chance to get this show for who knows how long" kind of way.     If GSN would just once get through the entire run of their holdings of $20K (a little less than two years), Pass The Buck, Chain Reaction and Break The Bank (which only got one third or half of their run done even when they were on during the DP),  that would tap out all the things I'd still like to see GSN do based on what currently exists in their holdings.

[cmjb13]

Will there be any upcoming episodes of NYSI that haven't been seen since their original broadcast?

Or has GSN aired the entire run before?

[irismason42]

Well, GSN has aired the entire NYSI series once or twice prior to October '97 and even prior to the Steve Kaplan's J! theme era days and last night's show was the same as the one that was uploaded on PoC last year.

[Steve_Bier]

Yeah....um......what she/he/it said...

(Go home, Iris!)

[xavier45]

September was just a sad month for GSN. For the first time in a long time, GSN was number 50 of 50 in Cableworld.com's ratings. The channel finished at number 50 with a .2 and 153,000 people watching the network in September.

So from the looks of it, Millionaire did not help them at all, Karn did not help them at all, and should we be suprised Chain Reaction did not help them at all. Now could they look at the classics and maybe putting some in primetime?

http://www.cable360.net/cableworld/departments/ratings/

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'xavier45\' post=\'167229\' date=\'Oct 18 2007, 01:15 PM\']So from the looks of it, Millionaire did not help them at all, Karn did not help them at all, and should we be suprised Chain Reaction did not help them at all. Now could they look at the classics and maybe putting some in primetime?[/quote]
You could also make the argument that if it weren't for Millionaire, Karn and Chain Reaction, their ratings might have been even worse.  I agree that at .2, it pretty much doesn't matter what you try, but don't use the numbers to "prove" something that isn't necessarily so.

[Ian Wallis]

The only episodes of Now You See It that haven't been run since their original broadcasts are Chuck Henry's.

If GSN would just once get through the entire run of their holdings of $20K (a little less than two years), Pass The Buck, Chain Reaction and Break The Bank (which only got one third or half of their run done even when they were on during the DP), that would tap out all the things I'd still like to see GSN do based on what currently exists in their holdings.

Agreed - especially on Break the Bank.  Unfortunately, they only aired it once a week when it was on the schedule.  Since they only seem to air Goodson-Todman short-lived shows though, there doesn't seem to be much hope does there?  Still, it would be a shame if they couldn't run everything in their library at least once.  I know they've run pretty well everything from Goodson-Todman at least once.

[Eric Paddon]

Yes, the Sunday night only airings of BTB, and weekends only on CR and PTB (which itself got yanked partway through the DP for infomercials) is ultimately the most frustrating thing about their scheduling selection of what they had during the DP.     Go! was the only short-lived series of note to get through its entire run during the DP (with one episode skipped from the week with Lynn Redgrave-Richard Gilliand).

Whether "Mindreaders" exists or not, and how much more of "The Better Sex" exists is the only remaining question regarding late 70s Goodson shows.

[CaseyAbell]

The September number is no surprise. I guesstimated that GSN did about a 160K average for third quarter, 2007, based on the Multichannel story. The network did 175K in July, so the 153K in September is pretty much in line with the estimate.

Matt's right about the argument for more oldies in primetime. Of course, what they're mostly showing in primetime right now are oldies - just not as old as some people on the board would like. The idea that even older shows would do better is dodgy, to say the least. Not that GSN could do much worse with anything in primetime.

Interestingly, the network is promoting the living daylights out of the very old shows in daytime. (I kind of like the "Rayburn's Eleven" shtik.) Maybe they've decided to be just a rerun outlet and not spend a dime on anything original. Or they've been forced to that strategy by the terrible numbers.

Hate to say it, but it must be bitter irony for GSN that reruns of Deal or No Deal have pushed CNBC above them in the primetime pecking order.

[Jimmy Owen]

I'm a game show fan, but I have to admit I've been watching CNBC more than GSN in prime.  I like the ins and outs of the stock market and DoND.

However, you never know what will catch fire in the world of reruns.  "Star Trek" was much more popular in syndication than it ever was on the network.  Same is true of "The Brady Bunch" and "The Odd Couple."  On the other hand, there were some big network hits that didn't perform well in syndication, for example, "Fantasy Island" and "Rhoda."

USA ran "Hot Potato" and other short-run games for a good deal longer than their original runs, so you never know what will work until you try, though GSN may run into flack from cable operators if it runs 30 year old reruns.  I'm happy with GSN's daytime and late-night skeds for the most part, so I'm okay with watching something other than GSN in prime.

[TLEberle]

[quote name=\'Jimmy Owen\' post=\'167446\' date=\'Oct 20 2007, 02:17 PM\']USA ran "Hot Potato" and other short-run games for a good deal longer than their original runs, so you never know what will work until you try, though GSN may run into flack from cable operators if it runs 30 year old reruns.  [/quote]That was something that surprised me; to come home and there were game show reruns on USA. (And Family Channel, so obviously it wasn't just one channel.) Oh, to be a fly on the wall when there was the meeting to get the rights to LMAD and other stuff.

But what's the difference between a rerun from 1977 as opposed to 1987 or 1997? After all, isn't that what GSN is in the business of? Reruns?

[Ian Wallis]

But what's the difference between a rerun from 1977 as opposed to 1987 or 1997? After all, isn't that what GSN is in the business of? Reruns?

We'd like to think so...and I'd love to see 30-year old reruns in primetime.  If it still has some sort of audience, why not?  (Just ask Andy Griffith!)

I wonder about those USA days.  Do you think they held onto shows like Hot Potato, Face the Music and Pat Finn's Joker's Wild for so long because licensing old titles was tougher at that time?  When many of those shows were on USA, it was when cable was just starting to take off.  Probably nobody knew if it would be a hit, and what would end up being a hit.  Maybe they just tried a few lesser titles to see how they would do.  They didn't get into the bigger titles (like Press Your Luck or $25,000 Pyramid) until a few years later.  Just speculation...

Interestingly, CBN had reruns of Blockbusters around that time.  If they could license that, I wonder why they didn't try for more Goodson stuff back then.  Maybe our ideal GSN could have started sooner.

[Jimmy Owen]

IIRC, the only Goodson shows CBN had were also those that were distributed off-net by Firestone, so I'm thinking CBN dealt with Firestone rather than Goodson itself.

Do you remember the interactive game show block on the Family Channel?  That sure looked to me to be a pilot of what FAM's proposed Game Show Channel would have looked like if they had launched.  I know Randy West was there, so maybe he could shed some light?