$ale of the Century to GSN.

[Vahan_Nisanian]

I was poking through the old boards on gsn.com, and thanks to Tyshaun Miles, I found a sample of GS ratings on USA. This is USA\'s top 5 from the 11/1992 issue of Cableworld Magazine. The last three were game shows:

 

1. Murder She Wrote 2.7

2. Quantum Leap 2.1

3. $25,000 Pyramid 1.7

4. Scrabble 1.6

5. Press Your Luck 1.5

[BrandonFG]

Sale didn\'t last as long on USA as some of the other shows (about two years), but by Nov. 92, it had only been on for two months. If someone has ratings from mid-to-late-1993 or so, I\'d love to see if the numbers went up then.

 

IIRC, USA never really advertised Sale that often, whereas I distinctly remember commercials for Pyramid and Scrabble.

 

/Ahh the days when USA\'s afternoon programming was something other than NCIS or Law and Order reruns

[TLEberle]

Another thing to consider; how many cable channels could you get in the early nineties? Our boxes either went to 40 or 70. (And thanks for the heads up about those last three titles being game shows; that\'s very helpful.)

[tyshaun1]

I was poking through the old boards on gsn.com, and thanks to Tyshaun Miles, I found a sample of GS ratings on USA. This is USA\'s top 5 from the 11/1992 issue of Cableworld Magazine. The last three were game shows:

 

1. Murder She Wrote 2.7

2. Quantum Leap 2.1

3. $25,000 Pyramid 1.7

4. Scrabble 1.6

5. Press Your Luck 1.5

And to add to this, IIRC, USA\'s cable universe at the time was around 60 million. So their top 3 games were averaging about a million per show.

 

Tyshaun

[BrandonFG]

Another thing to consider; how many cable channels could you get in the early nineties? Our boxes either went to 40 or 70. 

IIRC, our cable box went up to about 60 or 65...anything above that was premium/Pay-Per-View/skin flicks, and I think it topped out at 99 (non-consecutively). I remember being in 5th grade (1992), and being amazed by the concept of a 500-channel universe. I\'ll gladly take the cable of 20 years ago.

[clemon79]

When I was living in San Jose in the early \'90s I was introduced to cable boxes that had internal A-B switches, so while the box itself only went from 2-99, there was 2A-99A and then 2B-99B.

[BrandonFG]

Can\'t remember if it was in Virginia or elsewhere, but I vaguely remember seeing A/B boxes too. Might\'ve been when visiting my grandparents in Dallas.

[aaron sica]

In the early \'90s, where I lived, our cable box went from 2-40, and then 98 and 99. 98 was HSN and 99 was QVC. I always wondered if those two 98 and 99 channels were commonly used for home shopping in other places....

[cmjb13]

I posted this some time ago on the old board, but here\'s a picture of Jim from 2009.

 

http://www.shambhalapottery.blogspot.com/search/label/Jim%20and%20Edwina

 

(Scroll down to 4th photo)

[That Don Guy]

When I was living in San Jose in the early \'90s I was introduced to cable boxes that had internal A-B switches, so while the box itself only went from 2-99, there was 2A-99A and then 2B-99B.

 

IIRC, in the early 1990s, the system where I lived supported 60 channels if you had a cable-ready TV, but the boxes only went up to 40 for some reason.  98 and 99 were also \"specialty\" channels; I\'m pretty sure both were used for NBC\'s Summer Olympics Triplecast in 1992.  San Francisco, on the other hand, had A/B systems (for those of you who don\'t know what that is: two separate cable lines went into each house, and there was an A/B switch at each TV to choose which one you wanted - yes, this did make VCR programming a pain, as you had to remember to set the box to A or B accordingly, and too bad if you wanted to record two things while you were away, and one was on an A channel while the other was on a B).

[WhammyPower]

My old church built a new school building in 1996, complete with moving the old dial (!) TVs with an A/B switch attached to them.  That is the only reason I know that those switches exist.

[Vahan_Nisanian]

I tried researching old issues of Broadcasting Magazine to see which stations carried the syndicated edition of this show (which debuted on January 07, 1985). There didn\'t seem to be a lot of information. I did learn two things, though:

 

1) The series didn\'t seem to get higher than 6.2 in terms of ratings.


2) It was only carried by, like 32 stations. Seemed like Syndie $ale was THAT big of a bomb. Here\'s just some of them:


WLS-TV: Chicago

WXYZ-TV: Detroit

WPXI-TV: Pittsburgh

WTVJ-TV: Miami

KIRO-TV: Seattle

WABC-TV/WOR-TV: New York

WNCT-TV: Greenville

Columbus, OH

Tampa, FL

KXAS-TV: Dallas

 

If you know any of the others I overlooked, feel free to mention them.

[Pyramid80]

[quote name=\"gameshowlover87\" post=\"309986\" timestamp=\"1369595005\"]I tried researching old issues of Broadcasting Magazine to see which stations carried the syndicated edition of this show (which debuted on January 07, 1985). There didn\'t seem to be a lot of information. I did learn two things, though:
 
1) The series didn\'t seem to get higher than 6.2 in terms of ratings.
2) It was only carried by, like 32 stations. Seemed like Syndie $ale was THAT big of a bomb. Here\'s just some of them:
WLS-TV: Chicago
WXYZ-TV: Detroit
WPXI-TV: Pittsburgh
WTVJ-TV: Miami
KIRO-TV: Seattle
WABC-TV/WOR-TV: New York
WNCT-TV: Greenville
Columbus, OH
Tampa, FL
KXAS-TV: Dallas
 
If you know any of the others I overlooked, feel free to mention them.[/quote]

Although syndie $ale didn\'t air in Birmingham in January 1985, I do know that by July that WVTM-TV had replaced syndie Wheel with $ale.  Birmingham did not air the NBC version.

[Esoteric Eric]

WQTV: Boston (Channel 68), where $ale was a \"summer replacement\" for reruns of Dallas.  (Jim Perry even taped a special insert to that effect to welcome Beantown viewers.)

[Matt Ottinger]

WSYM in Lansing