Author Topic: GSN January 2005 Schedule (Adlink (Read 25917 times)

CaseyAbell · « **Reply #30 on:** December 13, 2004, 11:56:22 AM »

I didn't follow Scott around, but both Let's Go Back and Extreme Gong are listed on his imdb page. Scott Sternberg and Scott Satin are both listed on EG's imdb page. AMC provides another reference for Scott Sternberg on EG. (Did he actually work on something called Mike Tyson: Portrait of the People's Champion??)

If I'm unfairly tarring Mr. Sternberg with Extreme Gross, I'll be the first to apologize.

clemon79 · « **Reply #31 on:** December 13, 2004, 12:04:27 PM »

[quote name=\'CaseyAbell\' date=\'Dec 13 2004, 09:56 AM\']If I'm unfairly tarring Mr. Sternberg with Extreme Gross, I'll be the first to apologize.

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Well, for obvious reasons I'm inclined to believe the AMC site over the IMDB, and I'm guessing that blurb on Sternberg came direct from his publicist in that case, so there's no reason for the information there to be inaccurate.

CaseyAbell · « **Reply #32 on:** December 13, 2004, 12:11:02 PM »

Google on "Scott Sternberg" "Extreme Gong" and you'll get several references. Either the web is conspiring to tie EG to Scott falsely, or he really did help produce the show.

zachhoran · « **Reply #33 on:** December 13, 2004, 12:17:20 PM »

As 2004 winds down, GSN has dropped four classic game shows from their lineup this year: LMAD, $100K Pyramid, WOF, and Win Lose or Draw. None of them are GT shows, odd as it may seem.

Dbacksfan12 · « **Reply #34 on:** December 13, 2004, 12:17:26 PM »

[quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Dec 13 2004, 11:48 AM\']Are we 100% sure about this? Are Scott Sternberg and Scott Satin the same person, or do I have something mixed up someplace?
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I seem to recall that at the end of EG, a "Scott Sternberg" production logo came up, with a short stinger as well. It resembled a grey curtain, and was in all lower case letters.

CaseyAbell · « **Reply #35 on:** December 13, 2004, 12:24:29 PM »

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As 2004 winds down, GSN has dropped four classic game shows from their lineup this year: LMAD, $100K Pyramid, WOF, and Win Lose or Draw. None of them are GT shows, odd as it may seem.

Maybe you should have suggested these four shows to the Times columnist. Of course, GSN has also added WBSM, Name's the Same and Perry Card Sharks in 2004, plus glimpses at the few remnants of Number Please and Winner Take All. Not to mention Street Smarts and Dog Eat Dog, though an age requirement for "classic-ness" might knock these shows out.

Read some of the posters on the TVLand board, and the age requirement is 24 years because nothing from the eighties and later can be considered "true classics." If you set the age requirement at thirty years, Feud goes bye-bye.

Had to laugh when the Times guy called Dodgeball "compelling." I like the show but I ain't feeling compelled to watch it. And Regis Millionaire is getting more classic looking all the time, as its three seasons recede into the past. Shows what a tricky label "classic" can be, and why I tend to avoid it. The word too easily turns into a debating point rather than an objective, agreed-upon definition.

zachhoran · « **Reply #36 on:** December 13, 2004, 12:28:52 PM »

[quote name=\'CaseyAbell\' date=\'Dec 13 2004, 12:24 PM\']

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As 2004 winds down, GSN has dropped four classic game shows from their lineup this year: LMAD, $100K Pyramid, WOF, and Win Lose or Draw. None of them are GT shows, odd as it may seem.

Maybe you should have suggested these four shows to the Times columnist. Of course, GSN has also added WBSM, Name's the Same and Perry Card Sharks in 2004. Not to mention Street Smarts and Dog Eat Dog, though an age requirement for "classic-ness" might knock these shows out.

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WBSM and Street Smarts and DED are probably too recent to be considered classic. GSN also brought back MG90, and even pulled out an episode of Feud 1994 for the first time since the Dark Period. Not to mention they've been airing episodes of PYL not seen since their CBS airings 19 years ago.

CaseyAbell · « **Reply #37 on:** December 13, 2004, 01:55:09 PM »

Don't want to set off another round of arguments on what is a "classic" TV show and what isn't. But I have to tell a funny story that's actually true.

American commercial television, of course, only dates back to a little before 1950. Saturday I happened to wander into our local public library for the first time in a long time. I noticed they had a set of Encyclopedia Britannica's Great Books, second edition. This edition added some more books to the original set and controversially dropped a few, sort of like replacing Password with Name's the Same, only it was Jane Austen for Henry Fielding.

Mostly irrelevant aside from this math major: the new set dropped Apollonius' Conics, which is only one of the finest math books ever written. Mortimer Adler should have been shot for that offense alone. What's next, dropping Archimedes? I'm gonna get on the GBN (Great Books Network) message board and yell about bringing the classics back...smile.

Anyway, in the introduction to the set, the editors announced that nothing after 1950 was even considered for inclusion. I swear, I thought about our endless debates about what is old enough to be a game show "classic" when I read those words.

By their standard vitually no television game show could qualify as "classic." Which makes some sense. The time since 1950 looks like pretty brief when compared to the age on the Aeneid or Hamlet.

The editors even threw up their hands and admitted they couldn't be sure that their selections from 1900-1950 would look truly "classic" a hundred years from now.

I know, literary standards aren't appropriate for TV shows, as any TV critic will tell you with a very loud laugh. But it just shows how slippery the concept of a "classic" can be. And how age requirements for "classic-ness" can fluctuate wildly from one world to another.

Now that I think about it, though, some of the works in that Great Books collection date from as late as the 1930s. So they stand in much the same age relationship to Shakespeare and to the present as, say, WBSM stands to Name's the Same. So is WBSM a classic just like Name's the Same?

This is getting too metaphysical for me.

SplitSecond · « **Reply #38 on:** December 13, 2004, 02:02:40 PM »

Casey, I think I speak for a lot of us when I say this:

Puff, puff, *pass*.

clemon79 · « **Reply #39 on:** December 13, 2004, 02:44:25 PM »

[quote name=\'SplitSecond\' date=\'Dec 13 2004, 12:02 PM\']Casey, I think I speak for a lot of us when I say this:

Puff, puff, *pass*.

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"Puff puff give! Puff puff give! Yer screwin' up the rotation!"

CaseyAbell · « **Reply #40 on:** December 13, 2004, 03:28:18 PM »

I figured I'd take some grief for this one. So...

Short version: "classic" can mean so many different things, it winds up meaning not much at all. Something forty years old might be called a classic in one field, but it would qualify as a spring chicken in another.

Jimmy Owen · « **Reply #41 on:** December 13, 2004, 03:37:39 PM »

I just like good shows, It isn't the age of the shows that matters. Classic, to me, is a show that has stood the test of time and is well-crafted. In the world of books, a 10 cent pulp novel of the 40's, old as it is, cannot be called a "classic book," though it can be appreciated as kitsch.

CaseyAbell · « **Reply #42 on:** December 13, 2004, 04:11:52 PM »

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Classic, to me, is a show that has stood the test of time and is well-crafted.

Agreed, but the "test of time" can mean so many different things. To the editors of a book series spanning 2,500 years, the test of time couldn't be met by anything less than 50 years old. At least they couldn't be sure about it. If you read this admittedly stiff post from Mortimer Adler, the chief editor of the series, they ain't sure about some books that are hundreds of years old. (Mr. Adler died several years ago, by the way.)

TV critics and game show freaks like us chatter about a medium that is barely fifty years old in its entirety. So we've got a way different definition of the "test of time" or "classic-ness" or "greatness" or whatever you want to call it. Is WML a classic game show? Almost everybody on this board would say, oh yeah, sure. But if you're gonna admit something fifty years old to classic-ness, it would seem pretty strange - by literary standards - to deny the title to something that's "only" forty-five years less old.

So are the literary guys right about more perspective being needed to judge if something really will survive the test of time? I dunno. It just seems to me that the word "classic" is tossed around TV shows more to make a point than to give a solid definition.

When I say Vertigo is a classic movie or Dick Van Dyke is a classic TV show, I'm not really saying that these things have stood the same test of time that Hamlet has. This would be pretty ridiculous, no? What I'm actually saying is: I really like Vertigo and Dick Van Dyke. So maybe I should just avoid the "classic" label altogether.

SplitSecond · « **Reply #43 on:** December 13, 2004, 04:27:26 PM »

[quote name=\'CaseyAbell\' date=\'Dec 13 2004, 01:28 PM\']I figured I'd take some grief for this one. So...

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No grief intended, just some gentle ribbing for such a preposterously slippery non-argument.

CaseyAbell · « **Reply #44 on:** December 13, 2004, 04:33:24 PM »

We'll have to disagree on the argument, because I'm not even sure I'm making one...other than that "classic" is, to use your language, a preposterously slippery term.