The Top 14 Game Shows of All Time - Part III - Graphite! Aristophanes! Blank Tape!

Its that time of the year folks… pitchers and catchers reported today (yippee!!) and March Madness is just around the corner… that means… its time for our version of the Final Four as we present Part III of … the top 14 game shows ever…. And we start with….

4. THE PRICE IS RIGHT…. If you talk about comfort food.. there's nothing like being home sick one day (or sleeping in on President’s Day) and flipping on the TV at 11am and seeing…. that The View's Meredith Viera still looks hot, and Star Jones is still ugly. Nah, Im only kidding… The Price is Right continues its incredible run… and remains like an old reliable friend at 11 am! If you watch it now and watched it 30 years ago.. its still the same show! The models are different, but every day Bob Barker who is now in his mid 80s holds down the fort…. and still has all his marbles to run from set to set to play all the goofy pricing games.

From a business standpoint, the show is a juggernaut… CBS Daytime has kicked butt in the ratings for years and years and years.. And TPIR is the linchpin, In addition, it is the ONLY NETWORK game show… all the rest are syndicated,,… and it has been the only network game show since the early 90s when ABC bailed out on a revamped Match Game with Ross Schafer, and NBC gave up on its morning lineup of To Tell the Truth and Classic Concentration. Even CBS kicked out network remakes of The Pyramid, Wheel of Fortune and Family Feud…

The show is just amazing .. And it just might never end! .The key to a successful game show is its consistency. That’s why game shows are comfort food,. Especially to someone like me with such a hodge podge brain. They have structure and rules and if you look at TPIR from the mid 70s, its exactly the same as it is now 30 years later except the prices are way off.... 4 contestants on contestant row are picked right out of the audience which gives anyone who goes to watch the show a chance to win. Then the ones that advance go to the wheel for a chance at the showcase and then at the end you hope they both overbid. Okay, maybe that’s just me.. But remember I watch Olympic Ice Skating to see the skaters fall on their tushies…

One cool thing was the genius in the 70s on contestant row who realized the 3 prior bidders had high bids so he went with 1 dollar.. And won.. The strategy is still used to this day with some people in the 3rd position bidding 1 dollar only to see his neighbor go last and screw him by bidding 2 dollars. The Family Guy did a brilliant spoof of this and had the contestants get into a vicious fight.

Incidentally, the older version in the 60s was pretty cool too. I’ve seen it on GSN and bidding actually went beyond the first round and they didn’t have all the bells and whistles like the Barker version. They also didn’t have contestants row back then,… but from the moment when the late Johnny Olsen summoned the first contestant on the 70s Bob Barker version to “Come on Down”… a legend and a catch phrase was born.

And what happens to this cash cow when Bob Barker retires? As mentioned in Part II, I used to think that Jeff Probst might take over.. but that was pre- Survivor. And it looks like Survivor is here to stay.. Especially if they do gimmicks like Thursday night’s episode where bikini clad women wrestle inside five rings that look very similar to the ones on the Olympics that nobody seems to be watching.

Are you ready for my pick to succeed Bob Barker? (And they’re gonna keep the show running post Bob since it makes so much money)… The weather guy from the CBS Morning Show… Dave Price.. Pun intended. I don’t watch him that early in the AM on CBS, but I remember when he was on Channel 5 how wacky and crazy he used to be, and he just might have what it takes to take over a game show…. Although replacing Barker may be impossible. Just ask NBC when Pat Sajak quit the network version of Wheel of Fortune and was replaced by………….. Rolf Bernirschke!

Long live Bob Barker!!

3. PASSWORD - If you are too young to remember Allen Ludden, you don’t know what you missed! I hope I look that good when I’m old. What a classy dude.. Allen presided over Password for years and years until a stroke knocked him off the air and ultimately killed him in the early 1980s. Tom Kennedy and Bert Convy also hosted the Plus and Super versions rather well… but Password was just a classic game. One player gives a one word clue.. The other one guesses it.. Simple yet quite entertaining… especially that memorable Odd Couple episode where Felix and Oscar go on the show and the Password is pencil.. Oscar says “Lead”….Felix’s guess is …. Graphite! Aristophanes! Ridiculous! What a classic!

I don’t remember the earlier editions too well.. And I vaguely remember a celebrity version called Password All Stars when the show ran on daytime on ABC in the mid 70s before the network canned it.. But it wasn’t gone too long.. NBC brought it back as Password Plus with new gimmicks like a puzzle board and alphabetics… kind of like the Pyramid where you get 60 seconds to get the contestant to say 10 words. Tom Kennedy took it over after Ludden got sick and the show ran a few more years.

The network brought it back again a few years later,.. This time as Super Password with Bert Convy. The show was the same with a few minor rule changes and a smaller set.. But for the most part, the game remained the same. However once it was cancelled in the late 80s it never got remade after that for some bizarre reason! But as a game it’s a classic and it comes in at 3.


The hits just keep on coming on Nate’s Blog Top 14 as we head to Number One and now time for a long distance dedication. Susie from Kansas writes… My mommy just met a new guy and they started shacking up. Here‘s the problem Casey… I have a cute little toy poodle named Fifi.. And her shack up has a big out of control dalmation named Killer. Casey…. For my entertainment….could you play… the theme song to Dog Eat Dog??

Ok Dog Eat Dog didn’t make the list… Lets get back to the countdown…with number 2

2. THE PETER MARSHALL HOLLYWOOD SQUARES - The original and still the best comes in 2nd on my list. This is not to be confused with the 3 remakes hosted respectively by Jon Bauman (well get to that later), John Davidson, and Tom Bergeron. I actually liked the Davidson version better than the Bergeron version… but the Marshall one was still by far the best!.

The show was anchored by center square Paul Lynde and created a celebrity environment that was used even better by the show that comes in at #1. The concept was allow them to loosen up and have fun on a game show…. I have seen the old pre HS panel shows on GSN, and none of them gave the stars the freedom that they were allowed on the squares. But when HS came along.. (and if Im wrong on this… please correct me), Marshall became the first host to set his ego aside and play straight man to each star’s wisecrack answers. Oh yeah, the show is tic tac toe.. Easy enough.. The contestant earns a square by agreeing or disagreeing with the answer given by the celebrity sitting in the corresponding square. But early on, the stars started off shooting wisecracks to the questions, and the show took on a whole new meaning. Comedy writers were hired, and Paul Lynde was brought in as the center square along with other regulars Wally Cox, Rose Marie, Charley Weaver, and later George Gobel. In my naïve youth, I didn’t realize that the stars had the joke answers written for them.. I just thought they were that funny and quick witted and as a result I developed a strong admiration and appreciation of them. That was the time when I started to really like game shows because it gave you a window into the clever humor of famous people.

The show ran on NBC until June 20th 1980 to make room for the daytime David Letterman show. After its cancellation, it went right into daytime syndication (not to be confused with the nighttime syndication that GSN briefly ran in the early 2000s to mind bogglingly low ratings!). Strangely enough the show moved to a casino in Las Vegas owned by Meshulam Riklis and the audience was set up as a dinner theater.. So the camera cover shot of the lower level was actually blocked by a bunch of goofballs who spent their comps at HS instead of the buffet…(Or maybe it was a buffet.. You never did see a waiter.) Oh yeah.. One aspect of the deal.. Riklis’ hot little wife Pia Zadora had to get her own square as part of the deal.

One other highlight was the “secret square”… We knew who it was.. But nobody else did.. And when the secret square was picked… sirens went off and excitement was in the air… no funny answers here, buster.. This is it… I also got a kick out of hot stars who got to model politically incorrect fur coats on the spiral staircases that connected the 3 levels of the set.

By the way the Squares has the catchiest theme song in game show history… and is actually my cell phone’s ring tone. Second place for theme song goes to Whew… which had a catchy opening during its brief run in 1979- 80... (Close calls… narrow escapes… ) and who the heck can even pronounce the word “whew”??

HS fizzled out in the early 80s…(right after they changed the set and theme song.. although I just downloaded the new theme today and it actually is pretty snazzy) and came back in syndication in ‘86 with John Davidson. I liked it… it ran a few years and yet another edition recently ended a 6 year run with Dancing with the Stars host Tom Bergeron. (Not to be confused with Skating with the Celebrities starring the girl from the movie Buffy the Marriage Breaker. She hooked up with her skating partner, and he left his 9 months pregnant wife!) The remakes stayed basically the same, but its hard to recapture the magic of the old stars, and even though Davidson and Bergeron tried their best.. neither of them could pull the show together like Peter Marshall. I’m sure it will come back again in a few years…

And now ladies and gentlemen… the number one game show of all time… Deal or No Deal.. You got the models… you got the banker… you got the suitcases.. You got Howie… What more do you need?? Ok, Im kidding..

Ladies and Gentlemen…. The all time Number One Game Show of all time…..

1. THE GENE RAYBURN MATCH GAME - duh…

One day I was at the VCR department at K Mart.. And there in the flesh was Gene Rayburn!! He asked me if I knew where he could find “blank tape”… Hmmm,.. I started humming the think music…blank tape… Is it “duct” tape you want, Gene?? He started to get annoyed… “I know.. Masking tape…”.. I think he was gonna shoot me… “Uh how about ‘scotch” tape… Blank Tape he yelled… I want blank tape.. At which point he reached into his Brooks Brothers suit and pulled out his long microphone and started smacking me with it.

At that point I woke up from a horrible dream!

Flashback to 1973, The summer was coming to an end… and I was getting ready to start 3rd Grade. I was just about to turn 8, and my mom mentioned that maybe I should watch other shows besides cartoons. It was the week of Labor Day and the next thing you know this orange thingie starts spinning and I’m seeing Morey Amsterdam, Loretta Swit, and Ruta Lee (from High Rollers).. I started watching and I haven’t stopped… and interestingly enough I remember the panel for some bizarre reason… and it just so happens that very same panel is on this wks 3:30 GSN repeats!

The magic formula…Take one straight man host, (thanks for the idea Peter Marshall), six celebrities, write some wacky questions,… and you have a game show whose incredible popularity defies logic. Even Gene admitted, the game in itself is kind of silly,… but the chemistry between Gene and the six celebrities made for a fantastic show that continues on high rated reruns on GSN and websites made by fans who love the show more than myself…. Brett Somers, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Richard Dawson (for the first five years) were the glue that held the show together and their silly joking along combined with what was going on on HS really made these people seem to be hysterically funny and basically the type of people one would spend a half hour with each day. I used to watch the show and felt I knew the celebs… they were like uncles and aunts to me!! Of course I didn’t understand the jokes… and as I watch the show on GSN… I’m kind of surprised my mom even let me watch it… but it is my fave show of all time….

GSN knows the show is hot.. it’s the most popular show on the network… To me.. I equate it with Babe Ruth baseball games surfacing on ESPN… Ruth was the best player of all time bar none.. He dominated his era and set records that took years to break…. Hey pitchers and catchers reported today… its baseball season folks. Well if ESPN showed old Ruth games… they would have the same impact on sports fans as GSN showing old MG reruns has on us game show fans. The show is just so much better than any other game show and no matter how many times they remake it… it never will recapture its old magic.

They remade the show in 1990 with Ross Shaefer which stayed true to its original format… and in 1998 with Michael Burger (who dated a woman who lived next door to me when I had a summer house in 1990). Burger’s version was awful… it had 5 stars instead of 6... And the double entendres weren’t implied.. If the question was “Dumb Donald is soooo dumb… (how dumb is he?) He got his blank stuck in the spaghetti maker”.. the 70s audience laughed at the obvious answer and then wrote nose, head, arm, etc. The 90s version didn’t… and the show just didn’t work.

And what happens when you combine the top 2 game shows of all time? You get NBC’s very strange Match Game Hollywood Squares Hour. Its hard to write about this one since all the game show fans HATED it… I didn’t feel that strongly about it.. But it just looked odd.. Kind of like a movie in the 1800s that has planes flying over head… or a Met game that doesn’t have planes flying over head! I liked MG so much I was happy just to see it… (This show came 20 years before we could get our GSN rerun fix) but the celebrity alignment looked strange and I was more interested in seeing Bowzer than this strange Jon Bauman who played him… They played 3 rounds of match game with the same rules as the PM version… 3 rounds match as many stars etc…then it got creepier.. From out of nowhere emerged a wall with seats and voila you had the upper floor of a very cheap looking Hollywood Squares set. 3 other stars deemed not Match Game worthy came running out and jumped in the seats… and Jon Baumann took over as host… There was no secret square.. You didn’t have to “earn” a square to get a win and there were no bluffs. I’m amazed that HS ever recovered from this debacle. After the HS game ended, Gene took over as host and the winner got to play the Super Match like the old show. With all the legalities involving program ownership…and there are a lot since GSN has to jump through hoops to negotiate rights fees with the owners of different shows… I’m amazed this hybrid show even got produced! Rumor has it… there are legal documents that bar it from ever airing again!

I gotta really thank Google for help researching this 3 part extravaganza since I didn’t remember a lot of details about some of the shows. In researching the MG HS hour I found a review written by a teenaged kid on his My Spaces blog. Now how the heck could a teenaged kid review it if it hasn’t aired in 20 years. But even stranger are the comments section where these wacky My Spaces goofballs have assumed the identities of various game show hosts alive and dead… including Gene Rayburn. It’s good to see another generation of game show fans is emerging in America!

And there you have it folks,… the top 14 game shows of all time! I’m sure people have opinions like where was the Newlywed Game or Name that Tune for example? NTT may have gotten short shrift since it is never rerun because of the complexities involving the music licenses on the show.. I also left out Concentration and I am sure many others that you may have liked.. But feel free to leave your comments … and suggestions for other Top 14 lists.