GSN (formerly known on-air as
Game Show
Network) is an American
cable
television and
direct
broadcast satellite channel dedicated to
game shows and casino game shows. The channel was
launched on December 1, 1994. Its
slogan is
"Play Every Day". The network is currently available in
approximately 68 million homes, and is jointly-owned by
Liberty Media and
Sony Pictures
Entertainment.
History
1994-1997
Game Show Network started up at 7:00 PM on December 1, 1994 - its
first aired game show being "Match Game '73". From 1994 to about
1997, it aired not just post-1972 game shows but aired pre-1972
classics too. Most shows were from the
Mark
Goodson-
Bill Todman library. It
aired them in a 24-hour cycle, and would also use live interstitial
programming to wrap around the shows. In the first few months,
GSN's commercials consisted of
PSAs, GSN promos, and
commercials related to Sony (their owners). Once the network became
bigger, commercials were added to the network as they were able to
gain sponsors.
1997-1998
From October 11, 1997 to April 18, 1998 the network's
Goodson-Todman library rights expired, with the exceptions of
The Price is
Right (despite a lack of Goodson-Todman games, the network
never aired any episodes of the 1970s syndicated version) and the
1994-1995 season of
Family
Feud, which were both on a separate contract.
With the other Goodson-Todman shows gone, lesser-known Sony
properties such as
Juvenile Jury,
The Diamond Head
Game, the 1976-1977 version of
Break The Bank, and
the
Bill Cullen-hosted games
Chain
Reaction and
Pass The Buck all found their ways onto
the schedule.
Game Show Network also aired a children's game show block at this
time, highlighted by
Joker! Joker!
Joker!,
Jep!, and
Wheel of Fortune
2000—adaptations of
The Joker's Wild,
Wheel of
Fortune, and
Jeopardy!, respectively.
1998-2003
On April 18, 1998, Game Show Network bought back the rights to the
Goodson-Todman library. In late 1998, GSN would eliminate all of
its
Live on-air talent. GSN would replace the live shows
with in-show ads like
Win TV.
In 1999, the network would begin a slate of original programming.
These shows included
Inquizition,
All New 3's a Crowd, and
Hollywood Showdown. They
would also create unpopular originals like
Extreme Gong (a
remake of the classic
Gong Show) and
Burt Luddin's
Love Buffet.
In 2000, the network would face another setback when they would
lose the rights to air
The Price is Right.
In 2001, the network would see a massive change in both leadership
and programming. Liberty Media would acquire half of the network
and change the leadership of the network. President Michael Fleming
and Vice President Jake Tauber would both be fired from their
positions. Former FOX Family president Rich Cronin would be the new
man in charge. He and incoming vice president Bob Boden would
embark on the biggest original programming slate since the
network's inception.
2003-2008
In Summer 2003, Game Show Network began airing
GSN Video Games, the first program to
air on the network that had nothing to do with traditional game
shows. Although the show - a repackaging of somewhat dated British
video game review shows (mostly
Gamer.tv) -
was short-lived and considered a disaster, it was a sign of the
network's change of format from Game Show Network's "all game
shows, all the time" to what eventually became "GSN: The Network
for Games".
On March 15, 2004 at 10:00 PM, GSN stopped using the name "Game
Show Network" on-air and introduced the tagline "The Network for
Games", a move in line with the network expanding its programming
to include the genre of
reality
television and various other competitions. (However, the
entity's
corporate name remained Game
Show Network, LLC.)
The newly-renamed GSN also introduced the original series
World Series of
Blackjack,
Celebrity
Blackjack,
Extreme
Dodgeball,
Poker
Royale, and the short-lived
Fake-a-Date,
Vegas Weddings Unveiled, and
Ballbreakers. GSN also added reruns of
The Mole,
Average Joe,
Arsenio Hall's
Star Search,
Kenny vs. Spenny, and
Spy TV
- all of which were eventually removed from the schedule (though
Kenny vs. Spenny was picked up for new episodes by
Comedy Central in 2007).
Traditional game shows
Win Ben
Stein's Money and
Street Smarts were also
acquired around this time and aired in various time slots, though
neither was regularly programmed as of mid-March 2008.
Blackjack and
Poker Royale signified the
beginnings of GSN's attempts to cash in on the TV poker-craze at
the time. In 2006, GSN introduced
High Stakes Poker, a poker show with
a private-game format among professional players, and also
programmed additional series of
World Series of Blackjack and
a spinoff,
Celebrity
Blackjack. One of the most popular shows from the initial
TV poker boom, the
World Poker
Tour, was slated to move from the
Travel Channel to GSN on March 24,
2008.
Within a year after GSN's revamp, GSN has primarily began returning
its focus to studio-based game shows.
2008-Present
On
February 25, 2008, GSN went back into live television games by
debuting a brand-new live interactive call-in show called
GSN Live, hosted by actress
Heidi Bohay and KNBC
Channel 4
Los
Angeles
, sports anchor/director, Fred Roggin. The show was formatted to be
like the old Game Show Network show
Club A.M., and aired
weekdays from 12pm-3pm Eastern/9am-12pm Pacific between the current
GSN classic line-up. The show took calls from viewers, interviewed
classic game-show hosts, took viewers behind the scenes of game
shows, and played 3 interactive games during the show. People who
successfully got through to the games were enabled to win anything
from jewelry to GSN merchandise. In March, every contestant who got
through to the show was entered to win a brand new car.
In July 2008, GSN debuted a new game show called
Catch 21, a remake of the
Wink Martindale-hosted game show
Gambit, which combines
the classic quiz show with the
casino game of
blackjack.
Alfonso Ribeiro is the host of the new show
and his co-host and dealer is
Mikki
Padilla; original producer
Merrill Heatter will return in
the same capacity. The pilot for
Catch 21 (taped several
years before) was called simply
Casino.
In October, a second season of
Bingo
America premiered with former
Family Feud host
Richard Karn as the new host, replacing
Patrick Duffy, and
Diane Mizota as the co-host.
On November 6, GSN updated its logo for the first time in four and
a half years since its 2004 revamp, and began using a new slogan
"Play every day".
On November 10, GSN began airing the syndicated version of
Who
Wants to be a Millionaire? hosted by
Meredith Vieira.
On November 15, a new game show entitled
Think Like a Cat, sponsored by
Meow Mix cat food, debuted on GSN. The host
is
Chuck Woolery.
On April 6, 2009, a new version of
The Newlywed Game premiered with
former
Wilson Phillips singer
Carnie Wilson as the host.
Also on April 6, 2009, the second season of
Catch 21 premiered with new episodes with a
new time at 6:30 PM (5:30 Central) instead of 7:30 PM (6:30
Central). Alfonso Ribeiro and Mikki Padilla both returned to their
duties as host and card dealer.
On March 30, 2009, GSN removed
Blockbusters,
Card
Sharks,
Child's Play,
Press Your Luck,
What's My Line?, and
To Tell the Truth from its
lineup and was replaced by Tom Bergeron's version of
Hollywood
Squares,
Match Game PM,
Password,
The
$25,000 Pyramid, and
The $100,000 Pyramid.
Beginning in late August 2009,
Password Plus &
Pyramid will no longer air on weekdays and will be
replaced with Dylan Lane's
Chain Reaction and Richard
Karn's
Family Feud.
On October 10, 2009,
20Q
&
The Money List removed
from its weekend lineup and was replaced with Bob Saget's
1 vs 100 & Richard Karn's
Family Feud.
On October 12, 2009,
The Newlywed
Game premieres with new episodes.
Carnie Wilson returns as the host.
On October 12, 2009, the third season of
Catch 21 premieres with new episodes. Alfonso
Ribeiro and Mikki Padilla both returned to their duties as host and
card dealer.
On November 9, 2009,
Super
Password will be removed from the daytime lineup and
replaced with
Love
Connection,
Super Password will continue to air
only on weekends. Also,
Wheel of Fortune will
move from 12:30 PM to 11:30 AM,
Match Game from 1:00 PM to
12:00 Noon, Tom Bergeron's
Hollywood Squares returns to
the daytime lineup at 1:00 PM, and
Jeopardy! moves from
Noon to 1:30 PM.
On November 16, 2009 GSN began airing
Bingo Blitz while
Deal Or No Deal is
on.
On November 28, 2009 GSN removed
Password,
Password Plus,
Super Password and Richard Dawson's
Family Feud from the weekend
lineup and replaced with
Catch 21,
Meredith Vieira's
Who Wants to be a Millionaire?,
Whammy! and Dylan Lane's
Chain Reaction. Also, Tom
Bergeron's
Hollywood Squares moves from 12:30PM to 9:00AM,
Whammy! moves from Noon to 9:30AM, and
1 vs. 100
moves from 1:00 to Noon.
Deal or No Deal airs twice each
weekend, one at 1:00PM and the other at 2:00PM.
On December 7, 2009,
Love
Connection will be removed from the daytime lineup and
replaced with
Catch 21.
On December 8, 2009,
I've Got a
Secret returns to GSN Weekday Lineup.
On January 14, 2010, Carnie Wilson Unstapled will air on GSN.
Coupled with some of these changes is an aggressive marketing
campaign; GSN sent Ribiero on a promotional tour to local
television stations to promote
Catch 21, while they
partnered with the
ABC
Television Network to create
Play It Again! Game
Show Reunion Week, a series of one-off episodes of classic
game shows for the network's morning show,
Good Morning America, in exchange
for promotion of the September 2008
Play It Back
programming blocks, which will feature marathons of game shows from
the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
GSN has also been using its old name "Game Show Network" in the
past year. On press releases and on their new
GSN Radio, the network is referred to as
"GSN, The Game Show Network".
Programming
Original programming
GSN has also produced several original series. In the channel's
early days,
Club A.M. was a three-hour block consisting of
five classic game shows, surrounded by thirty minutes' worth of
interstitial trivia, interviews with game show producers,
personalities, contestants and fans, and interactive call-in games,
all hosted by Laura Chambers and Steve Day (which was also rerun in
late night, with some new segments, under the title
Late Night
Games).
Prime Games was a
similarly formatted show aired weeknights and hosted by
Peter Tomarken.
Wide World of Games
was a Saturday night block of four shows built around a common
theme.
After a few years, these shows were replaced by
Game TV (a
half-hour interview show hosted by Nancy Sullivan and Dave Nemeth),
Game World (which showed highlights of current game shows
from around the world), and standalone 30-minute call-in games like
Super Decades and
Trivia
Track. Later, the channel attempted a
Gong Show
remake called
Extreme Gong (hosted by
George Gray, in which the
viewers could phone in their votes as to whether to "gong" acts off
the air) and
Throut And Neck (where viewers controlled
video game characters with their phones). The network also
programmed
Burt Luddin's Love Buffet, a combination of
scripted scenes and a
Newlywed Game-esque "game
show-within-a-show". But all these efforts were eventually canceled
and removed from the network's schedule.
Traditional game show offerings since 2000 have included
Hollywood Showdown,
All New 3's a
Crowd,
Mall Masters,
Whammy!
The All-New
Press Your Luck,
Friend or
Foe? (a game based around the
Prisoner's Dilemma),
Russian
Roulette,
WinTuition,
Cram, and
National Lampoon's Funny
Money. The most successful GSN original game was
Lingo, a
Chuck Woolery-hosted revival of the 1987-1988
Canadian format in which teams guess five-letter words in a
combination of
Jotto/
Mastermind and
bingo. The network produced six seasons of the
show from 2002-2007.
Originals debuting in 2006 included
PlayMania, a late-night call-in game that
expanded from two to (at one point) six nights per week but was
cancelled on October 31, 2007; and a revival of the 1980s game
Chain Reaction,
which ended its run on June 9, 2007.
That's the Question,
Starface, and a revival of
I've Got a Secret also debuted in
2006. Debuting in July 2007 were
Camouflage, remade as a
word game, and
Without
Prejudice?, a remake of a British show where five people
decide which contestant would win $25,000 based in part on their
responses to questioning. Debuting on August 4, 2007 was
Grand Slam, a
game show involving big winners from other shows, including
Ken Jennings,
John Carpenter, and
Brad Rutter.
For 2008,
a US version of a BBC game called How Much Is Enough? debuted on
January 8, hosted by actor Corbin
Bernsen, and then in April, Bingo
America made its debut with Patrick Duffy of Dallas
and
Step by Step fame
as host. On July 21, as somewhat of a tie-in with the movie
21, Merrill Heatter returned to
game-show producing with
Catch 21
(a revival of the 1970s game
Gambit) hosted by
actor-singer-dancer
Alfonso Ribeiro
with actress
Mikki Padilla as the
dealer. GSN also relaunched a live interactive call-in interstitial
series by premiering
GSN Live,
which airs during commercial breaks between 12 PM and 6 PM Eastern
Monday through Friday.
Originally the series took place over a
three-hour span, with KNBC sports
anchor and NBC Sports contributor
Fred Roggin and actress Heidi Bohay hosting the interstitial
segments. Later in the year GSN expanded the series to the
six hours it has now, with Roggin moving to the 3 PM to 6 PM block
with
Kelly Packard while Alfonso
Ribeiro replaced him earlier in the day. Packard was forced to
leave her position shortly after taking it, and Roggin has hosted
with a guest host until May 15, 2009 when
Debra Skelton was chosen to be a permanent
co-host as of May 26. Roggin was forced to leave GSN Live on July
2, 2009 in order to concentrate on his new game show
The Money List. Alfonso was forced to
leave GSN Live on August 11, 2009 in order to concentrate his new
job, as well as
Catch 21.
Also in 2009,
The Newlywed
Game returned to the air on GSN, this time with
Wilson Phillips singer
Carnie Wilson as host. In June, GSN premiered
its
Big Saturday Night
live interactive show block, hosted by
Keegan-Michael Key of
MADtv,
Ross Matthews
of
The Tonight Show, and
Charissa Thompson of
Fox Sports. The three-hour block features a
variety of games, such as identifying pictures. Included in the
block are
20Q, hosted by
Cat Deeley of
So You Think You Can Dance
and featuring the voice of actor-comedian
Hal
Sparks as "Mr. Q"; and
The Money
List, hosted by
Fred Roggin of
GSN Live.
Specials
The network has run blocks of classic game shows on Saturday
nights, and for the first few months of 2006 programmed
back-to-back episodes of
Match
Game in a block billed as
That '70s Hour (a pun
on
That '70s Show), which
showed the original
production slate
before each episode as well as
Match Game trivia and brief
clips of an interview with host
Gene
Rayburn produced shortly before his death. Although production
slates had been aired by the network prior to this, "That '70s
Hour" was the first time the network
intentionally
did so.
During the Summer of 2006, the network began a special seven-week
run of
The 50 Greatest Game Shows of All Time.
In November 2006, GSN started a series of eight documentaries about
game shows, beginning with a program on
Match Game titled
Behind The Blank. Other subjects included game show
producer
Chuck Barris,
Who Wants To
Be a Millionaire?, a "Top Ten" countdown of game show hosts,
memorable game show moments, women who have featured prominently on
game shows, celebrities and how they impacted game shows, and an
insider's guide to winning on a TV game show.
One particularly interesting subject was the installments of
Press Your Luck in which
Michael
Larson won more than $100,000 in cash and prizes by memorizing
the sequences of the board then used, which was the subject of
Big Bucks: The "Press Your Luck" Scandal. Peter Tomarken,
who had hosted
Press Your Luck, hosted and narrated this
documentary in 2003. The documentary became Game Show Network's
most watched show ever (a title it still holds) scoring a 1.7 at
one time during the show.
In 2007, the network debuted two new specials: the
National Vocabulary
Championship, with a show airing on April 15, 2007
showcasing the first year of the event, and a broadcast of the
Cat Fanciers' Association
International Cat Show,
Catminster.
In November 2008, GSN and
Meow Mix
presented a special entitled
Think
Like a Cat, hosted by Chuck Woolery, with a top prize of
$1,000,000, one of the few times a game show on cable TV has had
that amount as a grand prize.
Syndicated programming
GSN's rerun programming comes primarily from two sources:
FremantleMedia and GSN parent company
Sony.
From Fremantle, the network licenses
Match Game (all except 1983-1984 and
1998-1999),
Family Feud (all
except the 1994-1995 and 1999-2002 seasons), and
Password (all except
Million-Dollar Password). Until
March 2009, GSN licensed the entire
Mark
Goodson-
Bill Todman library.
In the network's infancy, GSN regularly showcased vintage
Goodson-Todman game and panel shows from the 1950s and 1960s, many
of which were either originally broadcast or only preserved in
black-and-white - such as
What's My Line?,
I've Got a Secret,
To Tell the Truth,
Beat the Clock, and others.
These classic shows made up much of the channel's lineup at the
outset, but have been gradually cut back in prominence since the
late 1990s. On October 1, 2006, only
What's My Line? had a
regular spot on the schedule, late Sunday/early Monday at 3:00 AM
Eastern; it was followed by a selection from various 1950s-1970s
Goodson-Todman shows, usually another panel game. On December 31,
GSN reinstated the
Black and White Overnight to 7 days a
week at 3am-4am, showcasing
What's
My Line? and
I've Got a
Secret in the block; other shows, including
Choose Up Sides,
The Name's the Same, and the Bud
Collyer-hosted primetime version of
To Tell the Truth have been featured,
with the latter currently airing following
What's My
Line?. GSN cancelled
Black and White Overnight,
effective March 31, 2009.
GSN, in addition to its Goodson-Todman library, features shows from
other companies:
Other Sony programming includes
The Newlywed Game,
Tic-Tac-Dough,
Jeopardy!, and
Wheel of
Fortune.
In October 2003, GSN acquired the rerun rights to
Who Wants To Be A
Millionaire? (from
Disney-ABC Domestic
Television) and have added more episodes since, including the
Super
Millionaire spin-off in Spring 2005 and the
Meredith Vieira-hosted syndicated series in
Fall 2008.
Among the most well-known classic game shows previously aired
regularly on the network, other than
Price -
The Joker's Wild,
Tattletales,
Hollywood Squares,
The Dating Game, and various versions
of
Pyramid. Some of
these shows still continued to be aired occasionally as part of
special events, such as
Dick Clark's
Pyramid in honor of
New
Year's Rockin' Eve on December 31.
The Price Is Right
The Price Is
Right, Goodson-Todman's longest-running game show, did not
appear on GSN until December 1996. Episodes that featured fur coats
or other animal-related prizes were not aired, following
Bob Barker's animal-rights wishes. The show's GSN
premiere was delayed almost two years in order to remove such
episodes from the rotation. The show originally appeared on GSN in
occasional preemptions of regularly scheduled series such as
Match Game or
Family Feud and earned a regular
spot just ten months before the network's "Dark Period".
Various versions of the show were broadcast, specifically those
hosted by Barker,
Bill Cullen, and
Tom Kennedy (plus one episode sub-hosted
by 1972-1977 nighttime host
Dennis
James, aired on the day of his death in 1997). In December
1996,
Price began airing regularly on the schedule, with
half-hour Barker shows in the morning and hour-long episodes in the
afternoon and evening, Kennedy shows in late-night and the Cullen
version as part of what was then billed as "Sentimental Sunday". No
episodes from either the 1972-1980 syndicated version aired during
this time, mostly due to Barker's fur ban. Additionally, no
episodes from the 1994
Doug
Davidson-hosted version aired on GSN.
GSN's contract to air
Price expired in April 2000 and has
not been renewed since. Most
Price reruns are held not
entirely by FremantleMedia, but also through
CBS Television Distribution, as
CBS currently licenses the American
Price franchise from
Fremantle. GSN would have to pay royalties to both CBS
and
Fremantle to gain the rights to the show.
See also
Notes
- GSN Rewards Viewers With New Opportunities to Win
With "GSN LIVE" Weekdays Beginning Monday, Feb. 25
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