Concentration (game show)

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Concentration is a TV game show based on the children's memory game of the same name.

It aired on NBC for 15 years (August 25, 1958-March 23, 1973) the longest run of any game show on that network and aired in syndication for 5 more (September 10, 1973-September 8, 1978). A remake of the game called Classic Concentration, aired first-run on Concentration's old network, NBC, from 1987 to 1991 and reruns airing through the end of 1993. Various hosts starred in the first Concentration, including Jack Barry, Hugh Downs and Bob Clayton. Jack Narz hosted the syndicated version; Jeopardy!'s Alex Trebek hosted Classic Concentration.

Barry and game show-partner Dan Enright along with Robert Noah and Buddy Piper, created Concentration. The first daytime episode (hosted by Downs) aired August 25, 1958. Barry later that year hosted a prime-time edition that debuted October 30, 1958 (replacing Twenty-One) , but when the quiz show scandals broke, Barry was forced from his hosting duties. NBC eventually assumed production of the show.

Contents

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What's a rebus?

In all versions, two contestants competed to solve a rebus behind doors of numbers. For instance:

  • Picture of a 2 of clubs = "TOO"
  • "LI" plus a picture of a cash register till = "LITTLE"
  • Picture of a hand holding up two fingers = "TOO"
  • Picture of a hen "lay"ing eggs plus "T" = "LATE"


equals "Too little, too late."

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Rules of the game

Two contestants (one a returning champion) sat before a board of 30 squares, which concealed the rebus, names of prizes and special squares (see below).

One at a time, the contestants called out two numbers. If the prizes or special action didn't match, the opponent took his/her turn and so on.

However, if the player did match, whatever prize was printed on the card was placed on a board behind the contestant; or, he/she could perform an action.

More importantly, a match also revealed two pieces of the rebus, which identified a person, phrase, place, thing, etc. The player could try to solve the rebus or choose two more numbers, but even if he/she was wrong, he/she kept control. Usually, a player waited to solve the puzzle until they had exposed a good portion of the rebus through several matches.

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Special spaces

In addition to the prize cards, there were the following action cards:

  • WILD CARD - Self-explanatory; provided an automatic match. In the original game this left the natural match "orphaned", matchable only by the other wild card (there were only two). In Classic Concentration, the other half of the natural match was also given at that point, allowing three pieces of the rebus to be revealed at once.

Players uncovering two WILD cards also won a bonus. In the original game, players uncovering two WILD cards won a $500 bonus and chose two additional numbers; the prizes went on that contestant's side and four pieces of the rebus were revealed. Late in the run, getting two WILD cards in the same turn won the player a new car – usually the Chevrolet Nova – which he/she kept, regardless of the game's outcome.

  • Take One Gift - The contestant at that moment was allowed to take a prize his/her opponent might have in their possession and put it in his/her own rack. Usually, there were two sets of these per game.
  • Forfeit One Gift - The player immediately had to give up one of the prizes he/she had in his possession to his/her opponent. Also two sets per game.

Also included were two or three joke prizes (such as a banana peel or torn teddy bear). These actually served as insurance markers against opponents' Take cards and the Forfeit cards he/she might stumble upon.

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Winning the game

A player who offered a correct guess won his/her gifts; he/she also earned $100 if there were no prizes in the rack. The loser forfeits all his/her gifts.

During the early years of the run, there was no bonus game; the returning champion simply faced a new opponent. The bonus game - first played in 1960 - went thus:

  • The Envelope and its Mysterious Contents - A contestant selected one out of several possibilities. The prize was either cash or a grand prize such as a car.
  • The Cash Wheel - A player spun a carnival-type wheel, containing various dollar amounts. The top prize was $2000.

Champions continued until either defeated or by winning 20 games. Reportedly, this happened just once (in 1966 by Ruth Horowitz), although some sources document other 20-game champions.

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Concentration "Challenge of Champions"

Beginning in 1963, the top four players of the previous 12 months returned to play a best-of-seven tournament (styled a la the World Series. The grand prize was $1000, a trip around the world and a special trophy dubbed "The Connie" (modeled after Rodin's The Thinker).

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Longevity

On March 23, 1973 after 3,796 episodes (featuring a reported 7300 rebuses), the show ended its 15 season run on NBC. The first puzzle was "It Happened One Night" and the last puzzle was "You've Been More Than Kind."

Concentration remains the longest-running game show on NBC and held the record for longest continuous daytime run on network television until it was eclipsed in April 1987 by the 1972 version of The Price is Right. Concentration now ranks fourth on the long-run list of long-running daytime/syndicated game shows (behind TPiR and the syndicated runs of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!).

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Prizes, prizes and more prizes

Both versions of Concentration offered an impressive array and variety of prizes. One retrospective of the original series reported the following prize tally:

  • 512 cars.
  • 397 boats.
  • 1287 domestic and foreign trips and cruises.
  • 12 trips around the world.
  • 857 fur coats.
  • Numerous diamonds.

Additionally, there were countless gift certificates, travel trailers, airplanes, swimming pools, furniture, kitchen appliances (large and small), rooms of furniture, clothing, stereos and televisions, fantastic nights out on the town and virtually any other item seen in any mail-order catalog. One history of the 1958-1973 series reported the total prize giveaway at $10 million.

Speaking of prizes, the prize values were deliberately much, much smaller than those of the big-money quiz shows implicated as part of the Quiz show scandals of the late-1950s. Barry and Enright deliberately kept the winnings low-value to avoid any suggestion that it, too, was tainted.

Usually, there was at least one prize worth more than $1,000; however, nearly all the other prizes were worth less than $500, with many in the $10-$100 range. A board of prizes rarely totaled more than $2,000-$3,000 and champions rarely took home more than that in merchandise during their stay (though some longer-lived winners approached $10,000).

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Syndicated run (1973-1978)

After NBC canceled Concentration, Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions obtained the production rights to the show (although the format itself was and is still owned by NBC) and produced a five-a-week syndicated revival of the show. The show premiered in September 1973 and ran five years. Jack Narz hosted with Johnny Olson announcing.

The show ran on many of the same NBC stations (including flagship WNBC-TV in New York, albeit at 1:00 PM rather than its longtime 10:30 AM network time slot) that carried the network version six months earlier. Goodson-Todman ran across the same phenomenon five years later, when the daytime Match Game was dropped by CBS but revived in first-run syndication. One key difference was the show's origination; after 15 years in New York, Concentration was now produced at Metromedia Square in Hollywood.

The game was the same as before, with two new contestants competing each day. The rules basically were the same, except the joke prizes and the Forfeit One Gift cards were scrapped. A new Free Look space allowed the contestant to briefly open up two as-of-yet unrevealed numbers, which he/she thought would help him solve the rebus.

Also, Olson announced the whereabouts of four of the prizes (to give players a "head start") at the outset of each game; and, uncovering both WILD cards in a single turn earned the player a $250 bonus, which he/she kept regardless of the game's outcome. And, the player was spotted another $250 if he/she solved the rebus and didn't have any prizes.

At one point during this run, the rules changed slightly to speed up gameplay; players were allowed to call a third number if the first two didn't match.

The winner played a new bonus round called Double Play, with a new car as the top prize for solving two rebuses within 10 seconds. During the 1977-1978 season, players determined their Double Play prize package by choosing squares from a 9-space board and competing for the first prize package matched (the car was also a prize on this board). Solving the first puzzle won $100.

To this day, Concentration is the only stand-alone game show produced by Goodson-Todman but (contrary to somewhat popular belief) not invented by Goodson, Todman or a producer working for or with the duo (such as Bob Stewart, Frank Wayne or NBC staff producer Bob Noah). The Hollywood Squares component of the 1983-84 NBC daytime game The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour also fits into the category.

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Classic Concentration

NBC and Mark Goodson Productions brought the show back as Classic Concentration on May 4, 1987. Alex Trebek was the host, and Gene Wood was the regular announcer. Marjorie Goodson-Cutt, daughter of Mark Goodson and wife of associate director Tim Cutt, was the prize model for most of the show's run. The series ended on September 20, 1991, but NBC brought the show back in reruns a month after its cancellation and ran them until December 31, 1993.

While previous versions featured a mechanically-operated game board with 30 trilons, Classic Concentration used a computer-generated board with 25 squares. Gameplay, however, was similar to its predecessors. This version featured nine pairs of prizes, three "WILD" cards (although some games had just one "WILD" card) and two "TAKE" cards (one red, one green), which were similar to the "Take One Gift" squares in the original version but could be used by the contestant any time after making a match. Contestants won $500 for picking two "WILD" cards and $1000 for picking all three.

The winner of the main game had a chance to win one of eight cars in the bonus round. The contestant had 15 numbered squares to choose from. Seven pairs of matching car names were hidden behind the squares, as well as one car name that had no match. If the contestant matched all seven pairs of cars within the allotted time, he/she won the last car that was matched. The clock started at 35 seconds and increased by five seconds for each time that the contestant did not win a car. During the run, a pair of "Five Bonus Seconds" cards were added in the second game of each show, awarding the contestant who matched it and won his/her game five additional seconds to the clock.

Originally, the contestant who correctly solved the rebus puzzle in the main game played the bonus round while the opponent was eliminated. Later, the main game became a best-of-three match where the first player to solve two rebus puzzles played the bonus round. Finally, the winner played the bonus round after solving one rebus, but players were eliminated after two losses instead of one. Returning champions were originally allowed to win five games, but they were later retired if they won a car.

Like the original series, Classic Concentration conducted an annual "Tournament of Champions," which invited the best players from the previous season to compete for a grand prize. The first tourney took place in 1988, with the grand prize a trip around the world. The winners of the 1989 through 1991 tourneys took home an upscale car.

Once, when Wood took ill in the early 1990s, veteran announcer-host Art James filled in. It marked James' return to the format where he served as announcer/sidekick until 1961.

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Catch phrase

During the original NBC run, Downs or Clayton would often say, "Not a match, the board goes back," after a contestant's selections didn't match. In recent years, talk show host David Letterman — himself a frequent celebrity guest on game shows during his early career — has taken to using the phrase as well, sometimes after a comedy bit has fallen flat and other times for no apparent reason at all.

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Episode status

Nearly all of the 1958-73 episodes have been destroyed by NBC. Only a few remain on the trading block; Shokus Video is known to have a tournament episode from the late 1960s, and 12 Downs/Clayton episodes and a syndicated Narz episode have been found in the UCLA broadcasting archive. The Narz episodes' fate is uncertain. The Trebek episodes have been preserved, but no version of this show has aired on GSN or anywhere else due to the fact that NBC still holds the rights to the show.

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External links

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