Game Show Network
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Image:Gsn04logoa.jpg Image:Gsn logo.gif The Game Show Network (now known as GSn - The Network for Games) is an American cable television and direct broadcast satellite channel dedicated to game shows and interactive television games. The channel was launched on December 1, 1994.
GSN is received by about 58 million homes, and is jointly-owned by Liberty Media and Sony Pictures Entertainment.
GSN licenses the Mark Goodson-Bill Todman game show library, which includes such shows as Match Game, Password, To Tell The Truth, Card Sharks, Blockbusters, and Family Feud.
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History
GSN, in addition to its Goodson-Todman library, features other classics such as Jeopardy!, Press Your Luck, The Newlywed Game, Love Connection and the classic Dick Clark-hosted versions of Pyramid, along with more recent fare like Greed, The Weakest Link, Dog Eat Dog and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.
GSN has also featured game and panel shows from the 1950s and 1960s, such as What's My Line?, I've Got a Secret, Password, To Tell the Truth, Beat the Clock, The Name's the Same and other black-and-white classics. The black-and-white shows made up much of the channel's weeknight lineup at the channel's launch, moving solely to Sunday nights in the late '90s and finally to overnights. On April 17, 2006, "Black & White Overnight" effectively ended, as I've Got a Secret was replaced by GSN's new version of the series. This left What's My Line? as the only black-and-white series on the regular schedule.
Among the most well-known classic shows previously aired on the network: Wheel of Fortune, The Joker's Wild, Tic Tac Dough, Tattletales, the original version of The Hollywood Squares, The Gong Show, The Dating Game and The Price is Right.
Original shows
GSN has also produced several original series. In the channel's early days, club a.m. was a three-hour block consisting of five 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. Prime Games was a similarly formatted show aired weeknights and hosted by Peter Tomarken. Wide World of Games was a Saturday night marathon of shows built around a common theme.
After a few years, these shows were replaced by Game TV, a half-hour interview show hosted by Marianne Curan 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, 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 "game show within the show." All these efforts have long since departed from the network's schedule.
More traditional game show offerings since 2000 have included All New 3's a Crowd, 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 show has been Lingo, a Chuck Woolery-hosted remake of an '80s Canadian format in which teams guess five-letter words in a combination of Mastermind and bingo. The network has produced five seasons, and contestant searchs are going on for a sixth in 2007.
The "Dark Period" (1997–1998)
The "Dark Period" is an unofficial nickname coined by the channel's internet fanbase referring to the period from October 11 1997 to April 18 1998, after GSN's Goodson-Todman library rights expired, with the exception of The Price is Right and the 1994-1995 season of Family Feud. Episodes of TPiR that featured fur coats, or other animal-related prizes were not aired, following Bob Barker's animal-rights wishes; therefore, the show's GSN premiere was delayed until mid-1996 in order to remove such episodes from the rotation. (It left the network in 2000.)
During the so-called "Dark Period", the schedule consisted of game shows that are part of Sony's library, like Chuck Barris' shows (The Newlywed Game, The Gong Show) and Pyramid, plus lesser-known shows such as Juvenile Jury and The Diamond Head Game. The network did air The Joker's Wild, Tic Tac Dough and the Bill Cullen version of Chain Reaction (the USA version aired as well), as well as the 1976 version of Break the Bank. It also aired original game shows like the kids' games Jep! and Wheel 2000. Beginning January 1998, ostensibly to pay for the rights to get the Goodson-Todman library back, Game Show Network gave away a few hours of its schedule to air infomercials in the late night and early morning (a common practice among other basic cable channels).
A new name and a new direction
On March 15, 2004, at 10:00 PM ET, GSN stopped using the name "Game Show Network" on-air, a move in line with the network expanding its programming to include the genre of reality television and various other competitions. GSN's current tagline is "The Network For Games." (However, the entity's corporate name remains Game Show Network, LLC.) The newly renamed GSN also introduced their original series World Series of Blackjack, Celebrity Blackjack, Extreme Dodgeball, Poker Royale, Ballbreakers, and the short-lived Fake-a-Date and Vegas Weddings Unveiled.
GSN also added reruns of The Mole, Average Joe, Arsenio Hall's Star Search, Kenny vs. Spenny and Spy TV - all of which have left the schedule. Modern game shows Win Ben Stein's Money, and Street Smarts were also acquired around this time and continue to air late-nights.
On April 4, 2005 GSN introduced a new daytime lineup featuring several older game shows that had not been seen on the network for some time, including the two most recent versions of Password (Password Plus and Super Password), the 1990-91 version of To Tell The Truth, and the Bill Rafferty-hosted versions of Blockbusters and Card Sharks. This daytime lineup was accompanied by the "Men From GSN" advertising campaign, a Desperate Housewives parody featuring a group of women cooing over such game show hosts as Richard Dawson and Chuck Woolery. Also, Chuck Woolery's narration is added on GSN for the daytime lineup schedule. For a brief time in the spring of 2005, GSN also ran five-episode marathons of older game shows on Saturday nights, under the "Saturday Night Classics" banner.
Also in the spring of 2005, GSN acquired approximately 100 more episodes of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, including the Super Millionaire specials.
In June 2005, GSN acquired the rights to all seven seasons of reality series The Amazing Race for a reported US$50,000 per episode. Beginning July 11, 2005, the episodes aired twice daily, in succession; after initial ratings success, the show only airs Saturday nights as of March, 2006.
January 2006 saw two debuts: Anything to Win, a documentary series with no game show connection; and High Stakes Poker - a replacement for Poker Royale. The network's remake of I've Got a Secret debuted on April 17, and in late March the network shot a pilot for a possible new version of Chain Reaction.
Despite the forays into reality series, made-for-TV sports and documentaries, GSN's programming has always remained mostly game shows. As the only U.S. cable/satellite network largely devoted to game shows for adults, GSN is a prototypical niche operation. It remains to be seen whether such a concentrated focus is commercially viable in the long run. Currently, GSN is available in only about half of all U.S. households; however, the network's financial performance has improved in recent years.
GSN has raised the ire of some classic game show fans by cutting portions of the end-show credits from the shows it airs to allow for more promos and commercials (it is worth mentioning that those credits often contained mini-commercials for the "parting gifts" given to contestants, which could be free advertising for any of those products that may still exist to this day). GSN also uses technology, unofficially called 'speed-ups' by viewers, that slightly speeds up the video and audio in their programs, mainly for the purpose of including more commercials in their broadcasts (other basic cable channels employ this practice as well).
The United Kingdom satellite and cable network Challenge is the closest British equivalent to GSN; it has similarly expanded its programming in recent times to take in programmes which are not, strictly speaking, game shows. It shows British versions of several of the US shows on GSN; for example, Play Your Cards Right (based on Card Sharks), Family Fortunes (based on Family Feud) and the original UK version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?.
See also
- List of programs broadcast by Game Show Network
- List of original programs broadcast by Game Show Network
External links
- Official Site
- GSN's message board
- Showbiz Notes The making of a GSN pilot