It all starts with Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, the undisputed kings of TV game shows. Their success started in 1946 with programs including What’s My Line?  and their influence continues on television today. One of their shows, Match Game, enjoyed a successful run from 1962 to 1969 and returned in 1973 incorporating a newly-added bonus game, the “Super Match.”

“Super Match” earned television’s greatest mark of success—a spinoff in the form of the 1976 game show Family Feud. After testing as a single-player game and as a game for celebrity and civilian pairs, the Family Feud format evolved to feature a competition between two five-player teams comprised of family members related by blood or marriage. Where the Match Game bonus round rewarded contestants for guessing any of a recent studio audience’s top three responses to a fill-in question, Family Feud gave players the opportunity to offer responses to questions in the hope of matching any of numerous answers given by participants in a random sample of Americans. The most-popular responses garnered the highest point values for the contestants.

The most engaging element of Family Feud created the greatest production challenge. The Fast Money round posed five questions such as “Name something you take with you to the beach.” With players able to give any answer, popular or not, logical or not, there needed to be a way to instantly display any and all of their possible responses to the multiple open-ended questions. Pre-printed art cards couldn’t work for displaying responses as they had on Match Game, as there were answers to multiple questions to keep track of, and the contestants’ answers would be thoroughly unpredictable. Hand-written or typewritten notations created in real time on-set were judged to be antiquated as well as impractical, as they were unreadable from halfway across the stage. Other similar methods for visually recording responses were discarded for their lack of impact for the home audience. After research into the state-of-the-art in display and exhibition, a Canadian company was identified for a magnetic flip-dot signage system patented in 1964, and Ferranti-Packard of Ontario sold the first such display to the Montreal Stock Exchange for $700,000 (equivalent to more than $6 million today.) The unit was extraordinarily expensive because of the intricacy of the flip-dot components that required manual construction—hundreds of electromagnets which, when energized, switched the field in either the positive or negative direction. And when the direction changes, the dot flipped.

A decade later, the mechanics for flip-dot displays were being perfected and Goodson-Todman was among the early customers when they ordered one of the largest such units built to date, at a cost far in excess of any display system ever utilized on a television show. Although significantly advanced from the units marketed ten years earlier, the Family Feud board still proved to be susceptible to extremes of humidity, so care was taken on-set to maintain a constant airflow around the unit. With that accommodation, the big board operated reliably through long consecutive days of production.

Modules of the display were each capable of displaying 10 alphanumeric characters utilizing 35 flip-discs for each character. The Family Feud board consisted of 24 modules in a 6 by 4 array, capable of displaying eight lines of text, each 30 characters long, for a total of 240 characters comprised of 8,400 flip discs. The technology proved to serve Family Feud’s production needs perfectly. The ability to easily program words on a QWERTY keyboard that could be revealed instantaneously, on demand, with a kinetic flourish just seconds later, in bright contrast capable of registering on television cameras with high impact, earned the massive unit a place of great prominence, center stage on every Family Feud episode between 1976 and 1995. The Ferranti-Packard display also attained iconic status over the course of decades through its subsequent use on foreign versions of the TV series in as many as 80 countries.

Now, decades later, this signature piece of technology has come to The Strong Museum through a generous donation from game show veteran Randy West. But we quickly recognized that the signature sign would have limited use if it couldn’t be brought back to operational status. What to do? Fortunately, as in so many parts of life, the solution was all in who you know. Fortunately, we were able to connect with Corey Cooper, the wizard behind game mechanics for multiple shows over the years, including Big Brother most recently. In December 2023, Corey made the trip from sunny Los Angeles to chilly Rochester and applied his insights and troubleshooting experience to the matter. As Corey explained on Facebook:

Spent a week getting this old Lady up and running again, after many years of neglect. Thanks to Randy West for donating it and Bob Boden for introducing both of us to the National Archives of Game Show History at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY.

I originally created software on an Apple] [+ computer to run this lady’s older brother in ’82 or ’83, and then I did the software to run this one on an IBM AT computer in ’88 for the “Ray Combes version.” I worked from that software to figure out the protocol again, since we had the hardware manuals but not the software manual anymore (I had the hardware manuals, and was undoubtedly the one who lost the software manual).

I was pleasantly surprised that she came to life as soon as we hooked her up and gave her power. The Museum staff had it all set up for me when I arrived, and dealt with the tedium of all the missing and not-working dots, and she is now in their excellent hands!

With some physical care and technological ingenuity from Cooper and members of the museum’s Conservation and Exhibits team, the historic Family Feud digital signboard is now back in working condition and waiting safely in the wings to return to public visibility when The Strong opens its major exhibit on game show history in 2027. Survey says, the sign’s going to be a hit!

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On September 4, 1998, ITV network in the United Kingdom premiered a one-hour primetime game show called Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. It featured one contestant, sitting across from host Chris Tarrant, answering up to 15 multiple choice general knowledge questions of increasing values, from £100 to a top prize of £1 million. As long as the player answered questions correctly, they could remain in the “hot seat”, or they could walk away at any level and keep their winnings.  If they delivered a wrong answer, their winnings would often be reduced to one of several milestone amounts (£1,000 or £32,000) or to zero if the failure occurred in the first four questions.

The show, created by David Briggs with Steven Knight and Mike Whitehill, went on to become a ratings powerhouse, and it was soon adapted for U.S. audiences by an ABC executive, Michael Davies, who left his network position to executive produce the series. (Davies is now the executive producer of the U.S. version of Jeopardy!). Who Wants to Be a Millionaire premiered domestically with host Regis Philbin on August 16, 1999. At the time, summer primetime programming was almost exclusively reruns. Millionaire instantly soared to the top of U.S. ratings and has proven to be a very durable format.

There have since been numerous versions on broadcast TV, including four additional primetime series, one of which, featuring celebrity contestant pairs, currently airs on ABC with host Jimmy Kimmel (and is still executive produced by Davies); in addition, more than 3,000 half-hour episodes have been produced for syndication with hosts Meredith Vieira, Cedric the Entertainer, Terry Crews, Chris Harrison, and a variety of guest emcees. 

To date, more than a dozen players have earned $1 million (or more) in the U.S. The first was IRS agent John Carpenter. His million-dollar question: Which of these U.S. Presidents appeared on the television series “Laugh-In”?

1. Lyndon Johnson
2. Richard Nixon
3. Jimmy Carter
4. Gerald Ford

(answer below*)

What was perhaps most notable about Millionaire was its groundbreaking scenic, lighting and music design, which emphasized drama in ways that no game show had done before. In stark contrast to most of its predecessors, Millionaire featured a set in the round, with lights focused mainly on two people (a host and contestant) center stage and heart-thumping music providing a soundtrack for the entire show. These elements have radically redefined the look and feel of most contemporary prime time game shows. 

During the recording of each episode, contestants were allowed unlimited time to ponder their answers, which resulted in many drawn-out, nail-biting moments. The high-tension environment was relieved, somewhat, with “Lifelines” that provided help from the audience, a hand-picked “phone-a-friend” awaiting a call remotely and reducing the number of multiple choices; each lifeline could only be used once by each contestant.

As the show evolved, different formats, money ladders, and lifelines were introduced, but the epic “shiny floor” spectacle remained intact. A famous catch phrase, “Is that your FINAL answer?” had its origins on Millionaire. The show has won numerous accolades, including two EMMYs for outstanding Game/Audience Participation Show, one for Philbin and two for Vieira.

Before Millionaire’s debut 25 years ago this month, the presence of game shows on U.S. prime time TV was very limited, largely a result of the rigging scandals of the 1950s. The enormous overnight success of Millionaire provided numerous new opportunities for game show formats in the evening; today the airwaves are populated by many original and revived titles that have found new life and given broadcast networks an appealing alternative to more expensive and less popular products. In the fall of 2000, ABC programmed Millionaire an unprecedented four nights a week; this over-exposure ultimately led to the original version’s prime time demise.

In the mad rush after its monumental debut performance, networks fast-tracked many other prime-time attempts to create similar immersive series and capture advertiser gold, none of which approached the success of Millionaire. Among them was a FOX series simply called Greed, featuring a $2 million top prize, which went from pitch to air in 10 weeks and lasted for nine months. (I co-created the series with Dick Clark, and we both served as Executive Producer for all 44 episodes.) 

Other short-lived attempts included CBS’ Winning Lines and a new version of the notorious format that had previously been tainted by scandal, NBC’s Twenty-One.

Eventually new prime time formats would catch on and last, including The Weakest Link and Deal or No Deal, and reimagined versions of iconic legacy shows like Celebrity Family Feud, The $100,000 Pyramid, Match Game, Press Your Luck, To Tell the Truth, Card Sharks, The Price is Right at Night, Let’s Make a Deal Primetime, Celebrity Jeopardy!, Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, among many others. 

In the 25 years since Millionaire’s U.S. premiere, the series has been produced in almost 100 other territories across the globe. It was also the subject of the 2008 theatrical film Slumdog Millionaire, which garnered eight Oscars including Best Picture. 

*The answer to John Carpenter’s question is Richard Nixon, who, while campaigning for President, famously uttered the phrase “Sock it To ME?”

CAN YOU CORRECTLY ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS THAT WON PLAYERS $1 MILLION ON THE ORIGINAL U.S. VERSION OF WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? (answers at the bottom)

The earth is approximately how many miles away from the Sun? (won by Dan Blonsky in 2000)

• 9.3 million
• 39 million
• 93 million
• 193 million

Which insect shorted out an early supercomputer and inspired the term “computer bug”? (won by Joe Trela in 2000)

• Moth
• Roach
• Fly
• Japanese beetle

Which of the following men does not have a chemical element named for him? (won by Bob House in 2000)

• Albert Einstein
• Niels Bohr
• Isaac Newton
• Enrico Fermi

Which of the following landlocked countries is entirely contained within another country? (won by Kim Hunt in 2000)

• Lesotho
• Burkina Faso
• Mongolia
• Luxembourg

In the children’s book series, where is Paddington Bear originally from? (won by David Goodman in 2000)

• India
• Peru
• Canada
• Iceland

What letter must appear at the beginning of the registration of all non-military aircraft in the U.S.? (won by Bernie Cullen in 2001)

• N
• A
• U
• L

ANSWERS:

1. C. 93 million
2. A. moth
3. A. Albert Einstein
4. A. Lesotho
5. B. Peru
6. A. N

The post Birth of the Modern Game Show appeared first on The Strong National Museum of Play.

Board games and television don’t seem like they would go together. It would be hard to imagine millions of viewers tuning in regularly to watch people play a game of Risk or Settlers of Cattan. But 40 years ago this month, viewers across the country had a six-year-long daily habit of watching people play Scrabble every day on NBC.

The Scrabble game show originated with Exposure Unlimited, a prize brokerage that game shows commissioned to acquire merchandise from vendors. Exposure Unlimited ventured outside their usual business and made a deal with Selchow & Righter for the rights to produce a television version of Scrabble. They got the rights on the cheap because S&R wasn’t even considering doing such a thing at the time. Exposure Unlimited then reached out to all the major game show packagers in Hollywood to ask if they wanted to try developing a Scrabble game show.

Reg Grundy Productions, an Australian firm which had just gained a foothold in America with Sale of the Century on NBC, expressed interest, and a team headed by long-time game show producer Robert Noah whipped up a format.

The host of Scrabble was a surprisingly apt choice. Chuck Woolery, who had hosted Wheel of Fortune on NBC for seven years before departing in a salary dispute, was suddenly back on the network just a bit more than two years later, hosting yet another NBC game show based around picking letters and solving mystery words. The pilot for the Scrabble game show, shot in 1984, was a harrowing mess. The set included a larger-than-life revolving cube that housed monitors, projectors, neon, light bulbs, and an electronic timer, all in service to various parts of the show. The NBC electricians who wired all of the equipment had warned the Scrabble team that the cube should only be turned 180 degrees. Eager to display the spinning marvel on their dazzling set, the crew in the studio made six complete 360-degree turns of the cube, severing every wire inside the cube and requiring production to shut down for major repairs. The pilot episode, which ran only 17 minutes, took a full two days to tape. But NBC saw something in the game, and a focus group for the pilot responded enthusiastically. Scrabble debuted on NBC on July 2, 1984, and compared to the disastrous pilot, the next six years were smooth sailing.

If you’ve ever pulled your hair out after seven minutes of listening to your opponent mutter “I don’t have any good letters…” you’d probably be surprised that anybody could make a game show out of Scrabble. You would be equally unsurprised to learn that the secret to success here was that the Scrabble game show wasn’t really Scrabble. In execution, it was the classic game of Hangman with Scrabble-based trappings.

Two contestants faced a gigantic Scrabble game board, drawing numbered tiles two at a time, and dropping the tiles in an electronic eye scanner to find out what letters they represented. Contestants would try to place the correct tiles in the word, while attempting to steer clear of “stoppers”—the tiles with letters that weren’t in the word.

Viewers loved the brain-tickling game and Chuck Woolery’s earthy, affable hosting style, all packaged in an elaborate setting. The set, operated properly, was a thing of beauty. An array of 14 unique sound effects helped viewers keep track of twists and turns in the game. The show even added some extra charm to the excitement of a cash bonus being awarded. The game made use of the pink and blue squares on a Scrabble board by awarding bonus money for letters placed in those squares. On the air, contestants were paid out in “Chuck Bucks”—blue and pink bills bearing Chuck Woolery’s picture instead of Ben Franklin’s.

What truly made the game special was the brilliant clue writing, supervised by former Hollywood Squares writer and future Jeopardy! head writer Gary Johnson. Each puzzle opened with a misleading, often punny, clue that made contestants scratch their head while amusing viewers and often bemusing Woolery.

A five-letter word: “She lives in the White House”—VANNA

A six-letter word: “It makes kids smile”—CHEESE

A seven-letter word: “It keeps your feet on the ground”—GRAVITY

An eight-letter word: “A man who likes people”—CANNIBAL

A nine-letter word: “After years of only seeing his own, Robinson Crusoe was shocked when he saw Friday’s”—FOOTPRINT

Scrabble enjoyed enough success that Selchow & Righter adapted it for a home version, officially titled TV Scrabble —a board game based on a game show based on a board game. A revival briefly popped up on NBC in 1993, while reruns of the original series were a hit on USA Network. The Hub cable channel managed to come up with another twist on Scrabble with an entirely different game show format; Scrabble Showdown ran in 2011 and 2012. This fall, the CW network will unleash another all-new Scrabble game show in prime time.

DO YOU REMEMBER…THESE OTHER GAME SHOWS BASED ON BOARD GAMES?

TABOO (TNN cable channel, 2003): Contestants played a game similar to Pyramid, with the caveat that each word came with a list of five “taboos,” seemingly obvious clue words that couldn’t legally be given. For example, a player conveying “PRISON” might be told that they weren’t allowed to say “jail,” “arrest,” “inmates,” “bars,” or “warden.” Chris Wylde was the host.

BALDERDASH (PAX, 2004-05): Contestants heard celebrity panelists answer various questions, having to decide each time if the panelist had given them “truth” or “balderdash.” Elayne Boosler hosted.

THE GAME OF LIFE (THE HUB cable channel, 2011-2012): Families drove their cars along the virtual game board, having to answer trivia questions every time they came to a fork in the road.

The post Scrabble: A Television Hit? appeared first on The Strong National Museum of Play.

With host Pat Sajak’s departure from Wheel of Fortune after more than 40 years as host, one can’t help but reflect on the impact that Wheel of Fortune has left on popular culture. The average American knows how the game is played, whether they watch it or not. Our language itself has been influenced by the show. The consistency and simplicity of the game has led to many familiar phrases…

“I’d like to buy a vowel.”

“I’d like to solve the puzzle.”

“For $154, I’d like the ceramic dalmatian.”

Wait…what?

If you’re a loooooooong-time Wheel Watcher (or if you’re a younger watcher who’s discovering the earlier years of the show on the Wheel of Fortune channel on Pluto TV), maybe you remember the quirky charm of an era where contestants solved the puzzle and then promptly spent all their money at a lavishly decorated onstage boutique.

Talk show host Merv Griffin had shown a knack for developing games. His venerable Jeopardy! was starting its 10th year in 1973, but NBC’s head of daytime, Lin Bolen, felt that the show looked old and made it known that she wanted to be rid of it. Griffin shrewdly negotiated a stipulation in his contract for Jeopardy! stating that he could create the show that replaced it, if and when it was cancelled. Griffin came up with Wheel of Fortune, attributing it to two childhood memories—he and his sister would play Hangman with pencil and paper to pass the time in the backseat on long car trips; and he was enamored by a large spinning wheel he had seen in a carnival game. He developed a game where contestants solved Hangman puzzles, with a spinning wheel determining the value of the letters they called.

Bolen liked the idea well enough, but she had an idea of her own for a game show and wanted to infuse it into Griffin’s pitch. Bolen wanted to see a game show where contestants went shopping. When Griffin described the game to her, Bolen surprised him by saying that there should be prizes all over the stage, and contestants should use the money that they won to buy prizes. Griffin, recounting the story, implied that he was rather cool to the idea, but he wanted to get the show on the air, so he agreed to it, and in fact, Bolen’s idea for shopping became so intrinsic to the game that the original pilot was titled Shopper’s Bazaar.

Wheel of Fortune premiered on NBC in January of 1975, and for the next 14+ years, the contestant who solved the puzzle would take their prizes to one of a rotating series of boutiques—the Living Room, the Cozy Kitchen, the Kid’s Bedroom, the Outdoor Center, etc., with an array of thematically-appropriate prizes available. Contestants were allowed to buy whatever they could afford and had the option to stop shopping and save their money for the next round, in hopes of building it up so they could buy something even more expensive. That was called “putting the money on account.” Because of the risk involved (the money that went unspent could be lost on a Bankrupt, and if the contestant didn’t solve a puzzle for the rest of the show, the money simply went away), contestants typically opted to spend all of the money that they could, and when the few dollars they had left couldn’t buy anything onstage, the show would put it on a catalog gift certificate.

Many of the prizes were standard game show fare; cars, trips, furniture, appliances…but shopping got interesting once the contestant got down to about $300 or so that they still had to spend. Scattered around the stage were a variety of low-end prizes available for contestants to use up their funds—an end table shaped like an elephant; an onyx waste basket; a gold-plated towel rack; a Gucci calculator; a toy robot; a gigantic Toblerone bar; a hand-painted milk can; a silver picture frame; bookends depicting Atlas holding up the world; a 1930s-style telephone; a brass duck…

Of all the oddball prizes that contestants snapped up during those years, the one that unexpectedly became a star of Wheel of Fortune was a ceramic dalmatian. The apocryphal story (the author of this article could not verify this) is that Sheldon Linke, a prize coordinator in charge of rounding up goodies for NBC’s game shows, had seen a ceramic dalmatian and was so enamored with it that he placed a massive bulk order; so many that the show simply had to keep offering it to use up the stock. People came to love the ceramic dalmatian, and it became something of an unofficial mascot for the show. The studio audience would applaud when a contestant opted to buy it. Sometimes, a contestant armed with, say, $3,500 worth of spending money, would make it a point to buy the ceramic dalmatian first and then move onto the furniture and vacations.

By 1987, shopping began to fade away from Wheel of Fortune. A special “Big Month of Cash,” in which contestants simply got the cash for solving the puzzles in lieu of shopping, proved to be wildly popular. People watch game shows to play along, and with Wheel of Fortune, that means solving the puzzle at home. The time saved by omitting shopping allowed the show to cram one or two extra puzzles into each episode.

Besides that, even the people who made the show weren’t particularly fond of shopping—Sajak bluntly referred to the shopping segments as “the longest two minutes on television.” Contestants who had to spend thousands of dollars on the spot weren’t prepared to do so and would silently stare at the prizes for long periods of time. Sometimes, a contestant simply wasn’t interested in the prizes available to them for that round, and the shopping came across more like a chore than a treat. The show’s announcer had a short script to read for each prize purchased, which often led to tedious segments in which viewers just had to sit and listen to five or more prizes being described. No game was happening. And besides, the idea for shopping had been foisted on them by an executive who had long since left the network and no longer wielded any power over the show.

After 1989, shopping was entirely gone, but the ceramic dalmatian has enjoyed a cheeky legacy; it would still appear whenever the show did retrospective specials. In 2007, employees of the show were given miniature ceramic dalmatians for Christmas. And even today, in 2024, 35 years after the last time a contestant went shopping, a ceramic dalmatian preserved in a glass case sits at the studio entrance for Wheel of Fortune.

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The Exorcist is one of the most chilling horror films of the 20th century. Pea soup, flying furniture, and the terrifying guttural voice emitting from a 12-year-old girl came together to create a disturbing and impossible-to-forget experience for moviegoers.

And we have Groucho Marx to thank for it.

Groucho Marx’s comedy quiz show, You Bet Your Life, was firmly an institution by the start of 1961, having already logged more than 13 years on radio and television. The simple Q&A game was always of secondary importance. The actual appeal of the show was the lengthy interview that Groucho conducted with the contestants before they started the game. Groucho’s interviews were peppered with ad-libs and scripted lines as he mined the contestants for any interesting thing that they might have to say about themselves. And technically, even the interview was part of the game—the contestants won bonus money if either of them uttered that week’s “secret word” while talking to the legendary funnyman.

On February 9, 1961, Groucho welcomed two contestants to the stage. One was a Beverly Hills housewife named Arlene. The other was a mysterious man in a white suit and sunglasses, calling himself Prince Kahirala. Prince Kahirala, looking a little spooked and confused even with his eyes covered, explained that he was from Saudi Arabia, and that his grasp of English was minimal. Groucho fired off some quick lines about “being on the lam”—an expression that the prince didn’t understand—and confused the prince by asking about Minnesota.

Groucho seemed flustered for just a moment before the prince abruptly took off his sunglasses and began speaking fluent English with an American accent. He introduced himself as Bill Blatty, a friend of You Bet Your Life announcer George Fenneman, and explained that he was a writer who took on phony identities to amuse people. Groucho, who seemed to have only feigned not knowing the prince’s true identity, sang the praises of Blatty’s most recent book, Which Way to Mecca, Jack?, a humorous memoir of his two years living in Lebanon while he worked for the United States Information Service.

Blatty and his partner collected $10,800 that night. Adjusted for inflation, Blatty’s share of the money today would be about $56,000. With a cushion of money to land on, Blatty opted to quit his day job and focus completely on writing. In the next eight years, Blatty churned out the screenplays for eight feature films, becoming an established name in comedy with titles like A Shot in the Dark and What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? He was paid $150,000 for a screenplay that was ultimately never produced, and lived off that money while he researched and wrote The Exorcist.

Blatty returned to game shows once more shortly before The Exorcist reached movie theaters. Blatty was a contestant on To Tell the Truth, discussing the controversy and interest surrounding his novel on which the movie would be based. And to tell the truth, Blatty was never shy about acknowledging the role that a game show had played in his success. He once pointed out that he never held a regular job a day in his life after he had played You Bet Your Life.

DO YOU REMEMBER…THESE OTHER “YOU BET YOUR LIFE” CONTESTANTS?

HAYSTACKS CALHOUN: One of the most famous wrestlers of that era, the 601-pound Calhoun, of Morgan’s Corner, Arkansas, appeared with Groucho early in his wrestling career. He would later appear in Rod Serling’s Requiem for a Heavyweight, collect seven tag team championships with various partners, and be inducted posthumously in the WWE Hall of Fame.

PHYLLIS DILLER: A newspaper reporter and advertising copywriter who had started performing stand-up comedy at age 37, Diller made her national television debut as a contestant, telling a few jokes at Groucho’s request. She would remain a fixture of comedy and variety shows for the next five decades.

PEDRO GONZALEZ-GONZALEZ: A stand-up comic who performed mostly for Spanish speaking audiences, Gonzalez-Gonzalez’s chat with Groucho, in which he gave a confusing explanation of his name, caught the attention of John Wayne, who had Gonzalez-Gonzalez added to several of his films in bit roles. Gonzalez-Gonzalez had a long, successful career as an actor as a result, and today he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The post The Exorcist’s Game Show Connection appeared first on The Strong National Museum of Play.

More than two decades after the final episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood aired in 2001, the legacy of Fred Rogers has endured. Rogers has been the topic of a major feature film, It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood starring Tom Hanks, and a documentary film, Won’t You Be My Neighbor. His namesake company, Fred Rogers Productions, has produced numerous public television series, including the spinoff Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. Rogers himself left behind an extraordinary body of work—nearly 1,000 episodes of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, hundreds of songwriting credits, more than a dozen operas written especially for children, something north of 40 books…and one game show. Mister Rogers created a game show.

In the early 1950s, Rogers, having just graduated from Rollins College with a Bachelor of Music degree, moved to New York to become a page at NBC. He worked his way up to a floor manager position, and he held the distinction of being the floor manager for some early closed-circuit broadcasts testing NBC’s new color programming equipment—which amused him because his co-workers didn’t realize he was color-blind. Many at NBC expected him to have a long and successful career as a director of variety shows, but before that came to pass, he surprised the network by giving his notice and moving to Pittsburgh for a new job at a local TV station that wasn’t on the air yet; one that would operate with a business model that nobody had tried before. Station WQED would air no commercials, depending on funding directly from viewers to finance the programming—public television.

Necessity being the mother of invention, WQED needed ideas for programming from any employees who had them. Dorothy Daniel, the station manager, had given broad assignments to several employees that amounted to “Come up with a game show, come up with some children’s shows, etc.” Fred Rogers rounded up a batch of brochures with ideas for party games, looking for something to spark an idea.

Rogers, and three other employees—Josie Carey, John Ziegler, and Jimmy Miller—eventually crafted an idea that they named The Greeks Had a Word for It, and they began play-testing it in the WQED office. While developing the game show, Rogers and Carey began chatting with each other about ideas for children’s shows. They found that their individual ideas were so aligned that they decided to collaborate on a series that would involve songs and puppets. They called it The Children’s Corner, and it was the show that introduced children to King Friday, Daniel Tiger (named for Dorothy Daniel), Lady Elaine Fairchild, and the Neighborhood Trolley. One of the most celebrated children’s programs in the history of television owes its existence to two co-workers chatting while they brainstormed ideas for a game show.

The Children’s Corner aired on day #1 of public television’s existence, April 5, 1954. With so little money sustaining WQED in the beginning, it took a little more than a year for The Greeks Had a Word for It to make its debut. Fittingly, Rogers’ sole venture as a game show creator was a game that required pretending and imagination.

The Greeks Had a Word For It, hosted by Jim Westover, pitted two teams against each other: The Alphas vs. The Omegas. Each team was comprised of three celebrities; generally, they were local TV and radio performers in the Pittsburgh area; among them, Bob Trow, better known to future fans of Neighborhood as Bob Dog and Robert Troll. WQED’s own employees frequently stepped up to serve as “celebrities” when necessary. Rogers himself played the game quite often.

The game was charades. Home viewers mailed in suggestions for words to be played—usually words like “versatile” or “philanthropist” that couldn’t easily be acted on their own and had to be broken down syllable-by-syllable to be conveyed. One player acted out the word while their teammates tried to guess the word for points. The team could then win bonus points by guessing the language of origin for the word. If a word “confounded” the team, the home viewer who submitted it would win a pocket dictionary and tickets to a local cultural event, like the Pittsburgh symphony or a play.

The game was easy to understand; it had an interactive element that drew in viewers; and the live, low-frills, experimental nature of WQED at the time gave it an exciting air of unpredictability. One night, a player got so worked up acting out a charade that he threw himself to the floor as part of his clue, lacerating him over the eye. But firmly believing that the show must go on, he refused medical attention and remained onstage, finishing out that evening’s episode even though he was bleeding.

The Greeks Had a Word for It was a success—it ran for more than three years in its initial run, going off the air in October 1958, only to return in the summer of 1959 with new host Bill Brant and lasting for another two years. Even with an impressive five-year tenure on the air, it was a blip in the extraordinary career of Mister Rogers.

DO YOU REMEMBER…THESE OTHER PUBLIC TELEVISION GAME SHOWS?

YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF (1974) Allen Ludden hosted this ten-episode series, taped in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and designed to teach viewers about money management. Another Mister Rogers connection—the theme music for this show was composed and performed by King Friday’s royal handyman, Joe Negri.

WE INTERRUPT THIS WEEK (1979) Ned Sherrin, creator of the groundbreaking satire series That was the Week That Was, hosted this comedy quiz in which journalists answered questions about recent news events.

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CARMEN SANDIEGO? (1991-1995) Developed by National Archives of Game Show History co-founder Howard Blumenthal, and based on the computer game of the same name, three kids chased quirky crooks around the world in a geography quiz where the questions were presented in songs, cartoons, and comedy sketches.

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Barely five years removed from the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, NBC surprised viewers by touting an exciting new quiz show in which the contestants would be told all the answers…the catch was, they had to provide the questions. Sixty years ago this month, America was introduced to Jeopardy! in March of 1964.

Merv Griffin had lamented to his wife, Julann, about the absence of Q&A shows from television since the quiz show scandals, saying that the networks were afraid that a quiz show would give the contestants the answers, as they did on the shows at the heart of the 1950s scandals. Julann cheekily suggested a quiz show that did exactly that, give contestants the answers. When Merv didn’t understand the idea right away, she began giving examples.

“The answer is 79 Wistful Vista. What’s the question?”

Griffin, remembering an old-time radio show, replied, “What was Fibber McGee & Molly’s address?”

“5,280.”

“How many feet are in one mile?”

Griffin fleshed out the idea, creating a gameboard with 10 categories, each with 10 answers that had to be questioned. He named it What’s the Question? and staged a demonstration game for an audience of NBC executives. After a game that fell rather flat, an executive named Ed Vane laid out his main objection: “The game needs more jeopardies.”

Griffin could not take his mind off the word. He revised the format accordingly. The main “jeopardy” was that an incorrect response would now deduct the cash value of the answer from the player’s score. One executive, Bob Aaron, suggested dividing the game up into rounds of increasing difficulty, which led to a smaller game board of six categories with five clues apiece, and rounds of Jeopardy, Double Jeopardy, and Final Jeopardy. Griffin, a horse racing fan, added a “Daily Double” to the board, injecting an element of gambling to the game.

The retitled Jeopardy! played much better for executives. A complaint that the material was too hard seemed to doom the show, but one executive, Grant Tinker (who had started his career on another hard quiz, College Bowl), spoke up, insisting that the level of difficulty enhanced the game and implored his fellow executives to buy the show. On March 30, 1964, Jeopardy! made its debut. The host was Art Fleming, a novice MC who was hired because Griffin liked his performance in a commercial for TWA. In what could only be described as “beginner’s luck,” Fleming would host 2,900 episodes of Jeopardy! The show aired daily on NBC through January 3, 1975. A concurrent nighttime version premiered in the fall of 1974 and ran for 39 weeks. Fleming and Jeopardy! returned in 1978 with a reinvented version of the game (one contestant was eliminated before Double Jeopardy, and Final Jeopardy was replaced by a bonus round called Super Jeopardy) but it ran for only 22 weeks.

Among the highlights of Jeopardy! starring Art Fleming:

• The annual Tournament of Champions. The first, held only six months after the series debuted, was part of a ratings stunt that NBC dubbed “The Week of Champions,” in which each of their daytime game shows had a tournament of champions. Jeopardy!’s became an annual tradition. The 1968 Tournament was won by Red Gibson, father of Mel. The 1969 tournament was won by Jay Wolpert, who went on to create the game shows Whew!, Hit Man, and Blackout.
• In 1965, John McCain was a contestant, 22 years before he was first elected to the U.S. Senate. A one-day champion, McCain decades later recounted the experience to reporters and ruefully recalled the Final Jeopardy clue that cost him his second game. (“Cathy loved him, but married Edgar Linton instead.” The correct response was “Who was Heathcliff?” McCain, blanking on the character’s name, simply wrote the title of the relevant novel. “What is Wuthering Heights?”)
• In the summer of 1966, a special contest was held in which viewers were invited to submit complete boards of material they had written themselves—six categories with five answers apiece. The winning entrants won guaranteed appearances as contestants on the show, while the material they had written was played on later dates.
• On March 30, 1970, the show celebrated its sixth anniversary with a special game in which three ten-year-old contestants competed, with all the prize money going to Easter Seals. Art Fleming also gave a backstage tour of the Jeopardy! studio and offices during the show.
• On January 13, 1971, Jeopardy! kicked off a special Back to College Week with an appearance by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who thanked the show and Art Fleming for their efforts in promoting education.
• On February 21, 1972, Jeopardy! celebrated its 2000^th episode with a special game bringing back three of the all-time champions of the series, a board consisting entirely of visual clues, and a Daily Double hidden in every category. The episode also included a special appearance by devout Jeopardy! fan Mel Brooks, in character as The 2,000-Year-Old Man.
• On March 30, 1972, Jeopardy celebrated its 8^th anniversary with a special game played by the other NBC daytime game show hosts: Art James of The Who What or Where Game; Peter Marshall of The Hollywood Squares; and Bill Cullen of Three on a Match.
• On March 7, 1974, Art Fleming welcomed a special guest, Alex Trebek, who was promoting his NBC game show The Wizard of Odds.
• In April of 1974, Jeopardy! celebrated its tenth anniversary with a special week of games in which all of the contestants were parent/child teams, each consisting of a past Jeopardy! champion and their 10-year-old son or daughter. Alex Trebek returned during this week to wish Art Fleming a happy 10th anniversary.

DO YOU REMEMBER…THESE OTHER GAME SHOWS OF MARCH, 1964?

YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION (NBC)–Host Bill Leyden welcomed a mystery celebrity, and presented a series of clues, as well as the celebrity’s answers to personal questions that they had been asked before the show. A panel tried to guess the celebrity’s identity.

GET THE MESSAGE (ABC)–Frank Buxton hosted this variation on Password in which a contestants’ two celebrity partners each had to write down a clue to the correct answer; the catch was, the celebrities couldn’t consult each other about what they were writing.

WORD FOR WORD (NBC)–Jeopardy! wasn’t even the only Merv Griffin Production on the NBC schedule that day. Griffin hosted this creation himself; contestants saw a lengthy word, like MICROBIOLOGY, and scored points by coming up with shorter words that could be formed from those same letters. (BRIM, or GRIMY, or GOO, for example)

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Game shows are not just television programs. They are brands unto themselves, and some of them are represented by graphic icons—the blobby red Whammys of Press Your Luck; the merry joker of The Joker’s Wild; the distinctive dollar sign in The Price Is Right’s logo. These elements are calling cards for classic game shows. The best ones stand on their own as representatives of their show.

One of these classic icons was “the Truth Teller” associated with To Tell the Truth for more than 50 years.

The design was a very basic cartoon character with an incomplete, disconnected body, oddly proportioned, with one arm curving upward, raising his right hand, visually pledging to tell the truth. In the coming years, it would become so associated with To Tell the Truth that as the show’s look was revised and updated over the decades, the new set designs revolved around this icon; usually three of him looming behind the three contestants facing the questions from the panel.

Georg Elliot Olden (1920-1975) designed the Truth Teller. The grandson of a slave, Olden grew up in Alabama, took up cartooning in high school, and then dropped out of college to design graphics for the Office of Strategic Services (a precursor to the CIA) during World War II. When the war ended in 1945, Olden’s supervisor at the OSS personally recommended him for a new job at CBS: the head art director for CBS’s new television division. At the time, Olden was 24 years old.

Over the next 15 years, Olden made charts, graphs, and maps for newscasts. Even in television’s infancy, Olden infused a simple newscast with effective and imaginative artwork. A statement from the United Nations’ Atomic Energy Commission’, pledging to inspect and govern weapon development around the world, was accompanied by Olden’s three-framed animation of the U.N. logo peering through a telescope to focus attention on specific countries. He used a balopticon—a scrolling comic strip of sorts—to illustrate an argument between retailers, farmers, manufacturers, and congressmen about who deserved the blame for the rising price of goods. Sports scores were accompanied by images of smiling or frowning fans in the stands, depending on how the home teams performed. Olden also designed logos for some CBS shows, and stage settings as well.

One of Olden’s most distinctive contributions was “promo cards” or “title cards.” In an era where television advertising was much more simplistic, CBS would frequently promote shows by displaying a graphic on the screen for a few seconds with an off-screen announcer’s voice-over providing the time that viewers could watch the program.

Olden’s personal style made these graphics stand out as effective advertisements. The sitcom Private Secretary was advertised with the title and time slot typewritten across the screen, riddled with typos that had all been covered with X’s. The darkly humorous Alfred Hitchcock Presents was promoted with Olden’s drawing of Hitchcock’s body riddled with bullets. For the network’s coverage of The Kentucky Derby, Olden arranged the letters in “The Kentucky Derby” into the shape of a horse’s body, with the CBS eye peering from the “THE”-shaped head.

Olden won a special award for the animated promo card he created for I’ve Got a Secret. Running only about five seconds, the promo showed a basic cartoon face with a zipper forming across the mouth as the title of the show was spoken. Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions grew so fond of Olden’s work, they hired him to update the look and logo for I’ve Got a Secret after he’d left CBS.

Olden’s work was not limited to television. When he appeared as a contestant on a 1963 episode of I’ve Got a Secret (of course, his secret was that he had designed the show’s logo), host Garry Moore told the audience about Olden’s latest project — a U.S. postage stamp celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Olden was the first Black American to design a U.S. stamp.

It was not Olden’s only appearance as a contestant. He was also an imposter on To Tell the Truth. After the game, he revealed his true identity and (again) host Garry Moore told the panel and the audience that Olden had designed the show’s Truth Teller.

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Thirty years ago this month, a sad bit of game show history was made, but nobody recognized it at the time. On January 14, 1994, NBC aired Caesar’s Challenge for the last time. The following Monday, the network’s schedule was a wall of talk shows and soap operas. With no fanfare at all, viewers witnessed the end of the last original game show format to air on network daytime television.

By comparison, 20 years earlier, in January 1974, the three major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) aired eight hours of game shows in the daytime schedule. In 1984, the cumulative total dropped to six and a half hours. After 1984, though, the TV landscape and the audience it served both changed. The largest audience for game shows—women at home—was reduced as more and more women entered the workplace full-time. A long list of failed game shows at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s had convinced many TV executives that game shows were “out.” And the undeniable dominance of Oprah Winfrey, whose landmark talk show made its national debut in 1986 and immediately captured a large audience, compelled those same executives to follow the money; talk shows were “in.” Networks and local stations alike filled their schedules more and more with talk shows, not game shows, in search of the next Oprah.

Caesar’s Challenge had debuted the previous June, with several elements that made it stand out from the crowd. It was a traditional game show, but glossier. It was not produced in a television studio. Instead, it was presented on the cavernous stage of Caesar’s Palace Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. The host was a familiar face to sports fans but a rookie to game shows, NBC sportscaster Ahmad Rashad. The production company responsible for the series wasn’t the usual Mark Goodson Productions or Merv Griffin Enterprises or Jack Barry & Dan Enright Productions. Caesar’s Challenge was a venture of Steven J. Cannell, the production company behind many action and drama shows, including The Greatest American Hero, The A-Team, and Hunter. Remember the goateed gentleman ripping the page out of his typewriter to create the letter C at the end of those shows? That was Steven J. Cannell.

On Caesar’s Challenge, Ahmad Rashad read trivia questions that contestants answered for the right to solve a scrambled word. The letters in the word appeared in the windows of a gigantic slot machine (it was as large as the whole stage set). Each spin of the slot machine would put one letter in its correct position until the word was solved. Pulling the lever for the slot machine was the show’s version of Vanna White, and this was another twist that made the show stand out—the model was a muscular man, Dan Doherty, costumed as a Roman soldier, a centurion.

Before the show had even premiered, the writing was already on the wall for game shows on network television. Harry Friedman, the show’s executive producer, revealed to one reporter that it wasn’t intended to be a network game show. The company had been trying to sell it to individual stations through syndication, but NBC surprised them by making an offer for the series and guaranteeing 29 weeks on the air.

Friedman remarked at the time, “[That] is unusually good in this climate of game shows not being the most popular form of new shows. I’m just trying to get the show on long enough to get both my daughters through college.”

After the 29 weeks, Caesar’s Challenge was off the air. After January 14, 1994, The Price is Right was the last remaining game show on the network daytime airwaves. In 2009, TPIR would be joined on the CBS schedule by a reboot of the classic Let’s Make a Deal.  No original game formats have been seen on the daytime schedules of ABC, CBS or NBC (or FOX or CW) since that day in 1993 when Caesar’s Challenge debuted. The daytime games that have debuted since then have been syndicated offerings, sold to the local stations to be put wherever they each saw fit on their schedules.

Rashad stuck mostly with sportscasting after that, but surprised game show fans by returning to the genre in 2021 with Tug of Words for Game Show Network. Friedman would bounce back in a big way, becoming executive producer of Wheel of Fortune in 1995 and Jeopardy! in 1999. Friedman retired in 2020 after a monumentally successful tenure with both shows. His memories are available for viewing in the NAGSH collection of oral histories.

As for game shows themselves, there was a colossal silver lining to this dark cloud. In 1999, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? marked the return of game shows to prime time, which had largely ignored and avoided game shows for decades. Game shows became a more important part of the TV landscape than ever at that point, with more than 40 new game show formats bowing in prime time in the years since.

DO YOU REMEMBER…THE FOURTH, THIRD, AND SECOND-TO-LAST ORIGINAL GAME SHOW FORMATS ON COMMERCIAL NETWORK DAYTIME TV?

BLACKOUT (CBS, 1988): Bob Goen hosted this quirky game from creator/producer Jay Wolpert. In 20 seconds, players would record a description of a word that their partner would listen to later to try to guess the word. But an opponent was standing by with a “blackout button,” which could be pressed to mute the audio when a key word in the description was said.

SCATTERGORIES (NBC, 1993): Based on the successful board game, Scattergories, hosted by Dick Clark, could aptly be called Don’t-Match Game. Contestants were given a category and a letter, and had to name words that fit the category and started with that letter. The catch was that they were trying to guess words that were NOT said by the five celebrity players.

FAMILY SECRETS (NBC, 1993): Bob Eubanks hosted a game that was essentially The Newlywed Game played by families. Moms, dads, and the kids would answer questions that revealed embarrassing secrets about each other.

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Have you ever teased a friend who was about to make a bad decision by saying “You’ll be sorry”? And you probably didn’t just say it. You probably said it with an odd, sing-song inflection. “You’lllllll be soooooooo-rrrrrrrryyyyyy!”

It was probably just something you picked up. You’ve heard friends say it. You’ve heard characters say it in movies and TV shows. But when you said “You’llllllll be sooooooooo-rrrrrrrrryyyyy” in that distinctive way, did you ever ask yourself why you’re saying it like that?

When you say “You’ll be sorry” like that, you’re quoting a game show catchphrase that has enjoyed a stunningly long life beyond that of its show.

Take It or Leave It debuted on CBS Radio in 1940 with host Bob Hawk. An audience member’s name was drawn from a fishbowl, and that person would select a category from a simple blackboard onstage. Hawk asked a question valued at $1. The show’s title came from the dilemma attached to a correct answer. The contestant could quit with the money they won, or leave it for a chance to answer another question worth double the value, from $2 to $4 to $8 to $16 to $32, all the way up to the famous “$64 question.”

“Sixty-four-dollar question” itself became a common phrase, being invoked at sports events, Senate hearings, and political press conferences. Today, “Sixty-four-dollar question” is listed in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary with the definition “Noun: a crucial question expressing the basic issue on a problematical subject.”

A new host took over the show in December 1941, Phil Baker, the man generally credited with “You’ll be sorry.” He began saying it to contestants who opted to forfeit their money to go for another question. The audience picked up on it and began saying it with him. As the years went by, the delivery of the line grew more exaggerated, until it reached the strange sing-song tone that we know today. A 1943 report mentions that the older soldiers at military induction centers were known to stand near the barber chairs and yell “You’llllll be soooo-rrrrrrrryyy!” as the new recruits got their heads shaved.

With a popular host, a big audience (35 million listeners a week by one estimate), and catchphrases that permeated the language, Take It or Leave It achieved a rare level of success for a game show—it was adapted into a movie. In 1944, 20th-Century Fox treated moviegoers to Take It or Leave It, a movie co-starring Phil Baker as himself. The movie’s premise was simple and inexpensive: a contestant selected the category “Scenes from Motion Pictures of the Past,” with each question leading to a musical scene from a past 20th-Century Fox film.

Baker departed the show in 1947, replaced by Garry Moore, who hosted it until the series ended in 1950. Five years later, plans were being made for the CBS television network to introduce a new version of the show, with a thousandfold increase in the cash prizes. Moore was offered the job of hosting the new series, but declined, saying he suspected that with prizes that big, “hanky-panky” was inevitable. He called it. The $64,000 Question would be one of the defining shows of the Quiz Show Scandal.

DO YOU REMEMBER…THESE OTHER GAME SHOW PHRASES THAT ENTERED OUR VOCABULARY?

“Is it bigger than a breadbox?”—What’s My Line? panelist Steve Allen had established that a contestant’s line of work involved a product. Trying to figure out the product, Allen tried to zero in on the size of it by asking “Is it bigger than a breadbox?” For a question asked in such a specific set of circumstances, it became a common phrase in the English language, as a simple way to try to establish facts about an unknown thing.

“Will the real (____) please stand up?”—To Tell the Truth ended every game with a simple request to reveal which of the three contestants was the person that they were claiming to be. Within five years, Rod Serling presented an episode of The Twilight Zone titled “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” An animated series, Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down? showed up on Saturday morning TV in the 1970s. And Eminem had a signature hit in 2000 with the classic “Will the Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up?”

“The password is…”—When Password was originally developed in 1961, producer Bob Stewart wanted to do something helpful for his mother, an immigrant who spoke English fluently but had never learned how to read it. Stewart had the show’s announcer whisper each password while it was displayed in the lower third of the screen, so his mother would be able to understand the game at all times. It became a common way to say that the reason or solution for something was so simple, it could be expressed in one word.

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