By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
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.