Game Show Network

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, reality shows, and interactive television games. The channel was launched on December 1, 1994.

GSN is received is available in about 60 million homes, and is jointly-owned by Liberty Media and Sony Pictures Entertainment. The network licenses the Mark Goodson-Bill Todman game show library, which includes such shows as Match Game (the channel's most popular classic show since its '94 launching), Password, To Tell The Truth, Card Sharks, Blockbusters, and Family Feud.

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. However, Beat the Clock returned to the 3:00 AM slot in July 2006, effectively restoring the "Black & White Overnight" hour.

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 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 "game show within the show." All these efforts have long since departed from the network's schedule.

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 searches are going on for a sixth in 2007.

April 2006 saw the debut of a new season of Lingo and two new game show originals, PlayMania and a revival of I've Got a Secret. A revival of the word-association game Chain Reaction, and another new game, Starface, are scheduled to begin in August 2006.

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's 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 early morning (a common practice among other basic cable channels).

A new name and a new direction

In the latter part of 2003, Game Show Network began airing GSN Video Games, the first program to air on GSN that had nothing to do with game shows. Although the show was short-lived and considered a bomb, it was a sign of the network's change of format from Game Show Network's "all game shows, all the time" to what would eventually become "GSN: The Network for Games".

On March 15, 2004, at 10:00 p.m. 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 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 have since left the schedule. Traditional 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. Narration by Woolery was added on GSN for the daytime lineup schedule. For a brief time in the spring of 2005, GSN 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 the first 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 the debut of Anything to Win, a documentary series with no game show connections. GSN also introduced High Stakes Poker, which features a private-game format among professional players rather than a traditional tournament format, and is programming a third season of World Series of Blackjack. Also debuting in January 2006 was That 70s Hour, which consisted of two back-to-back consecutive episodes of Match Game '74. In an unusual move, GSN showed the clapperboard before each episode, which showed the original date of taping and production number. The hour also contained Match Game trivia and brief clips of an interview with host Gene Rayburn produced shortly before his death. That 70s Hour ended in April 2006 when GSN debuted its new version of I've Got a Secret in the second half of the hour; though Match Game continued in the first half, the slate announcements, trivia, and interviews were gone. Beginning July 18, 2006 the network is offering a special seven-week run of "The 50 Greatest Game Shows of All Time" in the 10:00 PM hour, Tuesday through Thursday. This is part of the network's return to an almost all-traditional game show schedule.

In fact, 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. President Rich Cronin stated in 2004 that, as long as the network remains on cable/satellite, it will always air Family Feud, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and Match Game, which as of 2006 are among its highest-rated classic and overall shows. It remains to be seen whether such a concentrated focus is commercially viable in the long run. Currently, GSN is available in slightly over half of all U.S. households; however, the network's financial performance and household availability have improved in recent years.

Controversies and similar UK channel

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 time-compression 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. The network 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?.

External links

American television networks | Sony subsidiaries | 1994 establishments