The Six Degrees of Alex Trebek via Starcade

Wink Martindale's video vault of vintage television finds its way through an interesting kiddie television show of the early 1980's, Starcade, which ran from 1982-84 when Parker Brothers money ran out even with decent ratings (and a show I remember from my youth).

Jim Caruso and Mavis E. Arthur, among others, pitched a video game-based television show and filmed a pilot in 1981.  The original host of the pilot was Mike Eruzione, the hero of the country following his game-winner against the Soviet hockey team a year earlier in Lake Placid.  The pilot with Mr. Eruzione took 24 players, with eight players playing one of three different games in a tournament.  A second pilot was later ordered a few months later, with someone best known then from High Rollers and later the flop Pitfall hosting this pilot.  It was evident that this pilot was still a game in development.

The same person hosted two more pilots and did the editing himself.  When the show was picked up, the daytime Battlestars was being done and he was doing pilots for a Merv Griffin revival that would take him to the rest of his life, so he could not do this video game show.

The oddities of this show turned out to be even stranger.  Mark Richards hosted the first 23 shows before executives did not like his work, so for the rest of the show's run, it was well-known Treasure Hut and Jackpot! lead Geoff Edwards who hosted the duration of the show until its ending, it was very popular and people auditioned.  And you could even hear Edwards using his signature phrases at times, while we later learned one video game was his favourite and he'd notice that when it was chosen.  Edwards, of course, as we noted in his obituary in 2014, was a well-known hosts who also hosted Chain Reaction and even a few episodes of Let's Make a Deal when Monty Hall was sick.  Edwards was also Mark Goodson's first choice for Family Feud (something I've noticed with Goodson-controlled versions;  Joe Namath was Mr. Goodson's first choice for the 1988-95 version).

But wait . . . there was more twists and turns from the pilot and the first host.

Despite the failure of Mark Richards, the man who producers wanted to host Starcade after seeing his pilot but was unable because of other commitments later hired Richards to be a contestant coordinator of the syndicated show and moderate practice games for contestants in the first season. He released those recently.

The current person doing the practice games for Jeopardy!, as he has for the past decade, is Clue Crew member Jimmy McGuire, s a candidate to take over hosting the show and I believe is the favourite for taking over that show that caused Starcade to not have its first choice as host.

REFERENCES

Retro TV Friday: GLOW and Card Sharks

With the announcement ABC is reviving Mark Goodson's Card Sharks (aka Play Your Cards Right in the UK and NZ) as a summer series with Joel McHale as host (?), this story came back to catch us.

The late Emily Dole, a star shot put athlete who was in the Olympic Trials twice, who played Mount Fiji on the original Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling "promotion," was involved in a 1988 episode of the Bob Eubanks version. Keep in mind Eubanks had just turned 50 and Dole was 31. (Dole died age 60 in 2018; Eubanks is now 81, and his son is a famous stuntman.) The ten GLOW actresses were asked how many could lift Mr. Eubanks over his head. Dole tried it -- and see for yourself what a shot put star could do trying to bodyslam a game show host.

Retro TV Friday

Wink Martindale's site is known for posing classic television clips, especially in relation to appearances on quiz and game shows.  Recently, he posted the pilot for a television show that ended up much differently than what was originally envisioned between him and and Merv Griffin that led the show to lasting just one season.  But note the names referenced in the pilot for "Headline Chasers" that was sent to the National Association of Television Programming Executives in the mid-1980's for the concept he had developed for production.  In the first round (which became the third in the final version that made it to air), note the clues referenced in the first question.  In the third round (which became the first in the final version that made it to air;  eventually letters were added to the headline when clues were later given), note the first headline.  Both the clue in the first cover and the subject of the first headline are back in the news on this very time in the present in 2018.  The first is a mid-30's child of the People cover subject that was referenced in the clue recently tied the knot with an actress that was a model on a Dutch postcode lottery game show franchise.  The other, now 50, is appearing on another European game show franchise starting next week, and I personally met 28 years ago!

So what indeed goes around comes around, as we saw with the headliners referenced in the pilot for a show that Mr. Martindale admitted was ruined by Mr. Griffin's own staff.

Retro TV Friday

On a recent episode of ABC's To Tell The Truth 2016, Alex Trebek became the second former regular host of the Goodson-Todman franchise to serve as a panelist; previously, Bill Cullen, who hosted the 1969-78 version of the show on occasion when Garry Moore was absent, and hosted much of the 1976-77 season after Moore's retirement, was moved back to panelist for the final season. Trebek was the third host of the 1990-91 NBC series that was short-lived because it faced a notorious CBS ratings juggernaut in daytime that still holds its own today.

When I learned Mr. Trebek was appearing on the 2016 version of the classic, ABC made a slight blunder because they did not want to viewer to know the history of the show; the 1969 version's theme song, complete with vocals, was to have been used in the 1990 version. In fact, Score Productions went to Nashville for Take 6 (a black gospel group originally) to record the vocals of the 1969 theme for use in 1990. For some reason, NBC did not approve of Take 6's vocals, and for the broadcast version, it was removed. The 1969-78 theme would have been a nice touch for Mr. Trebek's appearance. Let's enjoy the Take 6 version of the 1969-78 To Tell the Truth theme, and note how that version also used many principles of the classic logo and an updated version of the crossed-finger logo.

What gear is that sportscar in, Mr. Clarkson?

Fans of a very popular British motoring programme in its best known form will be excited to hear he is back on terrestrial television in the UK fronting the revival of a very well-known Sony Pictures Television programme.  ITV and Sony had this video released for this legendary hit's return to the UK airwaves.

Auditions of game show hosts . . . you'd be surprised!

When CBS debuted three game shows in 1972 (The New Price Is Right*, The Joker's Wild, and Gambit),  the oddity of CBS Daytime executive B. Donald Grant's moves were in play.  CBS wanted Bob Barker to host The New Price Is Right, but Barker wanted The Joker's Wild instead.  CBS considered Wink Martindale, but he chose Gambit.  The network effectively was forced to have Jack Barry (though he had baggage from the quiz show scandals) host it when Barker accepted Grant's deal for New Price instead of his want of Joker.  We know the result for 35 years.  Then, when CBS attempted to audition a replacement for Barker in 2007, the network auditioned Todd Newton, Mark Steines, George Hamilton, Mario Lopez, Dave Price, John O'Hurley (who was hosting a syndicated game show at the time), and Marco Regil (Spanish language personality who hosted Mexican versions but was wanting for an English language break).  The surprise was when a summer primetime series game show host, who had semi-retired from television after the end of his sitcom and his US version of a British comedy show, was given the chance without an audition.  The rest, as we know, is history, though Drew Carey has proven he isn't afraid to be a team over me person, especially after Rich Fields' firing (which according to Fields, led to a Season 39 taping day lunch after Carey learned of his brother's death where Carey and Fields spent a considerable amount of time together that proved skeptics wrong).

That reminded me of a commentary on the Classic TV History blog, and you wonder what would have happened 41 years ago had he been given that chance.  The drunkenness of Edd Byrnes when he hosted pilots of an NBC Daytime show that would replace the long-running Jeopardy! was highly inappropriate.  Thankfully, he wasn't given the chance to do the show, but the host of the first pilot, which was considerably different than the show we now know, Chuck Woolery was, and lasted nearly seven years.  The rest, as we know . . .



When the show was still a daytime show, NBC was trying to audition replacements for Pat Sajak in 1988.  We know NBC went with a former Chargers player.  But who was on the auditions list? You'd be surprised who was auditioned by Coca-Cola (then owned Merv Griffin Enterprises) and NBC:



*The "New" tag was used until the summer of 1973, the show's first season.  The reference was made during the show's Season 44 Premiere Week, which featured throwback door designs shown on the giant monitor behind the audience except for the current decade, which used the new Season 44 pattern.

Geoff Edwards, R.I.P.

The recent death of game show host Geoff Edwards at 83 reminded me of a very interesting comment I had read.

When Mark Goodson originally pitched Family Feud in 1976, he originally wanted Edwards to host Feud, but it never panned out.  Fast forward to 1988, when CBS had made an order for the first (of two) revivals of Feud (the second revival, in 1999, is now in its 15th season with Steve Harvey hosting).  Once again, Mark Goodson had a host in mind, but it was not the host that made it to final production.

The answer:  This "Broadway" legend was originally planned by Mark Goodson to host the 1988 (CBS) revival of Family Feud, but a contract could not be signed.  ◙

Retro TV Friday - 50 years of deals

One thing about the 50 Years of Deals this year is that the show was exported to Egypt this year. From the channel itself (Al Hayat), here's an episode of Let's Make a Deal in Egypt, complete with a playing of "Gold Rush". Interestingly with the culture of playing cards and the Arab world, the game "Race to the Finish is played with cards representing the three levels of prizes (car, cash, furniture) and the Zonk. ◙

Retro TV Friday

The report that Disney Channel is reviving for a generation that hasn't played the game -- in fact it's been nearly 20 years since the format even aired in the States -- the game that legend says came from Burt Reynolds' living room and whose format is owned by the company.

"Welcome to the quick-draw game that everybody's playing -- it's Win, Lose, or Draw!"

In celebration of Disney's new revival of the teen format, let's look back at the show:

Pilot clip: 



A contestant's child posted this clip of their father playing (best known version, Bert Convy):



NBC Daytime version (Vicki Lawrence):



Robb Weller (the final season of the original):

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Dick Clark tribute: The Gamer

We know Dick Clark from his time in pop music, especially on American Bandstand, and the tributes in light of his death have favoured his pop music career. However, for me, as I grew up in the 1980's, and our ABC affiliate (WOLO) was notoriously weak and would skip Bandstand in favour of Crockett Wrestling, we'd use the Charleston or Augusta affiliates to get the show, but I wasn't into pop music (and still isn't, considering my classical music background). But it was some days watching the various forms of Pyramid that made me think of Dick Clark first as a game show host. We know him from Pyramid, but I remember him from hosting three other games, The Challengers (1990), Scattergories (1993), and the domestic version of The National Lottery Winning Lines (2000), and produced one of the more nerve-racking shows on television history, Greed (1999-2000), which came after college graduation and in a fall of frustration where I was humiliated to a bad point of watching losers every week, I badly wanted to see winners and even damaged things watching that show!

But there were other game formats he hosted that weren't as well-known (and I wasn't born then or was too young to remember) -- The Object Is (1963), Missing Links (1964), and The Krypton Factor US (1981).

And this doesn't include all the pranks on Bloopers and Practical Jokes, the various music awards shows (with the MDA Telethon falling under R. A. Clark for the first time this fall), and even the original Star Search as judge for his old partner in crime Ed McMahon.

For some reason, Clark was best at nerve-wracking game shows, either hosting or producing.

1963 (The Object Is): Dick's first game show.

1981 (The Krypton Factor): One of two British formats hosted by Mr. Clark, neither lasted long. A mentally tough game, this summer series crowned its champion, and the top two went to Britain to face the British top two of that year. The British won.

Retro TV Friday

The recent announcement that the utter disgrace known as MTV2 is producing a hip-hop themed version of a Heatter-Quigley classic that we've discussed over the years reminded me of this zinger from ten years ago on the 1998-2004 version of that very show.

I don't think whoever gets that disgraceful version will ever come to the standards of this 2002 episode. My, have times changed! (And I don't just mean the value of a win either!)  ◙