From Big Bucks to Blasts from the Past
GSN is revamping its prime time schedule on Mondays and Fridays to celebrate high-stakes challenges and the retro games we grew up with.
Monday nights, the game show-oriented cable channel is running “Million Dollar Mondays,” a five-hour block of games with big-ticket prizes:
7:00pm – Million Dollar Password
8:00pm – Power of 10
9:00pm – 1 vs 100
10:00pm – Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
11:00pm – Deal or No Deal
Regis Philbin, who wraps up his work on ABC’s Live with Regis and Kelly on November 18th, hosted both Million Dollar Password and Millionaire. Deal or No Deal featured Howie Mandel. Drew Carey, hosted the short-lived Power of 10 on CBS, inexplicably impressing executives enough to make them hire him to replace Bob Barker on The Price is Right, and Bob Saget hosted 1 vs. 100.
You couldn’t pay me to tune in between 8:00-10:00pm.
Fridays, though, are a different story. “Flashback Fridays” celebrate five of the most loved game shows in television history, kicking off with one of my all-time favorites:
7:00pm – Match Game
8:00pm – $25,000 Pyramid
9:00pm – Card Sharks
10:00pm – Family Feud
11:00pm – $100,000 Pyramid
Each hour features two episodes. Match Game featured wild and crazy Gene Rayburn trying to keep a bizarre mix of celebrities in line. The show was so outrageous for its time that it remains one of GSN’s most-viewed shows.
Dick Clark hosts both versions of Pyramid. As far as I’m concerned, Clark was the only host of Pyramid.
Card Sharks was hosted by Bob Eubanks, which means this is the second version of the show (since Jim Perry hosted the original version in the late 1970s). Family Feud, which is still on the air, was originally hosted by Richard Dawson, but has seen a long line of successors since the first version left the air in 1985; It‘s Dawson’s version that makes up the 10:00pm block.
Given the choice, I’d be much more likely to tune in to Friday night’s lineup.
Unfortunately, they just don’t make ’em like that anymore.
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Patrick is a television producer, writer, Mac lover, and Christian, though not necessarily in that order. He has a natural dislike of double standards and poor grammar.
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