Worst Game Shows

[RicoGregg]

This will be a list of game/quiz shows that I think stank up every joint that they were seen in. I hope nobody gets a bright idea about reviving them.

1. You're in the Picture; This lasted exactly one episode in early 1961. Host Jackie Gleason totally trashed the show and the format the following week. If you've never seen any clips, don't feel like you missed anything. Jackie Gleason's rant the next week was more entertaining than this show was.

2. The Better Sex; Debuted in tandem with Family Feud on ABC in 1976. Teams of men competed against teams of women. The co-hosts were Country singer Bill Anderson and Sarah Purcell. It was one step shy of being brutal.

3. Treasure Isle; Another ABC game turkey. Long story short, husband and wife teams competed against each other on an artificial island located at the Colonnades Beach Hotel in Palm Beach, Fla. The host was John Bartholomew Tucker, accompanied by a constant droning off-camera voice named Sage (who the hell was Sage, anyway?), who half the time said "I have NO idea!" This dud ran less than a year in 67-68.

4. Whew!; CBS, 1979-80. Hold on to your horses. I know that there are plenty of people who fondly remember this game show, and believe it or not, I was a fan. So why am I listing it among the worse? Because, this show managed to do a complete turnaround, and went from being one of the best game shows to absolutely one of the worst. The big shark jump came when they added celebrities. The coffin nails all came at once. The show went from very cool to very brutal in no time.

5. That Game Show; Syndicated, mid-90s, exact year(s) disputed on net resources. This show was hosted by twins John and Greg Rice, the 2 foot 10 inch infomercial kings. It was a convoluted twist of You Bet Your Life, where there was more talking than actual game playing. No duck, secret word, or wheel spin, though. NOTE: John Rice passed away in 2005, but real estate infomercials with both he and Greg in them are still running. Check your local UHF station in the middle of the night.

6. The Magnificent Marble Machine; This show ran just short of a full year on NBC starting in July of 1975. While not unwatchable at first, I list it with the worst for the same reason as Whew!: They added celebrities, and as a result, ratings went down while they passed over the shark, and this once promising show died a needlessly early death. This should have been a great show.

7 & 8. The ill-advised revivals of You Bet Your Life; Both were syndicated, first in 1980 with Buddy Hackett as host, then in 1992, with Bill Cosby. A pilot featuring Richard Dawson was made in 1988, but did not get picked up. Rather than go on a schpiel (sp), let's just say that these newer versions of YBYL were the very reason that George Fenneman always said "The one, the only" when he introduced Groucho Marx. In 1992, a programming executive for the CBS Owned & Operated Stations made the decision to drop Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! from the Company cluster to pick up the Cosby version, and another show, now forgotten. The ABC O&O's have been grateful ever since.

9. The Baby Game; Short-lived ABC game show that ran from Dec. of '67 thru July of 1968. Produced by Bob Stivers Productions, hosted by Richard Hayes. Supposedly the "other side" of The Newlywed Game. Three teams of young married couples with toddlers tried to guess how the spouse would answer questions regarding their infant. Perhaps it would have been better if it had been produced by Chuck Barris. If you blinked, you missed it. If you missed it, you missed nothing.

10. The Fun Factory; NBC, 1976. Hosted by the always affable Bobby Van, I'll save myself the futile effort of trying to write a description of this mish-mash with a burning question that I always had about this show from Day One: What the hell was the point of this show? 33 years later, there is still no answer. What kind of game show ends every episode with the host saying "Let's go give out some suckers!"?

[Stanislav]

I'd add Take a Good Look (ABC, 1959-61), Ernie Kovacs' ill-advised game show hosting gig. While an interesting curio, and a must-see (what few episodes survive) for Kovacsphiles, as a game show it was rather bizarre. Panelists had to guess what recent event in the news was being "dramatized" in videotaped skits featuring Ernie and his band of merry makers (basically most of the same folks who accompanied him on his ABC specials: Jolene Brand, Bobby Lauher, etc.). Problem was that the skits were basically just a framework for Ernie's unusual creative talents, and in going for the funny the clues tended to get lost in the manic shuffle. Hans Conried, a frequent panelist, quipped that when Zsa Zsa Gabor was on the show, "she became so confused that she forgot to get married." Some say that Ernie did this and other poorly suited gigs simply because by that time the IRS was garnisheeing his income to pay his massive back taxes, and he would take on any job simply to survive financially. Still, anything with Ernie in it is worthwhile (even some of the real stinker movies he did are worth a watch to to see his performance) and this bizarro game show somehow lasted for 53 prime-time episodes (buried in a 10:30-11:00 pm ET slot on the, at the time, VERY much 3rd rated network).

[Braves2005]

The 1998 revival of The Match Game is at the top of my list: It stunk badly especially Judy Tenuta and her awful singing and accordion playing.

Family Feud hosted by Louie Anderson (1999-2002): He acted so bored and obnoxious in that half of the time or all the time for that matter, he wished that he hadn't hosted this. Richard Karn (2002-2006) and John O'Hurley (2006-present) are far better hosts than him but nothing could top Richard Dawson and Ray Combs.

[bpatrick]

The Sage on "Treasure Isle" was named Bill Templeton,
although he was never identified by that name.  "Treasure
Isle" was a unique idea (an outdoor game show) that, IMO,
became overly repetitious.  But I still think JBT is one of the
best voice-over people in the business.

I recall that "The Baby Game" had a lot of races among the
kids, and that the parents had to predict the winners.  That
show was so short-lived that my memory may be playing tricks
on me.

I'd pick two others.  One is Peter Tomarken's first show, "Hit
Man," which was bogged down by too many rules.  However,
he and announcer Rod Roddy (R.I.P. to both of them) clicked
on their next venture: "Press Your Luck."  The other is a little
item called "Wedding Party," which aired very briefly on ABC in
1968 and was hosted by Alan Hamel (a/k/a Mr. Suzanne Somers).
The show was really more talk show than game show (the creator,
Art Stark, had produced "Who Do You Trust?" when Johnny Carson
hosted it), with newlywed couples talking about their courtships.
The game, such as it was, showed them a showcase of prizes; they
each secretly selected a prize, and if they matched they won it.
That was it.

As for Gleason and Kovacs, Gleason probably took on "You're In
The Picture" because it required no rehearsal (he was famous for
his refusal to rehearse); that's the same attitude Jerry Lewis took
toward his 1963 Saturday-night variety show, which wasn't much
more successful (13 weeks).

Kovacs and ABC used to get a lot of complaints from viewers that
they couldn't figure out the answers from the obtuse clues Kovacs
and his team of actors provided.  Kovacs often said that he didn't
care; this was a show he did for himself.  But the person who said
this show is for Kovacs fans is right; he gets to stick a lot of his
off-the-wall comedy into the show, and that's really why anyone
would watch "Take A Good Look" today.

[Eric Stein]

The worst game show in modern history I've seen was "The Reel-to-Reel Picture Show" on PAX TV in 1998. Peter Marshall hosted, D-list celebrities (Abe Vigoda and Michael Winslow were two of them I remember) played with contestants in a game of movie trivia. Awfully low budget, the game play was bad, sets dated, and Marshall didn't feel comfortable hosting. The contestants never got their prizes after the producers went bankrupt and production shut down.

Then there was "Cross-Wits '86" in syndication, "The Home Shopping Game" (1987), "Winning Lines" (CBS, 1999), and the American version of "100 Percent" which had a limited run in '99, as honorable mentions.

[WMC2006]

-The Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour
-Greed
-last year's Merv Griffin's Crossword

[azumanga]

As for the Rice Brothers' "That Game Show", the actual title was "That !@#%% Game Show" (don't know the actual punctuation), and I think it ran in the late-1980s.

Two more shows worth listing:

* "Shopper's Casino" -- think "The Price is Right" really gone Vegas; while the motif is okay, the production values are below par. The Game Show Forum has lots on this travesty.

* "Match Game" 1998 --Questions designed to be censor bait (for example, a new soft drink from the makers of Viagra and 7-Up, called "_____ Up"), five D-list celebrities, a recipe for a "great game show" (instead of "It's time to match the stars") and 1973 money values.

*"Deal or No Deal", the later NBC shows -- has become the "Queen For a Day" for the new millenium, complete with dramatic pauses, corny stunts, nonsensical bickering and spoilers galore. I used to be a fan of this show, but after the last $1 million win, where they spoiled the win every chance they get and crammed the show with filler, I said, "That's it."

[Lkeller]

A contender in this category would have to be Showdown - in the mid 60s for one season on NBC.  It was hosted by Joe Pyne, a sharp-tongued Los Angeles radio and TV talk host that was famous for insulting his crackpot guests and people who disagreed with him.  Think Morton Downey Jr.  or Wally George.  Among his other catch-phrases: "Go gargle with razor blades!"  He skipped the insults on the game show, but was very stiff, surly, and rarely cracked a smile.

I don't remember the game itself, except that it was quite forgettable.  When a contestant lost a round, there was some kind of "trap-door" device below his seat that made him drop out of sight behind the contestant desk.

Instead of a pre-recorded theme, the show featured a small live rock band that played and sang the theme: "Showdown, showdown, showdown - let's have a showdown..."

[mleach]

10. The Fun Factory; NBC, 1976. Hosted by the always affable Bobby Van, I'll save myself the futile effort of trying to write a description of this mish-mash with a burning question that I always had about this show from Day One: What the hell was the point of this show? 33 years later, there is still no answer. What kind of game show ends every episode with the host saying "Let's go give out some suckers!"?

I remember reading someplace years ago where the purpose of The Fun Factory was only to showcase the talents of the late Bobby Van ( one reason why he sang on the show ). Of course it didn't work and it would be a few years until Van "found his hit", when he hosted Make Me Laugh, sadly ( and talk about bad timing ) Bobby Van was actually dying of cancer/brain tumor while doing that show.

Actually the idea of The Fun Factory wasn't a new idea. Baltimore's WBAL channel 11 way back in the early 60's had "The One O'Clock Show" which was pretty much what The Fun Factory did. a mish-mash of songs, dance, jokes, and games with a studio audience of married couples, hosted by two now-forgotten local Baltimore radio announcers ( I would imagine they worked for WBAL Radio..DUH !!!!!!!!! ).

I guess we should count our blessings. The Fun Factory was only a 30 minute show and didn't last very long while the WBAL show aired for a full hour and lasted several years.

[Charles1]

The 2001 (?) revival of To Tell the Truth was pretty bad, too.  Again, D-list celebrities brought the show down.