Game Show Network
| File:Gsn new06.PNG | |
| Type | Cable television network |
|---|---|
| Branding | GSN |
| Country | |
| Availability |  United States Canada |
| Headquarters | Culver City, California |
| Owner | Liberty Media and Sony Pictures Entertainment |
Launch date | December 1, 1994 |
Official website | www.gsn.com |
GSN (formerly known on-air as Game Show Network) 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. Its slogan is "GSN: The Network For Games". The network is currently available in approximately 62 million homes, and is jointly-owned by Liberty Media and Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Programming libraries
The network licenses the Mark Goodson-Bill Todman game show library, which includes titles such as Match Game, Family Feud, Card Sharks and Blockbusters, along with various versions of Password. GSN has also featured Goodson-Todman game and panel shows from the 1950s and 1960s, such as What's My Line?, I've Got a Secret, To Tell the Truth, Beat the Clock, and other lesser-known black-and-white classics. (Later, color versions of these shows have also aired.) The black-and-white shows made up much of the channel's weeknight lineup at the channel's launch, but moved solely to Sunday nights in the late '90s and finally to overnights. The black-and-white shows have now been cut back to one hour a week on early Monday morning at 3:00 AM Eastern. Currently, What's My Line? is shown in the the first half-hour of this time slot, followed by another black-and-white show and/or rare color series such as I've Got a Secret, Beat the Clock, The Name's the Same, Password, or To Tell the Truth.
GSN, in addition to its Goodson-Todman library, features other shows such as Jeopardy!, Press Your Luck, The Newlywed Game, Love Connection , along with more recent fare like Greed, Weakest Link, Dog Eat Dog, the 2000 version of Twenty One, and the Tom Bergeron-hosted version of Hollywood Squares. In October, 2003 GSN acquired the rerun rights to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and added more episodes (including the Super Millionaire spin-off) in the spring of 2005.
Among the most well-known classic game shows previously aired on the network are Wheel of Fortune, The Joker's Wild, Tic Tac Dough, Tattletales, the original version of The Hollywood Squares, The Gong Show, The Dating Game, Let's Make a Deal, various versions of Pyramid, 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 classic game 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 block of four 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 a 1980s Canadian format in which teams guess five-letter words in a combination of Jotto/Mastermind and bingo. The network has produced six seasons of the show. Other game show originals debuting in 2006 included PlayMania, a remake of I've Got a Secret, That's the Question, Starface, and a remake of Chain Reaction. In 2007, the network debuted the National Vocabulary Championship, with a special to air on April 15, 2007 showcasing the first year of the event.
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, which are both on a separate rerun package (neither have been regularly aired on GSN since 2000). 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.
The Price is Right originally appeared on GSN in occasional preemptions of regularly scheduled series such as Match Game or Family Feud. Various versions of the show were broadcast, including those hosted by Barker, Bill Cullen and Tom Kennedy. In December 1996, TPIR began airing regularly on the schedule, with half-hour Barker eps in the morning and hour-long episodes in the afternoon and evening. The evening episodes did not air in chronological order. GSN's contract to air TPIR ended in 2000 and has not yet been renewed.
With the other Goodson-Todman shows gone, lesser-known Sony properties such as Juvenile Jury, The Diamond Head Game, the 1976 version of Break the Bank, and the Bill Cullen version of Chain Reaction found their way onto the schedule. GSN also aired a kids' game show block at this time, highlighted by Jep! and Wheel 2000 - kids' adaptations of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!. Some of the shows that premiered during the dark period remained on the schedule even after the Goodson-Todman shows returned.
Beginning January 1998, ostensibly to pay for the rights to get the Goodson-Todman library back, GSN gave away a few hours of its schedule to air infomercials in the early morning, a common practice among other basic cable channels, and a practice continued by GSN to this day. The "Dark Period" began at the stroke of midnight on Saturday, October 11, 1997 with an episode of The Gong Show and officially ended at 8am on Saturday, April 18, 1998 with Goodson-Todman's Child's Play, which is currently programmed on the network's weekend schedule at 9AM Eastern/6AM Pacific.
A new name and a new direction
In the summer of 2003, Game Show Network began airing GSN Video Games, the first program to air on GSN that had nothing to do with traditional game shows. Although the show was short-lived and considered a disaster, 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 aired in various time slots. Street Smarts is currently programmed in late-night slots.
Recent changes
After generally unsuccessful efforts at expanding its programming, GSN has largely returned to traditional studio-based game shows. On April 4, 2005 the network introduced a new daytime lineup featuring several older game shows that had not been seen on GSN 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, the Bill Rafferty-hosted versions of Blockbusters, and Card Sharks. Also in the spring of 2005, GSN acquired approximately 100 more episodes of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (except the August, 1999 and 2002 episodes), including the Super Millionaire specials.
The network has run blocks of classic game shows on Saturday nights, and for the first few months of 2006 programmed back-to-back episodes of Match Game at 11:00 PM Eastern, which showed the clapperboard before each episode, including 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. On July 18, 2006, the network began a special seven-week run of The 50 Greatest Game Shows of All Time in the 10:00 PM hour, Tuesday through Thursday. In November, 2006 GSN started a series of documentaries about game shows, beginning with a program on Match Game. Other subjects included game show producer Chuck Barris, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, a "Top Ten" countdown of game show hosts, memorable game show moments, women who have featured prominently on game shows, celebrities and how they impacted game shows, and an insiders guide to winning millions on a TV game show.
The network also introduced several original game shows in 2006, including PlayMania, new versions of I've Got a Secret and Chain Reaction, Starface, and That's the Question. PlayMania, a late-night live interactive game show, has expanded to six nights a week, and Chain Reaction has been renewed for a second season beginning March 13, 2007. A sixth season of Lingo will begin April 2, 2007. In 2006 and 2007 GSN introduced High Stakes Poker, a poker show with a private-game format among professional players, and programmed additional series of World Series of Blackjack. The network showed the Maury Povich remake of Twenty One in prime time during 2007, and began airing the Richard Karn version of Family Feud in March, 2007.
Although the network has mostly abandoned reality programs, GSN acquired the rights to The Amazing Race in 2005 for a reported $50,000 per episode. The network first programmed the series extensively in prime time during the summer of 2005, then cut back the show’s exposure. In 2006 GSN also programmed a series of documentaries, Anything to Win, about non-game-show competitions.
Outlook
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 (although, starting March 10, 2007, Who Wants to be a Millionaire will no longer air every night). Senior programming vice-president Jamie Roberts said in a November, 2006 interview that there may be "at least two new original games" in 2007. 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; it also is available from most Canadian cable and satellite providers. Cronin recently said that the top priority for his new distribution chief is an agressive expansion from the channel's current availability of 62 million households to 72 and then 82 million households "as fast as possible"[1]. The network's financial performance and household availability have improved in recent years.
Controversies
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. These credits often contained mini-commercials for the "parting gifts" given to contestants, which could be free advertising for any of the products which may still exist. 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 also employ this practice.
See also
- List of programs broadcast by GSN
- Challenge, a similar United Kingdom cable/satellite channel
Notes
- ^ "Big Goals for New GSN Distribution Chief". Associated Press. Retrieved 2007-03-10.
External links
- Official Site
- GSN's message board
- GSN Unofficial FAQs
- Showbiz Notes The making of a GSN pilot