Episode status of Game Shows

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by SBC, May 23, 2019.

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  1. SBC

    SBC Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Is there a resource where I can research which episodes of classic game shows still exist and which are lost ? Would be great to be able to figure it out. Thanks!
     
  2. Vahan

    Vahan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Glendale, CA, USA
    Someone named Paul "The Flea" had two pages of game show survival statues, but I can't seem to find them anymore.

    Virtually everything Goodson-Todman exists, except for most daytime game shows of the 50's and 60's (i.e. Say When!!, 1960's The Match Game, and Snap Judgment), as well as Season 1 of the 70's To Tell the Truth, ABC Password, Showoffs, The Better Sex, and Mindreaders.

    Bob Stewart Productions would regularly wipe his shows a couple of months after the episodes had aired at least once, and continued to do so until 1978. Good thing he stopped by then, or else New $25,000 Pyramid would have been history.

    Jack Barry-Dan Enright Productions and Chuck Barris Productions saved just about everything, though there may have been some exceptions (i.e. Hollywood's Talking).

    Merv Griffin Enterprises wiped the NBC episodes of Wheel of Fortune into thin air well into 1985.

    Reg Grundy Productions, Inc. saved just about all of Scrabble, and 883 episodes of Sale of the Century, nothing before 1985 for the latter. God knows what they did with the pre-1985 shows of the latter.

    Over 3,000 episodes of The Hollywood Squares w/Peter Marshall were found over a decade ago, but it was never specified exactly which ones, and for all I know, they could have been just duplicates of the Syndicated run, which was bicycled.

    The networks never really cared if the game shows were saved or not; in the end, it was up to the production companies to decide if they were worth saving or not.
     
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  3. SBC

    SBC Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Thanks for this. I think I ran across links to the pages you talk about but they were inactive. I really wish somehow we could access those!
     
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  4. SBC

    SBC Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    How about Let's Make A Deal, from the 60s era?
     
  5. John54

    John54 Senior Member

    Location:
    Burlington, ON
    I wonder if The Game Game episodes are still around?



    I have over one hundred of the sets of questions and scoring written out somewhere ... !
     
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  6. Vahan

    Vahan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Glendale, CA, USA
    I heard 1,100 of the classic episodes exist of that, and supposedly, Fremantle has 600 of them (1971-1977 and 1984-1986 Syndicated runs).
     
  7. MarkTheShark

    MarkTheShark Senior Member

    LMAD has run on cable in fairly recent times, within the last three years. They were shows from the early 1970s, maybe even some from the late 1960s. They have a Fremantle logo added at the end.

    This is bizarre: Though most are from color video, I saw at least one episode which aired as a B/W kinescope transferred to video, with Fremantle's name added at the end. That was out of nowhere...

    Speaking of LMAD -- In the late 1970s, WFLD-Channel 32 in Chicago was airing this as part of a weeknight game show lineup. The shows had an animated intro showing Monty Hall riding a bill of U.S. currency (I forget what denomination, probably $100) as if it was a flying carpet. I've looked around for this and haven't found it. That was never on the shows I saw a couple years ago, which I think were much earlier. Anyone know what I'm talking about?
     
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  8. mBen989

    mBen989 Senior Member

    Location:
    Scranton, PA
    I thought I read somewhere one time they went looking for Dark Shadows episodes and found this stash of Hollywood Squares tapes.
     
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  9. SBC

    SBC Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Really wish there was some kind of resource to know exactly what exists and what doesn't.
     
  10. JFOK

    JFOK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cape Cod, Mass.
    Hi All,

    From what I understand, NBC wiped the early Lets Make A Deal (1963-1968), although the pilot episode still exists on videotape. ABC did the same wiping all but a few videotapes when the show moved to its network in 1969.
    The original Jeopardy with Art Fleming has very few episodes surviving from its 1964 to 1975 run. Those surviving are kinescopes of color videotape although a small number of videotapes do exist at the UCLA film and television archive. Same goes for Concentration (1958-1973) with Hugh Downs. Only a few kinescopes of this show survive in the Library of Congress, the original videotapes long since erased.
    Is a shame that those in charge weren't more insightful, saving perhaps several episodes a year for posterity.
     
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