What is one unsold game show pilot that you would have liked to see greenlighted, and why?

My pick: "Talking Pictures," the 1968 & 1976 pilots with Allen Ludden (edit: and Monty Hall). Sure, it was kind of an "Eye Guess" ripoff, but the wrong answers in that game were always good for a laugh, and even moreso with celebrities thrown into the mix.

--Sam

For me, I'm going with the 21 pilot from 1982, because when I saw it I thought it was pretty good. Just retool the bonus round.

-Twisters
-Malcolm had potential, minus, well, Malcolm. :-)

"Beat the Odds", at least as a network show.

What an addictive game.

Keynotes, the only music identification game I've ever seen that didn't make me think I was watching another lame variation on Name That Tune.

Here are my choices for pilots that should've made to television.

Twisters - It was my favorite pilot minus the awful trade-off music.
Split Decision - This could've made with a better question format & better card game.
Casino (Ron Pearson format) - To me that was a nice attempt to revive Gambit in some way.
Run for the Money - How come England had Questions pour un Champion (under the name Going for Gold) & we don't? Plus have five contestants play for the first four days, with the winners of those shows playing Friday for $25,000 or even $50,000.

I don't see why the bonus round was even necessary.
Just another "beat the bad guy" B & E end game for the sake of having it there.
To add to the list on this thread, I wish the 1990 pilot for Gambit starring Bob Eubanks would've gone to series.

With or without Bill Rafferty hosting? If not Rafferty then who back in the 80's would you have tapped to host, and who would you choose today for a 2007 revival?

Probably with Rafferty hosting. If not Rafferty, then my best choice would've been Dick Clark or Marc Summers. As for 2007, I don't know; I'll find someone or let somebody else do it.

Actually, I think you'll find Going for Gold came before Questions pour un Champion, as it turns out.

Although I've never seen it 'TKO' intrigues me. It potentially could have given both Mark Goodson just one more original in his career to pass on, and Peter Tomarken a lasting follow-up to 'Press Your Luck' that could be on GSN today.

It's....okay. The format of 3 players playing for the whole week was wierd.

Otherwise, the game had elements of Blockbusters, and a bit of Jeopardy ( a bit.)

It wasn't ready for primetime.

Top Secret
Twisters
Gambit 1990
Party Line

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this pretty much Bruce Forsyth's Hot Streak?

It eventually became Hot Streak, yes, but there were still a few differences between that, and the two pilots shot another year later, i.e. the bonus rounds.

Party Line also seemed a lot more confusing.

The Jack Barry Countdown could have been a good one as well as its cousin We've Got Your Number. Wink's Top Secret could have been pretty good, too.


--Mike

Eh, not really. It was still "Hot Streak" but always for 1 point per transaction, and $500 for any streak of 4. Winning team played with 9 new faces in the same dance as the front game for $100 on the first shot and double that for every one after. Honestly, I thought the set was the worst thing about it.

-Jason

I will go to the bitter end saying that Twenty-one was a better game than any of the three versions treated it. Tough questions, a per-point payoff scale, and maybe a race-against-the-clock bonus game, and you're done.

I thought the rules labored. The addition of a third person was an unnecessary addition, and why have those screens behind the players if you already have physical props on stage? Oy.

Because they're Endemol. That's really all you need to know. And this would be far less interesting than either Millionaire or Jeopardy!, which are both already on the air. With a less crowded schedule, maybe it has a shot. (The "Fame Game question that decreases in value as the question goes on" is a neat mechanic. Credit where due.)

I don't see what's weird about having contestants who stay on for an entire week. It worked on Go, it worked (very well, I thought) on Idiot Savants, so why not here?

Being far too young to remember the short run Hot Streak had, how often did a round end because of a repeated clue? Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the repeat element, while making it distant enough from Pyramid to make Reg comfortable, but makes the game that much more frustrating, while the players try to internally guess what clues have already been said, and so on.

Almost always. Buzzer sounds, Bruce interjects, and Announcer Guy tells Bruce what the infraction was.

I thought "Questions" was a Fremantle / Grundy program. I think its creation even predated Endemol by several years.

Was and is (don't know if Reg Grundy was involved in the development, since it was from the European division, not the Australian division).

And yeah, it did predate the merger of Van den Ende and de Mol's companies, although those two companies had been selling their formats to European markets for several years (I'm pretty sure "Stars in Their Eyes" predates the merger into Endemol). The U.S. operation has only been around since 1999 and has been actually producing in the U.S. for a couple of years (beforehand, they had other companies do the day-to-day production work on their shows).

I saw the French "Questions" a few years back on a Canadian satellite service (which carried the RFO channel from the French island chain of St. Pierre and Miquelon), and I recall it having a "Grundy International" logo at the end.

Though by then, Grundy's company was already part of Fremantle (I think).

Grundy was acquired by Pearson a few years before they acquired All-American (and the G-T formats). When Pearson bailed out of the TV business and sold to RTL, their TV division became Fremantle.

Someone's posted on YouTube (from a DVD, I assume) a credit crawl from "Prisoner: Cell Block H," with the Grundy logos left in (and the plug slides--"Cast and Crew Stay at Travelodge"--that were taken out of the U.S. version credit rolls), with the Network Ten logo replaced by a "Distributed by Pearson International Distribution--'What the World is Watching'" animation. Same thing was done to "Neighbours" during its very brief U.S. run on Oxygen a couple of years ago, in terms of the Nine logo (although the credits had a reference to a "Network Producer"). I recall that the Grundy logo had what I thought was a "50th Anniversary" line added to the logo--since I assume that the Grundy production company has been around as long as television in Australia, would that be the early fifties?

According to Wikipedia, TV service didn't begin in Australia until 1956, and Reg Grundy's production company wasn't organised until 1959.

Small bitch here...how does my name get attached to a post when I didn't make it?

(Confused.)

See up there? You can edit a quote so whoever you want said it.

In this case, someone (in this case, rugrats1) doesn't know how to quote. Granted, he was quoting from Travis's long-ass quote-heavy post, so it's an easy mistake to make.

Improper cutting and pasting. Or someone who can type in HTML code has a good name-changing trigger finger. :)

EDIT: Chris L. beat me to it. Insert witty self-deprecating remark here.

Simple. If you are quoting multiple people and break it down and delete the wrong person, the quote then becomes misquoted.

In this case, I was quoting myself, Brandon, and Jamey Greek; but "accidently" deleted myself and Jamey making it appear that Brandon was the one who posted it.

I suppose one could also insert anyone's name they wanted to when quoting, but I think that is far less of a possibility.

It is indeed a Fremantle logo at the end of the current episodes.

Ryan (who does indeed get that RFO channel and is anxiously awaiting Fort Boyard 2007).

I'll second this. Top Secret too if it had a better bonus round.

I've only seen a handful of unsold pilots, and I say easily the one that I've seen that deserved the most to have sold would be Twisters. Bob Stewart tried the "start the question, end the question" format seveal times, and here it worked wonderfully. In addition, there was the wonderful presentation with Shoot for the Star's theme and the awesome shuffleboard table. Plus, Jim Perry really fit well as host.



I absolutely concur. Malcolm itself was just goofy, but the underlying concept of two-word answers with each word given by a different person is one that I wouldn't mind seeing worked into something plausible.