It was exactly one score ago when Johnny Gilbert told us who had Blackout buttons and Bob Goen began hosting his third and final game show with a moustache.

...and that $25,000 Pyramid was gone from our television screens. For a while, anyway.

Good to know that the "state of the art" Blackout Buttons from the show were salvaged by the fine folks at WBNX-TV in Cleveland. :-p

And then, thirteen (?) weeks later, Jay Stewart was telling us the same thing, and it was over. Goen still had the mustache, I think.

"Take three Bobs and live it up every morning" was how CBS promoted their daytime game show lineup in TV Guide ads.

With Charles Siebert, Markie Post, Teresa Ganzel and Soupy Sales among the first couple week guests, it was as if the talent bookers shared a rolodex with the Pyramid bookers.

Wasn't the "Top Secret" pilot done around this time? Maybe if that was given a shot "Blackout" wouldn't be the answer to a trivia question! :)

Was Top Secret supposed to be the replacement for The $25,000 Pyramid in January or for Blackout in April?
From what I've read in this forum, the project was a whisker away from making it onto CBS and the mission was aborted.
Heck, there was even a home game ready to go. Very mysterious indeed.

My guess is the latter; the pilot's tape date was March 4, 1988.

Here's my comment about a brief conversation with Wink himself on the subject
And the home version wasn't just "ready to go", it went. On store shelves and everything. Hard to find today (believe it or not, I've never even gotten one myself) but it definitely was released.

Meanwhile, there was some reported sort of an angry backlash towards CBS-TV in cancelling The $25,000 Pyramid, in terms of phone calls and viewer letters to the network. I recall reading in some New York City newspaper that certain celebrities, like Adrienne Barbeau and Ed Begley Jr., were to be included in having a public campaign in bringing Pyramid back on the daytime schedule.

Perhaps this was probably what the network wanted to avoid as a public relations nightmare in the first place, plus it did not help matters that a news item in the broadcast trade weekly Variety, that I recall reading, told of the severe ratings problem that Blackout had endured during its 13 weeks on-the-air. So, CBS-TV daytime programming V.P. Michael Brockman probably gave in and simply put Pyramid back to its 10:00am Eastern time slot.

I did watched that memorable return episode in its first-run broadcast on that Monday, April 4, 1988 (and later again in USA cable & GSN repeats), and the ratings did come climb back surely but slowly. During its ninth week back on the air, Pyramid was getting basically a 2.7 rating, which was the same rating as that of Card Sharks. But never mind, as it all was in vain, because Brockman chose the updated Family Feud, whose original pilot was done on November 18, 1987 (as seen on a ticket offered on eBay), to be the next replacement for Pyramid's time slot.

In my opinion, I am one of the few people who believes to this day that CBS-TV at the time was really trying to please Mark Goodson at the most by having to put the updated Family Feud on its daytime schedule, while keeping Card Sharks and The Price Is Right as they were. For about one year after the relaunch of Feud, there was a domination of solely Goodson-produced shows during the morning hours at least.

Hmm. Was "Michael Brandenburg" a pseudonym?

Different cities, alas.

Yeah, that was more a rhetorical question than anything else. :)

The fictional character Jack Bauer is based on Matt Ottinger....oops wrong thread.

It did seem that Goodson had more clout with the networks than any other game show producer. He got his way on a number of scheduling matters, including having The New Price is Right go on at 10:30 instead of 10 in 1972 due to station clearance problems at 10. There were also several of his series that lasted quite a while on the network despite lagging ratings. Any other producer likely would have had the show cancelled prior to when they were. Dawson even mentions on the last Family Feud that the ratings hadn't been good for over a year.

Forty-nine people need to get a hold of their lives. [ducks]

/OTOH, replace 49 with the number of members on this board
//MO invented slashies

Goodson DID have clout. Big clout. But most of it was earned by virtue of delivering more hits than any other producer, and being willing to leverage the success of one show towards getting another on the air at the same network. Goodson also had clout as a result of his relationships with the network programmers, more than one of whom had jobs at Goodson before and/or after their network gigs.

But lest any of that be thought of as unfair in any way, Mike Brockman is among the network programmers who told me that when he bought a show from Goodson, even if only during the development stage, he KNEW the format would be refined, the writing solid, and the set and production first class.

And back to the topic of Blackout, it's hard for me to believe that it was 20+ years ago that I and other wanna-bes were being called by Jay Wolpert's people to sit with Markie Post and other of Jay's friends in his office at Metromedia Square (now the site of a high school!) playing the game in various configurations while Jay tinkered with the format. Damned exciting stuff for a kid!

Randy
tvrandywest.com

Was Markie Post still working behind-the-scenes in game shows at this time in addition to her on-screen roles, or was she playing this strictly as an invited celeb?

She was already successful as an on-screen actress but apparently maintained her earlier friendships.

Randy
tvrandywest.com