I would like to see some misconceptions that you have had about any game show. Here is one:

I thought that on game shows like Name That Tune and Scrabble, when they handed you money that you actually got to take that money home with you.

Well, that is true in the UK, since they're required to give you your winnings before you leave. The checks Chris Tarrant hands out on "WWTBAM" over there are real and negotiable.

I used to think that you could cash the giant checks from Check Game, hence why they put the big red VOID on it when a player lost.

I used to think Bob Barker was a nice man.

When I was seven I used to believe that the losers on Remote Control were being sucked into a hellish torture chamber from which they would never escape. Think it had to do with my grandmother constantly telling me how "evil" that "damn MTV" was.

All shows were live.

You too huh? Of course, my belief stemmed from a repeat of The Joker's Wild that mentioned the "Dead or Alive" category. I incorrectly thought this referred to the contestants.

I also thought that the shows that USA reran were "new" shows.

That one got me too...I remember watching Cosby's "You Bet Your Life", and wondering how they were able to use teaser clips from that episode, but during the intro.

The "Remote Control" backstage chamber piqued my curiosity too. Made me not wanna go on the show because I was morbidly scared about what lurked behind that wall.

Speaking of walls, I didn't realize that sets were all flash from the front, and all plywood on the opposite side.

When I was about 6 or 7, I looked through the TV listings, and found, in the middle of USA's lineup, a rerun of the sitcom "That Girl". I immediately thought it was a game show.

In 4th grade, a classmate told me that winners had to pay taxes on winnings, and immediately called shenanigans, not understanding such an asinine concept.

/Okay, I STILL don't understand such an asinine concept...

Back in the early days of Millionaire, I thought the hot seat rose up through the floor.

That the winner on Marshall's nighttime Hollywood Squares actually got to drive a new car off the studio parking lot home. After all, he did hand them the keys :)

Where did you hear that? No, it's quite common for contestants to get their winnings much nearer the time of broadcast. You don't tend to hear of many instances where people don't get paid if their show doesn't get shown, though.

When I was much younger, back in the early 80s, I thought that you would drive out to Hollywood and see signs outside of where the game shows taped, much like those of fast food restaurants. It had never occurred to me that 1) more than one show would tape in a studio and 2) that shows weren't in production all year round.

I used to think that the names of contestants on 'The Price Is Right' were drawn out of a hat.

Besides the live thing, which I thought about all TV shows, I assumed that the people who selected contestants did so on the basis of who they thought would do the best on the show. Yeah, I know.

You and about 90% of the American viewing public. Since I moved out to LA, I've tried to rope friends who are either back in West Virginia or just moved out here from West Virginia into going to a TPIR taping with me while they're visiting. The conversation ALWAYS goes like this:

ME: Of course, when we get there, we still have about a five-hour wait until they let us into the studio.
THEM: Why do we have to wait so long?
ME: Oh, lots of reasons. Producer has to interview the first 300 people in line, among other things.
THEM: Why does he interview 300 people?
ME: So he can pick the nine who get called to be contestants during the show.
THEM: What?! They do a random drawing for that, don't they?

My misconception was that TV studios housed only one show, and that the set was built to conform to the way that the studio was designed. This led me to believe that "Play the Percentages" was housed in the weirdest studio in Hollywood, because the opening looks like Geoff is waiting in a basement for Jay Stewart to introduce him and he had to sprint upstairs to do the show.

I used to think that contestants would win $35,000 grand total for making up the Pyramid twice in one show. Wasn't until I saw season one eps of "The New $25,000 Pyramid" on USA that I realized it was really $10,000 for the first trip and $15,000 for the second for a TOTAL of $25,000.

I thought the name of the game board on Family Feud was called "the Feud". Don't ask why, I'd never heard that word before Ray Combs' version premiered. I was only 5 at the time.

That one got me too.

Back when more shows aired on networks, I used to think that a show that aired at 10 or 11 in Virginia aired at 9 or 10 Central...and 7 or 8 Pacific. Wasn't familiar with a West Coast feed.

In the late 60s & early 70's, as a very young lad, I thought that Allen Ludden DID hear me when I shouted out the answers at home and he said something to the effect that, "I hear you at home!!"

I also thought that originally game shows were all done live. When I found out that they were 'taped', I just thought that they taped one show each day, done the day before (based on the "Can you come back tomorrow?" theory)

I also thought that you won the actual ZONK that was behind the LMAD curtain, like the cows or the giant rocking chairs. I also thought that the giant Reddi Whip was a REAL can!

Then when I tried out as a contestant for a game show for the first time, I thought the auditions were done on the actual set with the actual host or at least the producers being there, not a small office in an ordinary office building with staff people who you never heard of before.

And the #1 game show misconception:

That "The Fun Factory" was indeed fun!

/Ditto with the Channel 43 Prize Movie Game.

Agreed. I was 6 years old when I sent a letter asking to be a contestant on Kids Week for "Card Sharks". I sent the letter to Jim directly. Ditto Allen for "Password Plus".

Gawd, I wish my mom had kept those letters!


I know I'm in the minority here, but I enjoyed Fun Factory. I was, and still am, a HUGE Bobby Van fan.

Here's Mine.

Players who went below $0.00 (IE -$7500) They'd have to pay for it. heh I mean You lost now you have to pay for your failure! Or rather you do If you were a Simpsons character.

Backgrounds seem to go on forever. Then finding out it was just spotlights hitting a white wall.

And Yes I too thought about the "Hell wall," seeing the strange creatures abit from the hole scared the bejeevis out of me! Matter in fact, I think I remember one episode where after the contestant went "Off the Air!" They returned the seat with the Skeleton of the contestant. Now we're getting scary here!!

another one is that the Joker's Wild Had really big slot wheels. This was before I knew about the wonderful technology of Slide projectors.

If a game show had a Big prize, and You won the Bonus round, You won that prize!! Such as On Chance of a Lifetime , I always thought You won the million after winning the bonus round. the $100,000 in Golden Medley.

And this one's the most messed up Misconception I had from Bullseye! That some old guy was behind the "Starboard" turning a crank to spin the Spirals and quickly replacing them with the categories,Money,Lightning,etc!


/That's worse than the one with the guy Who turns out the light in the refrigerator!! lol.
//Good Night!

I forgot about that one. I even assumed that they'd have a third game if the first two were split.

Count me in on that misconception as well. I remember when Jack would ask "are they ready back there?" referring to the person(s) who changed the slides on the "giant"reels before they would start the bonus round.

For a while I thought that if they started the wheels up too soon, I'd see a silhouette of a stage hand caught on a spoke getting "spun to death". What a bad time to "Face The Devil" had it ever been true! :-)

I think some can say KCOP was one of the weirdest studios in Hollywood.

One of my main misconceptions----and I mentioned this at Golden-Road.net----was that "Price" was live. Believe it or not, I also kind of thought that about "Millionaire" back in the Reege days.

Maybe it's just me, but this one seems even dumber now than it ever seemed to me before...

The TPiR Giant Price Tag ™ had (has?) a black circle on the left side of its face, representing the hole through which a string would pass on a real price tag. When I was young, I always thought that black circle was a button Bob pressed to make the GPT rise up. I dunno, I think it was because it looked about the same size and shape as the buttons on the "Ten Chances" board.

That, and I always thought there were two turntables on TPiR. (But I write that one off to the staging of "Give or Keep"...games *have* to come 'round on the turntable!)

On Dream House, behind the golden door, the picture of the house was actually a house, and winning contestants could go through the door and walk right to the house. But here's my biggest one...

When Sajak took over on Wheel, I thought Chuck was just on vacation, and Pat was just filling in for him until he came back.

Y'mean he's not coming back?!

/was -5 when it happened
//When did "Woolery left Wheel" become a stock phrase here, anyway?

I thought Jack Barry looked like the devil on TJW.

Come to think of it... he really kinda does.

Mine, too ... I once did a design of a TV station building (back in the day when TV stations did local stuff other than news) with separate rooms for news, sports, cartoon shows, outdoor show, Dialing for Dollars, movie host, etc.

Nothing specific about game shows, but I often wondered what was under the desks when they would put used answers or Password folders down those little slots. Did they have wastebaskets? Did they just pile up on the floor?

(And don't get me started on asking how the Lightning Round cards worked)

I had thought Supermarket sweep was live and they really did total the groceries inside a few minute commercial break.

On the intro to Kennedy TPIR, I thought the prizes in the doors were actually there when the show began not realizing they must have taped it and inserted it into the show. Or maybe they didn't.

I thought everybody else liked game shows as much as I did.

Yeah, I thought that too. And that the stage was a few stories high, as they shot the Department store showcases in an actual building. Silly me.

/be nice if it came back though
//showcases the last few seasons have been pretty awesome

A poor thing sir, but my own - one that took me, literally, almost 40 years to find out:

On the original "Newlywed Game," when the lucky winning couple were shown their special grand prize, the one picked just for them, I'd always thought that it really was picked just for them.

But then I had occasion to correspond with a former contestant who'd appeared on the show with her husband in 1968.

She told me that the four couples were given a list of possible grand prizes and asked to check off which ones they would like to win. Talking among themselves, they figured that the grand prize would likely be a boat, since they'd all checked off "boat." And sure enough, the grand prize *was* a boat. (Which my correspondent and her husband won; they ended up selling it so they could put a down payment on their house.)

When I found that out, I realized that, as a kid, I'd half-assumed that after the winning couple was declared, a bunch of stagehands were frantically moving the grand prize into place behind the couples so that it could be revealed just seconds later. In fact, they probably took their sweet time about it.

Since the late-ATGS days, c. 2002 or so. I know it became popular before we moved to Invision (or EZBoard for that matter).

I did, too. I figured Bob's crazy long introduction to the prize--"brand-new, super-deluxe, high-powered. solid-state washer/dryer!"--was to buy time.

The other strange phenomenon was how on Match Game PM's sudden death tie-breaker, the players never had the same answer.

Whenever a host (Bob Barker, Peter Tomarken, Jack Barry, etc.) mentioned that a player was going into that show's Hall of Fame, I really thought there was some sort of area in the studio which had plaques celebrating the best playings of games.

I can't say I wondered about that, just never thought about it, but I recall one episode where they come back from break and the audience and Gene are all nervously giggling, and he says something to the effect of "Hello... Now you at home may be wondering what's so funny... well while you're seeing this for the first time... this is the fifth time we've done this!"

The biggie! How'd I manage to forget that one?

More recently than the other things I mentioned: I assumed that shows with returning champions, like J!, aired ALL their shows in the order taped. (That's a double misconception. I thought we saw semifinal games in the order taped, and I thought the tourneys themselves were taped between the two regulation games that aired before and after.)

Pat Sajak's saying "We drew numbers to see who would start the game...", but they didn't draw numbers because the player farthest to the left always went first!

/Don't "whoosh" me
//I was only a child at the time

Actually, they DO draw numbers to see who starts. Pat showed the actual numbers the players draw on one show (labeled 1,2 and 3 of course) Of course, to make things easy the player that draws the 1 always sits at the red podium, 2 at the yellow and 3 at the blue. Of course nowadays it makes no difference, considering the first two rounds are tossups.

That's OK, I used to take Pat's claim they "drew numbers" a bit too literally and thought they actually wrote down numbers, w/whoever wrote down the biggest one getting to start first. :-) Other misconceptions:

- Thinking the seat for the player who recieved clues in the Go bonus round really was hot, since Kevin O'Connell often referred to that player as being "in the hot seat"
- Also thought players who had money handed to them got to take it home
- Thought the doors that Bert and the celebs entered from on Super Password was an elevator
- Thought they were working railroad tracks into the Face the Music logo (it wasn't until it came back on FAM in 95 that I realized they were supposed to be piano keys)
- Thought those consolation prizes were being referred to as "party gifts" (my dad cued me in on what they were really saying, LOL)

Chuck Donegan (The Amused-By-My-Past "Chuckie Baby")

After the bonus game one time, a contestant on Joker's Wild once tried to give the money back to Jack. He said "you hang onto that"; she said "they told me I'd be getting a check". Kind of a funny moment.

In a similar vain, I thought it was "California ignition" on all the cars for a while. Boggled my mind as a kid, but chalked it up to lack of car knowledge. :) Similarly, I thought the FAM interactive games were being hosted by a "Mark Semmith" when in fact the promos said they were premiering "March 7th."

-Jason

Along those same lines, when I was very young (about 4 or 5) and I'd watch the Fast Money portion of the Feud, and Richard yelled "Survey Says" I thought Survey was some woman....

Funny, I thought it was "California admission". :-D

Chuck Donegan (The Illustrious "Chuckie Baby")

It makes some difference, as control still passes to the host's left between rounds.

Only unique misconception I can recall right now is that no one ever hit the $1500 space. I thought Sweep was in a grocery store, too, but the bigger concern was that could I never figure out for the life of me where they put the audience.

TPiR's Safecrackers safe was real.

I thought that the contestants on Supermarket Sweep actually took home all the groceries they bought.

OK, I'm really gonna date myself on this one, but here goes ...

Back when Dennis James was hosting the nighttime TPIR, there was some pricing game (perhaps it was Most Expensive) where the contestant would pick a price, and Dennis would always say, "We'll hold that one in abeyance and check the others."

I always wondered what a "beyance" could be.

Skip forward a couple of years, and I'm in high school taking my SATs. I'm in the vocabulary section, and there it is, right on the SAT: "abeyance." I went, "Oooooooh!"

Thanks to Dennis James, my SAT verbal score was a couple of points higher.

the same was for Me with Teen WLoD. When Marc Price would say we have a coin toss,...AND YOU WON!!! (referring to one of the teams). I was like "What just happened?! what coin toss, I didn't see a coin toss!" this was before we knew about the whole "backstage decisions" deal.



/We all were!! :-p

And then everybody probably looked at you weirdly for saying "Oooooooh!" :)

I had the same problem with astigmatism, if it makes you feel any better.