In reading the post about GSN's ratings - that the bump from Deal or No Deal has worn off, and that their Saturday night shows aren't doing very well - it got me wondering what the future might hold for GSN as a niche network.

In its history, it's gone through many changes. It started off with wall-to-wall classics. Then it started replacing some of those classics with sub-par originals (with a couple of exceptions). Then it went away from traditional game shows for a while. Now it's gone back to game shows, with a fewer number of classics but with much better originals. Still, the ratings just don't seem to be there.

I'm sure we all have our opinions on what we'd like GSN to be. Some of us would love to see shows like Joker's Wild, Break the Bank and Now You See It return to the schedule. Somehow I don't see that improving the ratings. Some of us would like to see them pick up additional libraries (Reg Grundy comes to mind). Some of us would probably love to see a whole schedule full of originals like the ones they're doing now. However, if they're not doing that well overall, why go to the added expense?

I think for a lot of us the novelty has worn off after 15 years. The fact that they overplay some shows doesn't help - how many times can we watch Match Game or Family Feud and still be as excited as we were the first time GSN aired them - especially when those shows are on several times a day?

Some of us on this forum have stated we don't watch the channel much anymore. While I think it's true that more variety on the schedule would help a bit, I wonder how many eyeballs out there will catch it and stop when flipping through the channels. It's kind of a shame that 60,000 episode "vault" gets relatively little use at present. There are thousands of shows they have (or had) the rights to that have never aired on the network.

Lately they seem to be going after more recent shows. Is adding shows like Crosswords, Trivial Pursuit or Temptation the way to gain more viewers? Or maybe last season's daytime Deal or No Deal?

Maybe GSN's happy with the ratings they have and don't expect more. Maybe they've reached their peak. Maybe the average viewer out there won't go out of their way to find a 20-year-old game show, or a decent looking original not on conventional TV.

Is there anyway of a win-win situation here for the network, or will it just push on as it has, never really reaching a big audience? Or, is there a danger of Sony throwing in the towel one day and saying "we tried"?

Any opinions on what the future might hold?

I'd like to believe they are here for the long haul, but why kid ourselves and think they will ever be as well known as USA, TNT, etc. But IMO, changes will need to be made & I just can't see bringing in a game that failed miserably last year will magically become a ratings bonanza on GSN. If I was given the opportunity to run GSN's programming, I'd try 3 hours of quality originals during prime time. If the budget would allow, try to curb rerun abuse of these shows. Nothing worse than following a show and then a few weeks in you notice the same contestants/questions and lose interest. Maybe bring in a new library of recognizable games and do these in daytime(again, it does come down to money to license these). Then maybe toss all of us long time fans a bone and do some 'lost classics' in late evening. Earlier I suggested a checkerboard schedule like prime access time in the 70s, for some of the games that only lasted a year or so. Take an hour and fill it with 2 games each weeknight(maybe a midnight run). One run per week would give longevity to a short lived quality game. Thoughts????

A necessary ingredient to success for any cable channel is MSO clearance. You can show video of Peter Tomarken having sex with the Kardashians while the Whammy pleasures himself, but without enough households able to watch on less than the most expensive premium tiers of cable service, your viewership and thus your revenues are limited.

GSN has come a HUGE way over the years; let's hope it continues and the channel thrives.

Never known for subtlety,

Randy
tvrandywest.com

Actually, I'm pretty sure you can't...

It all depends on camera angles and the lighting. We'll argue about it on Saturday.

Randy
tvrandywest.com

I think GSN needs to expand their avenues. If they truly are "The Network for Games", why not pick up some sports programming? Show some college football or basketball on the weekends. I'm inclined to believe this would help pick up the ever-desired demographics. Then, run promos during those events for your other programs.

Another avenue I think GSN should take is to showing some movies once in awhile, that have games behind them; whether it be Quiz Show or Radio.

I think the other way 'round would get more viewers.

Before SoapNet got them, I thought it might be a good idea for the Sony-owned soaps (Y&R and DOOL) to run in prime time, thus creating The Game and Soap Network (GSN).

I think the bloom is off the rose for casino programming as well, though it might be good in late night following the NBC series.

Maybe run it like the independent stations of yore, with Sony sitcoms in the morning, game shows in the afternoon, a couple of Sony's action shows at dinnertime, Sony movies in prime and game shows overnight. GSN would stand for "General Show Network" I'm not sure if cable operators would like this though; they seem to want things in niches.

I'll be in my...wait, what?

It would be nice if GSN had more classic programming on, not the same shows over and over, even
then, many of the shows were the same subset of episodes (think "Tattletales" "$25,000 Pyramid" & "Press Your Luck"
for example). I would love to see the Grundy shows, "Whew!" and others, but I doubt this will ever happen,
especially in the current economic climate.

This would have to air during the wee late night hours, along with that vibrator commercial that used to air on B&W Overnight.

Why?

^ On second thought, this would've brought a whole new meaning to "Big Saturday Night"
(ducks from tomatoes)

The bottom line is: GSN needs to turn a profit. If they're making money, they're happy. If not, they'll diddle with the schedule until it they are.

The big problem with a network focused on game shows is that, with the exception of a very small percentage of the population who enjoy the genre as a whole and not individual shows, game shows have never been appointment TV in the way that, say, a soap opera or a talk show is. So the people scheduling GSN have to deal with what is essentially a transient audience - people who flip on the network, see a show they like, watch it to the end and resume channel surfing. The folks at GSN have to find a way either keep TVs on their channel, or give them a reason to tune in of their own volition.

I'd probably employ this strategy if I were in charge:

1. Dump the million-dollar shows from the schedule. Shows like WWTBAM and DoND don't work on the main schedule because, for the most part, the people watching these shows when they were first-run weren't watching them for the game - they were watching them to see someone potentially win the advertised top prize. Since the vast majority of the episodes shown don't feature a million-dollar winner and viewers already know this, they're likely to flip on GSN, see "Millionaire" in the listing, and say, "Next."

1a. If you must air million-dollar shows, limit each show to 1-2 airings a week. It's ludicrous to think that viewers are going to follow a show like DoND on a daily basis, so rather than stripping the shows, put them on once during the week and once on the weekend. WWTBAM on Mondays, DoND on Tuesdays, 1vC on Wednesdays, and so on. There are three benefits to this strategy: you don't burn through all the episodes of a show in a matter of months, you add variety to the schedule, and you have a chance to air only the "good" episodes from that show ($125K+ wins on WWTBAM, for example).

2. Longer runs of your original series. Unless you plan on rotating them around, doing 8-week seasons of a show means that each episode is guaranteed to air at least six times during the year. If you extend those runs to 13 weeks, it cuts the number of repeats by a third. Whatever additional studio and staff costs you may incur will likely be recouped by the fact that all of the episodes will now stay fresher longer.

3. Rotate the bejeezus out of your library. On the other side of the coin, there's no reason to air your late-night and early-morning shows more than 13 weeks at a time. Use the hours on your schedule between GSN Live and Prime Time to focus on your core shows: Match Game, Feud, Password, Pyramid, PYL, Originals. Outside of those hours, make it a point to shuffle as many shows in and out as possible. You get your money's worth out of the shows you've bought the broadcasting rights to, and you give viewers (both fans and casual viewers) the chance to happen upon a show like Hot Potato or Break the Bank and say, "Hey, this looks new."

4. Marathons on the weekends. Two four-hour blocks of different shows every Saturday and Sunday, leading into prime-time. The fans of those shows get what they want, and those who happen upon a show they like will get to stick with it.

This can all be done with the shows that GSN already has available to them. The Reg Grundy library, while awesome for us, would almost certainly be a wasted investment unless they can get it at a miserly price. Same for TPIR (and there's no way they're getting this cheaply, if at all). No need to produce any more original series, either. Honestly, it's not as if they can do any worse, if the encroaching informercials that now start at 1:00 AM are any indication.

You must be out west, because it's 4am when they start here.

Anyhow, I really have to question the ratings, for example, Lane Chain Reaction. There's not that many, and how in the heck are they pulling those numbers with a suck product like that anyhow? Karn Feud is being replayed like all heck, but doing well. Even though most people enjoy the O'Hurley version more anyhow.

When they pulled HS at 3pm, that seemed kind of stupid. Now the Lingo episodes are from 2002. I have a hard time believeing that the "GSN Live" players are staying on that channel, save for the contest at :50 past the hour.

Thanks a LOT Randy! If your ears start burning tonight, it will be due to the fact that after reading that line, I will be cursing you for providing me a nightmare for which I will never be able to un-see. :-)

Sorry about this one. It's long and choppy.

I thought they might go that way once they started Extreme Dodgeball, Ballbreakers and Greek Games. Competitions and sports, rather than primarily studio games. If they wanted to do that, though, they should have done it before Versus decided to take on ESPN. That makes things even tougher to start now. To piggy back on your point, I didn't have a problem with the idea of video game programming from many moons ago, just that they did it in such a poor fashion by redubbing old British shows.

How much do you think it would take to air Slumdog Millionaire in primetime?

I think daytime in primetime would have been something unique, exposing the shows to an audience that may not otherwise see it.

Perhaps so, but GSN's gotten quite a bit of mileage out the poker shows and in first run, they still do pretty well. I'm still laughing at all the yakking Gabe Kaplan A.J. Benza did about the show possibly being cancelled despite having the highest ratings on the network at the time.



What makes things worse for them, I'd imagine, was when cable operators started pushing it into the digital tier, like Comcast did in my area (Flint, MI). Instead of competing with 70 or 80 channels, GSN's now either non-existant or a single grain of sand in the 400-channel beach of life.

The problem with that is, even though those shows have considerably shorter runs than a 5-a-day series, they are also the most visible and memorable. That's one reason why some were clamoring for Meredith Millionaire a couple years ago. There was the visibility with the longer run. They probably can't wait until they can do the same with daytime Deal.

Well, GSN usually orders 65 episodes. I think they only did 40 for Friend or Foe and Catch 21. I think GSN in particular has been bad about letting new shows repeat too long since Whammy! debuted and went into reruns for a year and a half before season two aired.

They were doing that for a while. Both runs of Blockbusters. Three runs of Card Sharks. Tic Tac Dough, for a while. Now You See It at night.

I think GSN Live is such a boost for all of the shows. To answer the Oodles questions, more often than not, you have to watch at least half of a segment. Like, they'll ask, "What was the $100,000 Pyramid category "A CHOPPING SPREE" about?" It'll show up in the second round and be the last one played. Meanwhile, you've watched about 5 minutes of play and GSN scores a point.

I think you've been snookered here.

At least GSN did get their head out of the sand, and put some things on Fancast. They are realizing that "on demand" is something people want. Money List and 20q have full episodes, and I believe I saw one episode of Lingo posted there also. It would be great if they could take the "vault" shows and post those also. Maybe it would be cheaper to run them on the 'net instead of the channel?

Given the awards and accolades (winning Best Picture), it would be several years. HBO will prolly get first dibs, then either one of the broadcast networks, and then the higher-tier cable channels (most likely TNT). My guess is sometime in the year 2026. ;-)

This, right here, is the million dollar question. And this is also what the people who throw around terms like "rerun abuse" and say "why aren't they showing more/different stuff?" don't get. It's about the money.

What constitutes overplaying? I could watch Body Language, Double Dare or some of the Barry-Enright shows for a long time, and your Match Game/Family Feud/Password group has such a vast number of episodes to pick from that it makes sense to have those options at the forefront.

But GSN isn't going to lose a ratings point because a handful of superfans decided to go get some fresh air.

Here's the easy way to answer that: if people didn't watch it before, what makes you think people will watch today?

If I want to watch a college football game, I already have half-a-dozen avenues that I can get my fill. Game Show Network already has their niche, and every time they wander away from that (with the exception of Sunday Night Poker) they get slaughtered. Why would this be any different?

But just because you think you've wasted an hour to watch someone fumble, stumble and bumble their way to a bailout at $16,000 doesn't mean that it's a "bad episode." There are times that I've rooted against a contestant and wanted them to fail badly. And when they do, I get to do the Muntz Point, and I'm happy.

(And what denotes a "good" episode for Deal or No Deal? Is the cutoff $249,000? Part of the fun of The Deal for me is watching people falling off of the tightrope.

I have no quibble here.

Here I'll quibble. When I found out that I had gotten a special deal on cable for six months, I looked at the GSN schedule, and wouldn't you know it, there's the Pyramid Hour, and it's been the closest thing to appointment television for me in a long time. I will be a mite ticked if I stick around for a while and Pyramid gets chucked for something else.

The one thing that I loved from GSN a long time ago was Game of the Week. I would check out the schedule whenever it was point out, and see what was there. Sometimes we got something neat like the 2,000th Jeopardy!, or Eye Guess, or the Grand Final of Super Jeopardy! And sometimes it was the laughably bad Camouflage. But it was always something off the board.

I don't remember if this was the same time, but there was something called As Seen On...Theater, and it ran from midnight to one in the morning, and it was a wild card of programming. If it was something not on the schedule, like a Pyramid or Super Password, I'd stick around. If it was a Match Game or Gong Show, I wouldn't. It was these "extras" that I looked forward to most of all.

I think the problem with something like this is that you assume that the Executive Producer of the channel gives a damn. After the Game Show Awards and Big Saturday Night, I dn't think that's the case.

Do you have anything to back this up? At all?

Too much to be worth it. You'll see that as the Saturday Night Drop-In Movie on one of the Big Three networks before you'll see it on GSN, is my bet.

Really? Seriously?

I'm not sure how much can be done with this angle.

I think HBO already has it...here there's a Comcast commercial pimping HBO On Demand and the centerpiece of the commercial is Slumdog Millionaire.

Totally do see ABC getting the broadcast rights...would make a good Sunday offering, with a special offering of Millionaire before it.

Somehow if they did that, I doubt they'd remove the Pyramid hour. I'm guessing what the original poster of that comment means is, find some spots on the schedule to regularly run different series. Keep the popular shows like Feud, Match Game, etc., but also rotate in and out Break the Bank, Hot Potato, Dating Game, etc. That way you're always keeping the schedule fresh and also getting some use out of the shows you have rights to. It might even add some interest for the casual viewer to be flipping channels and finding something they've either never seen (and wondering what it is), or something they haven't seen in a long time and are fascinated by it.



I'm willing to bet we all miss that. For shows with only one or two existing episodes, it was a great place to show them. I still think they should do something like that today. Even if they can't/won't put some of those shows on the regular schedule, at least find an hour on the weekends to run "Games of the Week", or bring back "As Seen on Theatre".

If "Rotating the bejeezus out of your library" is not possible for some reason, at least that would be a nice compromise.

If they don't want to air them on the network, Sony could offer these fan favorites for download, or a Youtube or Hulu-type site. Warner Bros. is doing custom mail-order DVDs of movies they don't feel have the potential to sell at retail, maybe Sony could do the same thing for their game show library.

So at what point is it a false economy? When do you start to lose the Nielsen-counted flippers if and when they want to move past the recent reruns or don't like them? What else can you do to continue their interest if not changing things up every once in a while?

Obviously, it's subjective, and what makes such a statement hard to get behind is that I would guess that it doesn't apply to most viewers. Yes, Family Feud does get played 7 times a day, but to your point, they have one Combs ep, two Dawsons, three Karns and an O'Hurley. And if a person works 9 to 5, they'll just catch the two Karns and the O'Hurley, the most recent ones. (Which I imagine is no accident.)

Well...you'd have to make sure that it was dropped for that reason in the first place. GSN's gotten a lot of play out of Greed after FOX just dropped it. I'm not saying necessarily that Temptation would burn up the charts on GSN, but I'm saying that knowing what we do about the saturation of the syndication market, don't discount the effect of low or bad clearances. I think my local CBS affiliate gave TP: AP a fair shot, with the first of two Feuds at 9:00 AM, then TP: AP, Guiding Light and Price.

It could be different if executed well. I believe Dodgeball at one point did very well before they took it too seriously. And anyways, they've been holding fast to their niche recently for the most part, and they're STILL getting slaughtered. Something has to change.

Ehhh. I don't know how many really have the level of schadenfreude required to think that way. I think that, depending on how early it happened, they'll just be bored or disappointed.

But on the other side of that coin, what if Pyramid hadn't been rotated in? Maybe somebody would have preferred the last show? Or what if they don't like Pyramid?

Never. I think you're confusing this with minimaxing. False economy is when a town builds a trolley right in the middle of downtown because it will cut down on car emissions and other happy crap, without factoring the resultant car crashes when it plows into an intersection, or without figuring that people like their cars and won't ride a trolley, and so they lose bundles of money on it. Minimaxing is what that asshat in my role-playing group would do whenever I granted him some experience points: it took hours for him to figure out the best way for him to apply those points to get maximum benefit.

Beats me; that's why they have guys who are paid to figure that stuff out.

And the reason they're picking the shows they do? Just about everyone can recognize The Feud. If you stop for a moment, you're sucked in, playing along. Just about everything that's on the air right now would be either recognizable to Joe American, or a GSN original. (or both).

Crosswords was 6:30p here in Seattle on an independent affiliate, but it was still rubbish. Temptation was up against TPIR, and TPAP was the lead in to Feud. But they still just weren't all that good.

Are they? Is the network profitable? They can pull a star and still make money if they have enough repeats of Vince making sure that the camera guy is following him? If you want to have an identity in the Ocean of Cable, General Show Network or Games/Sports Network isn't going to cut it.

But why bother to pull out the big winners? Why not just let the series roll along? Won't people be just as bored with Yet Another Big Winner?

Please point me in the direction of this person. I need to have a good long Clockwork-Orange style chat with this person.

The story of GSN is like the story of TV Land. When it began a lot of you were getting it--along with Cullen TPIR and a few other goodies I'd have loved to see--but I couldn't. Then suddenly one day I got it, and at least got to enjoy those mid-60s WML? shows from CBS with those big-haired female celebs and civilians, plus an unexpected double bonus: late Sunday airings of Monty Hall BTC and Trebek's Double Dare, two games that didn't air on my then-local CBS station in their original runs. But now there's nothing of interest to me on GSN and I wonder sometimes how much longer it will last.

The REAL frustration for me is that all the tapes of Spin-Off are available for airing, and GSN is the only network potentially capable of showing them...but of course, they won't touch it, probably because it's not a G-T or B-E show. It surely can't be because it was short-lived, not when GSN has aired the same one ep of Number Please and the same handful of Play Your Hunch eps more than once.

If Food Network ever ends production of Unwrapped and it only airs in reruns from then on, I may drop my expanded cable channels.

On one hand, I could make the argument that the show is extremely obscure, but on the other hand, I doubt that that many more casual viewers have heard of Number Please or Play Your Hunch. However, I doubt anyone at GSN is even aware of a show entitled Spin Off.

If that's the case, then why does it seem like so many networks, especially the ones lower on the dial, can't abandon their niches fast enough? TV Land. American Movie Classics. Cartoon Network. History Channel. Bravo. A&E. What good is an identity if it doesn't grab eyeballs?

I've heard of people getting tired of losers, but the only time I've heard of people get tired of too many big winners was early in Twenty-One's run, and that was years before "Pick A Box, Win A Million" became a popular format.

Then, quite simply, you haven't been paying attention.

Then enlighten me, Lemon, instead of adding yet another predictable insult to your total. Assuming, of course, that you can. Have an actual opinion, rather than a soundbite or one-liner.

With that attitude, I don't know why I'm bothering, but: I was quite serious. Many, MANY times over the years, certainly between when Twenty-One aired and today, there have been complaints around here that Show X was giving away too much, or that Game Y was too easy. I like challenging games. I like it to MEAN something when someone wins. And for you to say "hey, I haven't heard anyone complain..." means exactly what I said, that you haven't been paying attention.

(We now return you to our regularly scheduled CarShark screed about Why I Suck.)

One thing the aforementioned cable channels above do that GSN seems to ignore is advertising. Granted, some of the advertising those networks do is advertise on their sister channels (and GSN has no sister channel), but many of those same channels advertise elsewhere: in magazines, on radio. and on other non-sister channels.

The last time I heard radio advertising for GSN was the "Judge for Yourself" show and I couldn't even tell you the last time I saw any print advertising for GSN. How many times does GSN get mentioned during Wheel or J! nowadays? What is GSN's creative daily or special block of programing that would be the equivalent of an Adult Swim or Shark Week or Academy Award Winners month? And when they do such a thing, do they publicize the hell out of it, or do they just send out simple one-page press kits with a bunch of GSN bling?

As far as marketing GSN to the masses is concerned, there is a lot of room for improvement, and the same can be said for their choices in programming.

To add more fuel to the cries of "brain-dead" GSN programming decisions, weekday P+ is being replaced with yet another airing of Dylan Lane CR next week (just in case you clamor for even more of it)

There is also a couple other changes.

Donnymid is off of the schedule and is being replaced by a full hour of Karn Feud at 4:00pm. Deal or No Deal goes into the 5:00pm hour. Feud will get a full hour at 8:00pm with Karn and O'Hurley. Lingo gets the 9:00pm spot now. And The Newlywed Game and Catch 21 will flip flop places at 10:00pm.

Rather than doing the research on his own or just accepting the answer, CarShark falls back on "You're just a big meanie!"

If you're playing the home game: Take a drink.

For those keeping score, Deal or No Deal, Show Me The Money, Set For Life, Fifth Grader, Lyrics, The Rich List...did I miss anything?

(emphasis mine)

I know what happened here. You thought I meant complaints from GSF specifically, but I was talking about the general public, because that's what I believe Travis was talking about in his statement before last. I've seen nothing that said the home audience thought primetime games were giving away too much.

But both are true. You can't just throw money at contestants and expect to keep viewers. That's been demonstrated repeatedly over the last few years.

I can think of two possibilities as to why Spin Off doesn't air:

First, the version I heard was, the tapes were found at the same time as the original The Joker's Wild; was it ever determined that the tapes were in showable condition?

Second, I don't recall GSN airing many Jim Lange shows (did they ever air The Dating Game?) - could he be the holdup somehow?

Although comparing the number of episodes to Number Please or Play Your Hunch isn't particularly appropriate, as those shows typically aired in a once-a-week "leftover" block (along with the one Eye Guess and what I assume is the one Jack Barry (weekly syndicated) Break the Bank), I'm fairly certain there are more episodes of Spin Off than there are of Greed.

-- Don

They indeed aired DG.

Yes; The Dating Game (and later just the celebrity episodes) had a regular spot on the schedule for many of the early years (I remember seeing the original in summer of 1997, paired with the syndie '70s version of Newlywed Game, right before the "Dark Period"). They've also aired one of his Newlywed Games, IIRC, Hollywood Connection, and a few eps of Bullseye, so I highly doubt he's the holdup, especially given the former...;).

Anthony

I think music rights are the main reasons why GSN is having trouble airing TDG.

Another reason why you will never see Spin-Off -- the run is likely on 2" tapes -- which would be north of $500 per tape to convert. Plus they would have to clear rights, mark commercial breaks, edit for plugs, etc. And all of this for GSN to see no appreciable difference in a daytime rating for a show that was so incredibly successful, it ran for 60 whole episodes.

Let's remember, it is GSN's duty to make money for their investors, it is not GSN's duty to show 34 year old game shows. The only way you will ever see Spin-Off on GSN is if the heirs of Nick Nicholson and Roger Muir reacquired the tapes, converted them and bought infomercial time.

The reason why you saw some of those G&T one-offs is because they initially paid to have their library converted. I know it's sad where we've approached a time where the residual value on some of these older shows has approached negative bupkus, but it is what it is.


--Mike

$30,000 just to convert all episodes of that show to digibeta? That doesn't sound like much.

Also, it's possible that the tapes may have already been converted to digibeta. I don't think there's a rule that an older game show can't be converted to digibeta, unless GSN acquires it, is there?

I'm sure if you wrote them a check, they'd be happy to make you a set of DVDs as a thank-you.

Some of us who work for a living could probably tell you that $30k is a lot of money these days.

Myself included.

Clearly gameshowlover87 is the sort of baller who only rolls in the finest European sportscars and uses $500 bills for napkins. If he wants to flaunt it Mix-A-Lot-style, really, who are we to deny him?

While I make a good enough living to get by, The highest I've ever made in a year is about $25,000..And I can safely say I may never see $30,000 a year.. And Ive been at my job nearly 19 years..Some people just dont have a keen sense of reality..

I suppose you'd have no problem paying off my $6,800 remaining in student loans then, huh?