Just recently, I dug up a couple DVDs that I thought I'd lost. One of them had the debut episode of Break the Bank 1976. Watching it, I saw yet another solid entry in the B&E catalog with one of my favorite GS themes. I saw nine lower-than-HSq-level celebs playing a rather interesting and fairly original game. I saw some rather strong writing, both in the questions and the bluffs. It's a shame this didn't catch on; no doubt the similarity to HSq did it in, as did ABC's sudden pulling of the plug to expand the soap opera block. I heard Johnny Jacobs announce more dynamically than ever before. Basically, I saw a rather well-executed game that deserved much better.

Are there any fans of BtB'76, or am I on my own here?

I'm with ya. I always thought it was a very unique and entertaining show. Wish more eps would pop up on YT. Do they still exist?

I've only seen a couple of episodes on YouTube, being too young for its original run, and too cable-deprived in the '90s to have seen it on GSN. But what I've seen, I've certainly liked. There's no doubting the game's source material, but it's a well-done original twist with a great bit of strategy thrown in.

I know the syndie version offered a standard-issue B&E dumb-luck bonus game. A while back, I concocted this:
- The bonus board consists of 15 prize cards (3 each of 5 different prizes), and 5 money bags.
- Player selects a box, and borrowing from the last couple seasons of HS, the host reads a factual statement. The player must decide to which of the two celebs that statement applies.
- If the player guesses correctly, the prize or money bag in the box is revealed. If incorrect, a strike goes up, and the contents remain unknown.
- If the player successfully reveals 3 boxes containing the same prize, he/she wins that prize.
- If the player successfully reveals 3 money bags, he/she "Breaks The Bank", winning all 5 prizes plus the current cash jackpot.
- If the player makes 3 strikes, the game is over, and he/she receives $_00 for each captured box.

A common myth is that the show was a ratings winner when it was canceled by ABC in July 1976, to make way for soap operas on their daytime schedule. In actuality, that season comprised of approximently 3 weeks. Someone here even said something about the ratings tanking by the end of the game.

Hey don't blame me, Mark Odor said this one time. He also said that it had 0 meat to it.

One thing I thought stuck out was the fact that claiming three moneybags won the game instantly, no matter how much work the other contestant did. In the debut ep, the female contestant answers way more questions right, but the male contestant ends up winning just because he stumbled into all three bags.

But you can't "stumble into all three bags." You have to give up your turn twice to do so.

One of the things I like about BTB that I wish would be more prevalent in game shows is the spatial strategy. If you know that the three matching amounts connect on an edge and blanks don't touch, you can plot what you want to do more than if all twenty items were scattered randomly.

You're TenPoundHammer, aren't you?

Last post for TenPoundHammer was March 13. Twentington signed up March 27. I'd reveal his full identity..but I promised 'Zink that I wouldn't.

Where are you quoting this from?

Which a) makes one wonder why you were sworn to secrecy, and b) makes me wonder why you would post this at all, since it boils down to "I know but I'm not telling."

My sig.

I loved Break The Bank. The game didn't really need a bonus round. Heck, you could win $5000 or more during the main game. The syndicated version seemed to have a bonus game just to have a bonus game. And that theme music (ah!) orgasmic.

Yes. Dontcha just love that breed?

That's B&E for you.

I always use the original Hollywood Squares secret square sounder for a nooner.

Bang. Zing. Ahwooooooo-gah.

Curious.

Travis is right here; there was some strategy to the three bags element of the game. I remember an episode when there was basically a deadlock between both contestants and their color-money squares, and they both started to look for the moneybags (or the wild card), which made for a very interesting hide-and-go-seek match. I think, more often than not, those money bags were what a contestant turned to when he/she wasn't going anywhere with the regular color-money cards.

Agreed with most everyone else, aside from the bonus-game-just-to-have-one, this was a fun show. Kennedy and Barry both hosted it well.

I may have to dig around in my tapes...I think I might have 3-4-5 episodes laying around...

What show were you watching? The show had about the same level of celebs as The $20,000 Pyramid, which was right on par with HSq

And I enjoyed BTB as well...it did require some strategy in winning and presented a bit of risk. Deserved a longer run.

I meant slightly lower. Usually I recognize the stars on even 30some-year-old HSq eps, but I didn't recognize most of the guys on this show.

The whole run exists, save for a couple of episodes. GSN ran about a third of the run when it was on the schedule in '97-98. Wish they'd bring it back...

The part about 3 weeks is true, but the rest isn't. Somebody (I believe it might have been Jimmy) posted some numbers from Variety for the summer of 1976, and Break the Bank still held its strong ratings all the way through. It was cancelled despite the high ratings because Fred Silverman was more interested in longer soap operas. I believe it could have worked in syndication had Jack Barry not been more interested in reviving Joker's Wild the following fall.

I agree with what most have said...great show!

BtB was one of my favorite shows from the B&E stable of games.

The questions were "harder" than many of the Q's that were used in TJW, TTD & Bullseye a few years later, but there was always a choice between Dis or Dat.

The theme was awesome, in fact it was the first theme I recorded onto cassette -- still have it, too!

I liked the gameplay -- especially when the players knew the whereabouts of at least 2 or 3 moneybags on the board, then you had to figure was it worth it to take a moneybag, lose control of the board, and risk your opponent blocking any 3-box win that you may be close to getting.

Tom Kennedy was the better host between the two. I would love to see an episode near the end of the run to see how the game's pace & rules played out -- all most have us seen of the daytime run was the first 3 weeks, so there is a good possibility that the show was looking even better by the time Fred stopped by to say, "You're Canceled".

For heavens' sake, no. Pyramid's were FAR worse. And while Jan Murray did both, he'd be the least funny of the four corner squares but the Paul Lynde of BtB. That's not par. (Not that I didn't like "Break the Bank," too.)

I liked BTB, it was a great show,but that weenie at ABC, Fred Silverman took it off to put on two piece of crap soaps. Silverman's decision to dump BTB was a rehash of him taking off Password when he was at CBS. But I knew it would come back as a weekly nighttime show in Fall 1976.

I loved it when I seen TV favorites I haven't seen in a while on both versions, like Bob Crane, Barbara Eden, Mickey Dolenz, Craig Stevens, Bill Dana, and Alice Ghostley. I liked it when Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin guested on the Tom Kennedy version, and ABC had a movie about him at the time.

I wish someone would do a downloadable BTB with Tom Kennedy and Johnny Jacobs (or Ernie Anderson,the voice of ABC)'s voices, a Star Changer and a new bonus round like trying to win the money before getting 3 strikes or something.

He is a weenie, isn't he? Not in the Lidsville sense of the word, but certainly he is one. Or he was. He may have reformed.
He attended The 2006 Game Show Congrefs, which was also attended by ABC Break The Bank host Tom Kennedy, Now You See It's Jack Narz (NYSI was also dinged by Herr Weenie), Peter Marshall [master of The Hollywood Squares, yanked in 1980 by Fred S. Weenie] and Henry Polic II, supporting cast member on the 1975 sitcom When Things Were Rotten, whose plug was pulled by The Weenster along with That's My Mama to make room for The Bionic Woman.
Was it you, Matt O., who told us afterwards that while Weenverman was been introduced that you were thinking, "Nobody boo. Nobody boo"?

I just watched a bit of BTB on YouTube the other day. Looking back now, it seems that and "Rhyme and Reason" were both trying to catch on to the funny celeb Mojo of HS and MG'7x. When it was canceled, it seemed like the beginning of the end for afternoon games.

And yes, the theme song is glorious. That was the clincher for buying the TV game themes CD.

Indeed.

i am a fan of all game shws of all eras, i love BTB76!

I love it too and with the ratings good, they should have just sticked with it.

Agreed on the theme. Unfortunately the version included on the CD wasn't in the best of quality.

The last time I saw Silverman, was on a TV program, can't remember what it was, but Fred has lost a hell of a lot of weight due to diabetes, forcing him to give up martinis. And I guess he gave up the Salem cigarettes he xhain smoked going back to his days at CBS .

Did you know that Silverman worked at WGN-TV Chicago from 1960-63? (He also breifly worked at WGN's sister station,WPIX-11 in NYC before going to CBS). At Chicago's Very Own Channel 9, he gave WGN viewers The Bozo Show, Family Classics with Frazier Thomas, Garfield Goose (not to be confused with Garfield The Cat in the funnies) and The Ray Rayner Show. These shows would later get national exposure when WGN went up on satellite on Halloween 1978 joining WTCG-17 Atlanta (later WTBS and now plain old TBS) as a superstation.

Oh, how I loved this show. It's the only B&E show that I have a real fondness for. Tom Kennedy was always my favorite host, and I also taped and kept that great theme music - my favorite ever. It looks like I wasn't the only one blown away by the theme.

Did the daytime version ever have a bonus round?

-- Don

It did not.

Nope; the daytime show had a "straddling" format.

Funnily enough, I recieved a 45 dub of the theme on casette a good 3 years before the 2nd GSN CD was released (this is the version that was circulating on websites, etc. during that time), and despite the noticable vinyl crackle/hiss, it sounds MUCH better than the CD copy...go figure!

Chuck Donegan (The Illustrious "Chuckie Baby")

I have a pretty good version of the BTB theme on my site.

I didn't know that he worked at WGN and WPIX; as much as game show fans give him grief for cancelling BTB 76, he's cool in my book(even though I like game shows as much as everyone else here does) because he helped get one of my favorite tv shows on the air: Scooby Doo, spefically Scooby Doo Where Are You? There's info about this online but here's the basic cliff notes version: Silverman while he was on a flight from New York to Los Angeles after pitching Scooby Doo with another name which the network didn't like, heard the line Scooby Dooby Doo in Frank Sinatra's song Strangers in the Night, he then decided that Scooby Doo would be the perfect name for the main character of the show and as the saying goes The Rest Is History

I knew it was from vinyl because I heard the crackles...but a 45...wow! As a cut on a vinyl LP it wouldn't surprise me, but it was almost unheard of to release game show themes on 45s.