I just found out that this coming Tuesday, GSN will show the start of the Password Plus week that features Pat Sajak as one of the celeb players. This was just as he was about to embark on his long run as Wheel of Fortune host.

Cordially,
Tammy Warner--the 'Teresa Ganzel of the Big Board!'

You mean Chuck's gone for good? And when's John Barbour coming back to GONG?

Caught today's ep...Pat's proving to be a VG player for his first time out of the gate, and Tom even mentioned Woolery's departure, etc. during his opening chat w/the celebs.

And to top it off, they forgot to go to a split screen after Tom's goodbye and let at least part of the fee plugs run unobstructed...unfortunately, my VCR cut off partway through, so I didn't get to see the entire final segment. :-( Anyone have more luck than me?

Chuck Donegan (The Curious "Chuckie Baby")

I'll let you know in about six hours.

Doug -- and the countdown to 1600 continues

It's also the first time the opening is truncated. Heard it myself.

Then would this be the first ep where TK is billed as the "star" of P+, rather than the "host"?

Doug -- and the countdown to 1600 continues

It cut out during the Chef's Knife plug. Then immediately cut to Pyramid.

Well, I did get the end on tape. The only issue I had was the monthly required EAS test that kinda got in the way of the last played puzzle.

Is this where I go into the tmq800 rant?

Doug -- and the countdown to 1600 continues

Any particular reason why the opening was cut to simply "It's Password Plus!"?

Certainly it's not a timesaving measure... it only takes a couple seconds to say "It's More than Password..."

Has Allen Ludden passed on at this point of the run? I would think Tom was named the "star" at this point because it was very evident that Allen would not return, or that he had died and that Tom had earned the new ranking of "star" of Password Plus.

Also, sometime later in the run, the passwords that are projected on the screen are white instead of yellow, and the PW+ logo on the screen is also white. However, the passwords on the puzzleboard remain yellow.

Allen died on 6/9/81, roughly six months before this week of shows originally aired(December 1981).

So it's probably a safe bet that they taped this week's shows soon after he passed.

I'll take that bet.

Doug -- and the countdown to 1600 continues

He'll be back. They won't buy Sajak as host. He seems so stiff as a Password player. Merv will beg Woolery to return by this time next year.

I guess I should've elaborated a little.

The reason it's prolly not a safe bet is that you're talking about a show with returning champions produced continually. In the last few weeks of shows, references have been made to P+'s new time slot, Regis' new talk show debuting at the end of November and Sajak taking the helm of WoF right after Xmas. If your window of "soon after Ludden's passing" is say, a few weeks later (so we're now talking the end of June or beginning of July 1981), I don't think NBC would've allowed CS and LVG to stay on the air for four months just so the timing of their departures could coincide with when Tom Kennedy said they'd be happening--if they wanted to cancel a show it doesn't make business sense to just let it languish. It's more likely that these decisions were made sometime in August or early September (allowing for CS to tape a farewell episode, I don't know if LVG ever had one). So the earliest that P+'s first episodes with the new format and trumpeting the new time slot would've taped would be around that time. Now add a few weekends, and you're at the time when the current week would be airing.

I know there was some lag time with tapings. But I don't think the lag time was five months.

But, hey, I've been wrong all week. Why stop now?

Doug -- and the countdown to 1600 continues

Las Vegas Gambit ran reruns toward the end and the farewell announcement ran with The Winker in an insert box delivering a good-bye message as a "best of" episode from a boyfriend-girlfriend week was finishing. I'm guessing by then Heatter-Quigley had left their Nevada base of operations and were back to focusing on L.A. production, from whence came Battlestars which was simply a Merrill Heatter Production with, for the first time in ages, someone other than Kenny Williams behind the announcer's microphone. Had Kenny decided to retire? Merrill wouldn't have canned him from the company, would he?

Heatter and Quigley broke up their partnership after "Squares" finally ended at the end of 1980. Quigley had not been continuously active in H-Q for several years anyway, according to his daughter, who was working as an actress in Chicago in 1981 and who told me that she was his daughter when I made a side reference to "Squares" while talking to her. Since H-Q had been a division of Filmways (which was about to be acquired by Orion), that company kept the rights to the formats while Heatter started a new independent production company.

And I believe that shortly after the H-Q breakup, Kenny Wiliams passed away. It's hard to say if Heatter would've kept him on had he lived, but it's possible, since several H-Q stalwarts, including Art Alisi, did go to the new production company.