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History of Fremantle Part 1: The All-American Years
Originally posted: July 10th, 2015
By James
Fabiano
June 1st,
2015 was a major day in the game show world, as Fremantle’s Buzzr network
made its debut.
Not unlike
subchannels such as Antenna TV, Cozi TV, and MeTV, Buzzr is available in
certain local markets, and features reruns of game shows from the
Fremantle library…particularly from the Goodson/Todman archives.
This is super news for fans who have been disappointed in GSN’s
shoving a token block of classics into the corner in the morning.
Buzzr’s coming, as well as Fremantle embracing online media sources
like YouTube, has earned the company a great deal of respect.
But it wasn’t always this way.
Flash back to a bit over two decades earlier.
Mark Goodson Productions was purchased by All-American Television,
which was absorbed by Pearson Television, which in turn would be absorbed
into FremantleMedia.
Under
the penultimate company, revivals of several Goodson properties would
begin in the late ‘90s, with the 1998 version of Match Game being the
first to make air.
It was
also the first show to fall under heavy scrutiny at the time from the
Internet game show community for its faults and failure to live up to Gene
Rayburn’s (or even Ross Shafer’s!) version.
Subsequent shows to find new life under Pearson/Fremantle included
Family Feud, To Tell the Truth, Card Sharks and Sale of the Century, all
of which had varying success and merit, and plenty of nits for fans to
pick either way.
As a result,
for a time Pearson and Fremantle became infamous for screwing up classic
formats, and would be referred to as “DismantleMedia” or “Pierce and
Dismantle” (when the purchase of Pearson was happening), among other
mocking nicknames.
Nowadays, Fremantle isn’t quite seen as the failures
people saw them as in the ‘90s and 2000s.
Despite an occasional hiccup or two, it has kept The Price is Right
fairly quality amidst a change of host and more.
Also, Feud has enjoyed its highest ratings in this incarnation, and
they produced a minor daytime game show revival on CBS by bringing back
Let’s Make a Deal.
And now we
have an alternative for classic game show fans.
That all said, the question is, looking back…what DID
Fremantle get wrong?
And what
wasn’t that bad?
Did they
deserve their vilification back in the day, or not?
This is what I look to analyze here.
(As a quick sidenote, I never really watched the
following: 100%, GSN I’ve Got A Secret, PAX Beat the Clock, nor Celebrity
Family Feud with Al Roker.
So
I will not be counting them.
Feel free to add your opinions about them if you’d like, as well as
anything I may have forgotten.)
PRE-PEARSON
ERA
Not the “critical” era(s) per se, but I feel it sets
the tone.
This would include
All-American’s syndication of Family Feud, the end of Ray Combs’ run and
the Richard Dawson comeback.
There’s also a revival of the syndicated/nighttime Price is Right,
starring Doug Davidson, to consider, as well as All-American’s unsold
pilots to Match Game and Card Sharks.
Basically, Combs Feud ended with the Bullseye era,
which is considered a shark jump that rushed the show, not unlike $400+ to
win in the end of the original Dawson run.
The classic look and feel were still there, however, and Ray was
still trying.
Then came his
firing in 1994 to make way for the Dawson comeback version of the show.
Considering where this led to, this is a definite black eye, in my
opinion.
However, I, like
others, have mellowed out on Dawson Comeback Feud.
There were changes that were very jarring at the time, such as the
CGI board, the “darker” version of the set (I feel they got what they were
going for here right with the O’Hurley/Harvey versions), and scaling back
to the show when it comes to payoffs and the size of the families, which
dropped from 5 to 4 members.
Plus the Bullseye (now Bankroll) format was still in place.
But it wasn’t that bad.
Richard was not in his prime, but he himself mellowed out after
becoming a family man and was more like the host of the earlier years of
Feud, albeit a kinder and gentler version.
So I can see why it was/is considered a black sheep of the Feud
family, but can still be entertained by it.
Let’s say 0.5 point for
Good, 0.5 for Bad.
As for The New Price is Right, you can repeat a lot
of my comments about Dawson Comeback…different host, not-as-colorful set,
and moreso here, the change in format.
Now, the half hour consisted of nothing but pricing games, until
you got to their version of the Showcase Showdown, a
Contestants’ Row auction on retro items called “The Price WAS
Right”
(after running out of
classic commercials to use, they went back to the Big Wheel from the
daytime show).
The Showcase
here was one player and was a souped-up version of the Range Game.
Video walls and CGI displays started to appear often, whereas the
daytime PIR remained “traditional.”
The show didn’t last long and was even buried on the daytime show
by Bob Barker, on more than one occasion.
That said, when you get by the cosmetic changes,
which were different and not terrible, TNPIR was not a bad show either.
Robert Seidelman has a video also explaining how it had its ups and
downs.
You still saw your
favorite games, mostly played the same way.
Doug Davidson and Burton Richardson were a decent combination of
host and announcer, and in fact some people wonder “what if?” as far as
Davidson getting the post-Barker daytime job in 2007 (I believe he had an
audition).
You could say they
bucked tradition by de-emphasizing the one-bids, a part of the show back
to the original Bill Cullen version, to the point of not existing on some
episodes.
Which is a minus.
But I think that may have been the result of trying to have a
Showcase Showdown in there instead of what the other syndie PIRs and the
original 30-minute CBS version did (one-bid/pricing game, repeat thrice,
two highest total winners go to the Showcase).
I’d actually go 0.75 Good,
0.25 Bad.
Now we have stormy seas ahead, as I must mention the
pilots All-American did in the mid ‘90s.
Here is where you can tell something was up.
As you’ll see in a bit, many game show fans detest what was “done”
to Match Game and Card Sharks a couple years later.
But what we could have had was just as bad, if not WORSE.
Shortly after Dawson Comeback Feud and TNPIR went off the air, in
1996 All-American had pilots shot of these two shows, and both would
display many of the faults that did make it to air years later…and then
some.
For starters, there was
Card Sharks with ESPN’s Tom Green.
Most of the tropes to be seen in the 2001 series were in place from
this point : one set of cards for both players?
Check.
Video clips to
predict?
Check.
Oh yeah, about those clips.
While the “Clip Chip” concept did not make it into the main game
this time around, the ENTIRE Money Cards format was eliminated in the
bonus game in favor of a game where contestants had to predict a
celebrity’s answer to a question to earn choices in another set of cards,
hoping to find the $5,000 Ace of Spades.
Kind of like mixing the Clip Chips with the first car game in
Eubanks/Rafferty CS.
Speaking
of which, survey questions were all now the “audience poll” style groups
of ten questions from the 1986-89 series, apparently.
Just like a later entry in this article, it appeared as if
All-American mixed elements of the Card Sharks of the past and randomly
threw ones out on their stage, while looking into the future and tossing
in some from the version that would be seen 5 years later.
If nothing else, at least it was a speck closer to the classic.
But that couldn’t top Match Game with host…Charlene
Tilton.
CHARLENE TILTON.
WHY?!!!?!
This is
taking what I think was part of the logic behind having Jon Bauman as the
co-host of the Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour, and turning it down to
the negative elevens.
That is, I believe Bauman was chosen partially because appeared semi-often
on the Rayburn version and thus could host Squares while being a competent
MG panelist.
Which is all
well and good, and while I will go down as one of the biggest Jon Bauman
and MG/HS defenders in the world, it still was an unconventional choice;
moreso since Peter Marshall was RIGHT THERE and just had his show on the
same network in the same timeslot cancelled.
AND he made numerous appearances on Gene’s MG.
But that’s another story for another day, right?
Regardless, CHARLENE TILTON?!!?
At least Bauman could be entertaining at times as “Bowzer” on MG,
and as himself on MG/HS.
Tilton was the Seat #4 girl; a soap star or model who was not on the panel
for being a comedienne.
If a
former panelist was what they wanted, call Charles Nelson Reilly, Bill
Daily, McLean Stevenson, Richard Dawson again, Betty White, Fannie Flagg,
Joyce Bulifant…there’s HUNDREDS OF NAMES I’d think of before Charlene
Tilton!
And on
top of that, you had a series of unneeded changes, such as having the
stars give their answers and THEN the contestant gives theirs.
The Super Match here was reformatted to have the Audience Match
come second, following what can be described as a ripoff of Hollywood
Connection, Barry & Enright’s Match Game ripoff, of all things.
2 bad points, easily, for both
pilots.
So we start off 1.25 good, 2.75 bad. Actually, if you only count what made it to air, the race is a bit closer and in the company’s favor. But those pilots are bad enough to include as a cautionary tale as to what’s to come.
Questions or comments? Check out the GSG facebook page or message me
directly at sigmafan2@msn.com.
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