Match Game/Trivia

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• Development Hell: Where any chances for a revival seem to have been residing since 1999.
  • FOX shot a pilot for an "updated" version of Match Game entitled What the Blank?! in 2004. Mixing elements of Street Smarts into the game (because it obviously worked so well for another game show just three years earlier), it was canceled abruptly before it aired.
  • TBS tried their hand at reviving the show in 2008, taping a pilot featuring, among others, Sarah Silverman and Scott Thompson on the panel. Shot on the same set as the Gameshow Marathon version, it was scrapped in favor of Lopez Tonight.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: The Price Is Right announcer Johnny Olson was the announcer for the first four versions (1962-82), and Goodson-Todman standby Gene Wood announced the ABC version.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The 1960s version was destroyed by NBC, and only 11 episodes exist.
• Missing Episode: A string of CBS episodes from 1979 didn't air until GSN finally showed them in 2001. The network also skips over a few episodes due to misplaced/broken tapes, although a few are skipped due to no-longer-PC content.
• The Pete Best: Jack Klugman. Jack agreed to appear during the first week of Match Game 73 on the condition that they bring his then wife on a later week as a celebrity. Her name - Brett Sommers (Klugman).
• Screwed by the Network: More often than you may think.
  • NBC canned the original not because of ratings (which were still very good), but because it wanted to revitalize its lineup. The replacement, Letters to Laugh-In, bombed in three months.
  • CBS moved the show from 3:30 PM to 11:00 AM on November 7, 1977 — then to 4:00 PM on December 19. The first change was bad enough, but the second really killed it and Dawson's departure in August 1978 only sped it up. To the show's credit, it managed to last 16 months following the move to 4:00 PM.
  • The ABC version was slotted at Noon, forcing affiliates to choose between it and local news. Most took the news.
  • The 1998-99 version was laden with so many problems, Michael Burger and the second set were the only things that didn't screw it over.
• Uncancelled: The original NBC version, and how. NBC thought the show was getting low ratings, so they didn't renew it for another season. However, they still had 6 weeks left of episodes to film. So, Mark Goodson decided to okay a suggestion from one of its writers (Dick DeBartolo, then and now a Mad Magazine writer) to start using more racy questions, under the logic that they could easily get away with it because they were already cancelled to begin with. It turned out that the Hotter and Sexier Match Game was getting way more viewers.