This is Fair Shake, where I look at good game shows that didn’t last long, often for reasons out of their control.
On October 24, 1980, The David Letterman Show, essentially a daytime version of his more famous late night talk show, aired its final episode. It was a quick and precipitous fall for Letterman, as the show lasted for just 18 weeks. Hell, just a month in, the show’s runtime was scaled back from 90 minutes to 60 minutes. As it turned out, Letterman’s edgy comedy didn’t work for a daytime audience. But don’t feel too sorry for him; Letterman would turn out just fine, becoming a consistent late-night presence for over 30 years, first with Late Night with David Letterman from 1982 to 1993 on NBC, then with The Late Show with David Letterman from 1993 until his retirement in 2015.
The Monday after The David Letterman Show came to an end, two game shows premiered in its place on NBC: Las Vegas Gambit and Blockbusters, the subject for this Fair Shake. Before I talk about its revival, a little background on the original.
Hosting was game show icon Bill Cullen. The man needs no introduction, but I’ll give him one anyway. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in February 1920, Cullen survived a childhood bout with polio that left him severely limited later in life. This is why Cullen was seated or hiding behind a set prop while he was hosting.
While in college, he worked for WWSW Radio in Pittsburgh. Four years later, he left for rival station KDKA before heading to New York in 1944. He quickly found work, being hired on by CBS as a staff announcer. He also wrote jokes for some of the top stars in radio to supplement his income.
During World War II, Cullen served as a pilot for the US Army’s Air Corps and later as an instructor and pilot for the Civil Air Patrol; his polio prevented him from qualifying for combat duty.
Cullen first got into game shows in 1945 with Give and Take; the next year, he would announceWinner Take All, the first ever game show created by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman. Four months later, after Ward Wilson, the show’s original host, left, Cullen took over and would remain there until 1953. A year prior, he hosted the television of Winner Take All, one of the pioneering game shows of the era.
Cullen would go on to host numerous gameshows, including the original version of The Price is Right from 1956 to 1966, Eye Guess, Three on a Match, Blankety Blanks, How Do You Like Your Eggs?, the first syndicated version of The $25,000 Pyramid, and just before this, the short-lived Chain Reaction. A little DYK: Cullen was actually in consideration to host the 1972 reboot of The Price is Right, but the physical demands were deemed too strenuous for him. The show ultimately went to Bob Barker for the daytime version and Dennis James initially for the nighttime version.
Post-Blockbusters, Cullen hosted the short-lived Child’s Play, the short-lived Hot Potato, and the final two seasons of The Joker’s Wild following the death of Jack Barry. Ultimately, it was his smoking habit that would be the death of him. Cullen died of lung cancer in his home in Bel Air, California on July 7, 1990. He was 70 years old.
Announcing for the show was Bob Hilton. Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, he broke into show business at KPLC in Lake Charles. He would move around the country and even hosted his own in Boston.
in his first announcing gig was as a substitute announcer for Tic Tac Dough in 1980. He would announce two other Barry & Enright shows in The Joker's Wild and the short-lived Play the Percentages. Prior to announcing, Hilton hosted two game shows in The Guinness Game which lasted one year in syndication, and the 1977 reboot of Truth or Consequences.
Hilton would announce numerous other game shows throughout the 1980s, including Card Sharks, Child's Play, Trivia Trap, The $25,000 Pyramid, The $100,000 Pyramid, Double Talk, The New Newlywed Game, The All-New Dating Game, Strike It Rich, Win, Lose or Draw, and Body Language. Following Johnny Olson's death in October 1985, Hilton served as one of three substitute announcers for The Price is Right. Though Hilton did an admirable job according to longtime producer Roger Dobkowitz, he had to pass on the gig as he was already working on several other shows at the time. The gig went to Rod Roddy, who served as the show's announcer until just before his passing in October 2003.
Now, on with the game, which largely worked the same for both the original version and its reboot.
The game had a unique format, as one contestant took on a team of two that were related, referred to as the "family pair". The game used 20 hexagons, arranged in a 5x4 field, with each of the hexagons housing a letter. The letters indicate the starting letter for the correct answer. After a letter is picked, the first player to buzz in and answer the question correctly, gave the player or the team the hexagon. If they missed, the opponent can steal. If both sides missed, a new question was asked with the same letter at stake.
To win the game, the player had to make a path of their corresponding color from one side of the board to the other. The solo player in red worked from top to bottom and could win in as few as four hexagons. The family pair in white worked from left to right and needed a five hexagon minimum. Originally, the winner of the match played a Gold Run worth $2,500, with a second attempt should they win again for $5,000. This was later changed to a best-of-three rounds format, with each round worth $500 and the winning player or team playing for $5,000.
The Gold Run, originally called the Gold Rush, had the same concept, except the only path was from left to right, and this time the hexagons housed multiple letters. A correct answer turned the hexagon gold and was worth $100. A wrong answer or a pass turned the hexagon black, forcing the players to work around it. The idea was to connect the gold on the left to the gold on the right to claim the money.
Champions could stay until winning eight matches. This was later changed to ten, then again to 20. With the win limit upped to 20, former 10-time champions were brought back to try and extend their win streak. One such contestant was John Hatton, a psychologist from San Bernardino, California. After winning six matches (and winning the Gold Run all six times), Hatton was informed that during the taping, his house had burned to the ground and his family kept the awful news from him, probably to not rattle him. Hatton was offered to leave the show and return at a future date, but he declined. He would finish initial run a perfect 10-0 with $60,000 in winnings, the most he could win on the show at the time. That's over $170,000 when adjusted for inflation. Hatton returned to the show during the final weeks in April 1982, where he ended up extending his win streak to 20 and winning $120,000, the most won by any player or pair in the show's history.
After 372 episodes, the original Blockbusters ended on April 23, 1982, playing 350 Gold Runs (175 each by solo players and family pairs) and giving away $1,574,000 in winnings. That's just over $4 million when adjusted for inflation. Not bad for a daytime game show.
The show created by Steve Ryan and Mark Goodson laid dormant for nearly five years before it was reborn on January 5, 1987.
Hosting the reboot was comedian and impressionist Bill Rafferty. Born in Queens, New York, Rafferty, a former military policeman and butcher before he broke into show business, had his national TV breakthrough as a roving reporter for human interest series Real People, which aired on NBC from 1979 to 1984. Prior to that, he had some guest spots on the 1970s version of Laugh-In. Prior to hosting Blockbusters, he hosted Every Second Counts and the syndicated version of Card Sharks. Each of those shows lasted just one season.
In the announcer role was Rich Jeffries. Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Jeffries moved to Los Angeles to become an actor. He had a few bit roles on various TV shows and movies before becoming a lighting technician for Mark Goodson Productions.
This isn't first go-around with Blockbusters. He announced for the final two weeks of the original version in 1982. Prior to announcing the reboot, he served as an announcer for Super Password for the show's first three months in the fall of 1984 before being replaced by veteran announcer Gene Wood.
Jeffries was a substitute announcer for many other game shows, including Super Password's predecessor Password Plus, the Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour, Time Machine, Love Connection, and The Price is Right. Jeffries would be an audience warm-up guy for Goodson shows until his retirement in 1989. Jeffries died of pulmonary fibrosis on March 30, 2012 at age 73.
Blockbusters '87 ditched the solo-family pair configuration for just two solo players, with the champion playing the white hexagons and the challenger the red hexagons, retaining a 5x4 grid. The path to victory alternated for the first two rounds in a best of three, with the third round being played on a 4x4 grid.
The Gold Run also played the same as before, though later in the run, champions played for a progressive jackpot worth $5,000, increasing by that amount each time the champion did not win, and resetting when the Gold Run was won or a new champion was crowned.
So... with the show being a quite faithful reboot of the original and a killer lead-in with Sale of the Century, why did this show not get a fair shake?
It appears there's no concrete reason for its short lifespan (no info is readily available on the show's ratings), but to me, the Blockbusters reboot was pretty much filler, something to fill the schedule until something long-term was ready to take its place. The Blockbusters reboot debuted on January 5, 1987 and was cancelled after just 85 episodes on May 1. The following Monday, NBC debuted another reboot in Classic Concentration. It would be one of the more successful reboots of the modern era, airing 1,020 episodes through September 20, 1991, with reruns of the show airing until 1993, unusual for network game shows.
For Rafferty, Blockbusters would be his first network game show. It would also be his last. Rafferty's other game show at the time, the daily syndicated version of Card Sharks, would be canceled a month after Blockbusters on June 5, though the show continued to air in reruns in some markets until September 11.
That same year, he hosted two other shows that would not make it beyond a pilot, Run for the Money, which would be reborn as Going for Gold in the United Kingdom, and Boggle, which would actually be picked up in the Netherlands. An American version of the show far different from the 1987 pilot would air briefly on The Family Channel in 1994.
Rafferty's final act in television was hosting a series for Retirement Living TV called Retired and Wired. On August 11, 2012, Rafferty died of congestive heart failure in San Rafael, California. He was 68.
As for Blockbusters, the show, largely forgotten in the States, is an institution in the United Kingdom. The show would debut for ITV and Sky One on August 29, 1983, over a year after its cancellation in the States, and would air for 12 seasons, 11 of them hosted by Bob Holness. The series would be rebooted three times from 1997 to 2012. The most recent reboot, first airing in May 2012, began four months after longtime host Holness died of vascular dementia. He was 83. I'll touch more on the UK series at a later date.