by Stuart Shostak
I've always loved game shows. When they started making a comeback in prime time last year, I got hooked, just as I had been watching daytime game shows as a child growing up in the '60s and as a teen in the early '70s. Now I wanted to play. In January I started playing the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" telephone game aggressively. Once I got all three qualifying questions right, but no callback. Then I got all three questions correct and, after another hour waiting by the phone, someone called to say, "Congratulations! You have been selected to participate in a playoff game tomorrow between 1 and 2 p.m." But I only got three of the five questions right in the playoff. That ended my big-money game show aspirations — or so I thought.
About a week later, one of my friends called and told me to look in that day's L.A. Times classifieds. There was an ad looking for so-called "television experts" to try out to be contestants on a special TV trivia edition of "Greed," Fox's answer to "Millionaire." Since I own a television archive facility with almost 7,000 shows and have TV memories going back to the age of three (I remember seeing "The Flintstones" first run Friday nights in prime time on ABC!), I figured I qualified. Meeting Regis in New York would be nice, but "Greed" taped right in my own backyard in Hollywood and since I was so familiar with the subject matter, what harm could going to an audition be?
Picks to click ... for the week of March 6 are here.
The daily digest ... for March 9, 2000: In 1988, at this point in the presidential campaign, the three network nightly newscasts had aired about 800 minutes of coverage. That number has been sliced nearly in half, reports newscast analyst Andrew Tyndall in a new study for Mediachannel.org. Through last week, ABC, CBS and NBC had devoted just 465 minutes of their nightly news to campaign coverage, only slightly more than the dishwater-dull 1996 primary season had been given ... Pat Brown writes, "You've recently reported on movie studios creating web sites that appear to be independently produced to help promote their movies. So here's another non-movie-promoting-movie-promotional-site to add to the list, if you're still keeping track: www.mutantwatch.com for the Twentieth Century Fox movie "X-Men." (I would pity the folks, however, who might actually take that page seriously.)
Coming up next:
Friday: Ratings roundup, Kansas city TV
Tuesday: Zippy's Sci-Fi Loft returns!
Previously on TV Barn:
8 March: The candidates and late-night
7 March: The $218,000 answer
3 March: "Contact"
2 March: Bush whacked
1 March: Reader mail
29 Feb: Kathie Lee quits
28 Feb: Kathie Lee triumphs
24 Feb: Reader mail
23 Feb: More games to come
22 Feb: "X-Files" meets "Cops"
21 Feb: Dave is back!
On this date... in 1969, CBS thinks the brothers Smothers doth protest too much and cancels "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" after Tommy and Dick refuse to delete Joan Baez's song dedication to her husband, David, who's headed to "the-ol'-Grey-Bar-Hotel" for objecting to the draft. -- Tom Heald
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