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ALL IN THE GAME
January 8, 2006
 Give me a chance to play The Grump for a few minutes.
When I was on Stu Shostak's Shokus Internet Radio show last week, BillCullen.net webmaster Matt Ottinger was on via phone and we were conversing about "Best Of..." and "Greatest Ever..." shows. As I told Matt, I don't particularly care for these kinds of compilations or retrospectives because they inevitably lead to disappointments, sometimes big ones. I've been sour on these kinds of things since those end-of-the-century polls. When The Associated Press listed Garth Brooks above Bob Hope on the "greatest entertainers of all time" list and Hope was number seven, that said enough for its credibility. When I watch one of these shows, I often feel as if I've just seen Perry Mason lose a case when it's over.
OK, you know where I'm going with this. I was honored to be a part of GSN's Top 10 Hosts documentary Sunday night. I am a big fan of Asylum Entertainment and the work that production company does, not just for GSN but in sports documentaries as well. The producers have done a brilliant job with the texture of all of these specials to date. John O'Hurley did his usual sterling job as narrator. I don't disrespect any of the gentlemen who made that top ten list. Every last one of them could qualify as a legend in one form or another. However, I have to sound off about a few things----and I'm sure a number of you are doing the same thing:
---First off: who decided on the ten and who determined the rank order? For once, I would like a complete and honest revelation on this. Was it GSN President Rich Cronin? Was it a committee of GSN people? Was it the show producers? Was it the computers which select the BCS championship teams? Was it the Hermione Gingold Preservation Society? Our good friend Fred Wostbrock asked some of the same questions of TV Guide after some of the glaring errors in its top 10 emcees list of a few years back. Is it too much to ask who is accountable?
---You're going to give Peter Marshall, arguably the greatest comedy game show host in history, four token soundbites on the special but not include him on the list??? Gene Rayburn's great talents aside (and I am not arguing against Gene's deserving inclusion), Peter led The Hollywood Squares through 15 years and an entire generation of changing pop culture entertainers. Perhaps Peter does not receive the kind of credit he deserves today because he was the straight man for all of those comic lines and not the funnyman Gene was. However, Peter won five Emmys as Outstanding Game Show Host and virtually owned the Daytime Emmys in the '70s. I watched the documentary twice Sunday night. I'm still waiting for Peter to be in that top ten. I shouldn't be waiting and neither should anyone else. I don't think I want to hear the reaction at Dixon Hayes' house. Peter, I hope the Game Show Congress award stands a little taller now.
---At Game Show Congress 5, Peter---who won the 2006 Bill Cullen Career Achievement Award---took some pointed shots at that July A&E documentary on game shows because not one mention was made of either Bill or Allen Ludden. Now, I'm going to take my shot: you did an hour on the best game show hosts of all time and you omitted Tom Kennedy? I still want to know who made that call. Even Rich Cronin paid tribute to Tom's career work when Tom was called to New York to do a re-creation of Name That Tune on NBC's Today in 2002. In my opinion, a big reason Tom gets short-shrift is because two of his three longest-running shows were not archived and Name That Tune has stayed in Ralph Edwards Productions' vaults because the music licensing fees are said to be too high for GSN or any other cable network to repeat them. People today don't get a chance to see his best and most enduring work. You Don't Say! was one of the greatest games of the 1960s and Tom was one of the first two nominees ever on the prime time Emmys for a daytime show. Nobody sees it today. Split Second was one of the most challenging quizzes of all-time, ran for more than three years, and today, it's out of sight, out of mind. The man was called back to do 16 game shows in his career and, as was the case with Cullen, several of Tom's shows stayed on the air a few months longer than they probably should have just because he was Tom Kennedy. Tom's omission was the gaping hole in the GSN hour.
---Wink Martindale and Allen Ludden having to settle for honorable mention awards? That's like parents buying toys for their kids on Christmas morning and telling them, "We don't have any batteries." Are Wink and Allen both Miss Congenialities? On the flip side, Chuck Barris and Jeff Probst receiving consolation tokens while far more deserving people were ignored? I know Chuck had a brief place in the sun with The Gong Show but he's already had his own GSN special. His talent was as a producer, not a host. As for Probst, at last glance Phil Keoghan has three Emmys for The Amazing Race, two more than Jeff.
---Bill Cullen number seven? What is he: the Boise State of game show hosts? Peter Marshall said he spent weeks watching everything Bill did before he started Hollywood Squares. Dick Clark said he contracted sweaty palms whenever he was in Bill's presence because he considered Bill such the pre-eminent talent at his craft. Tom Kennedy has said in interviews and to me personally Bill was The King. In my first interview with Betty White in 2002, she said, even with the natural partiality to her late husband Allen Ludden, Bill "was just the best to ever get behind a microphone." I suppose those kinds of testimonials are enough to make you number seven. Perhaps if Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton had offered interviews for Bill, we might could have squeezed him up to number six.
---I'm probably going to make some people mad with this one. I love Regis. I love the match made in heaven he was for Millionaire. I take my hat off to him and will forever pay homage to him for his role in bringing game shows back to prime time on television networks. However, he did one show and one show---despite its 400-plus episodes---which burned out in less than three years. When he did The Neighbors in 1976, he was anything but a ball of fire. If you judge the entire body of television history, Hal March is every bit as deserving as Regis. In 1955, Hal did what Regis didn't do until 44 years later and became arguably the biggest star on television for two years until the quiz scandals diminished The $64,000 Question. I didn't expect to see a mention of Hal here. Kinescopes of Question are only seen on documentaries about the scandals and most people today don't know who he was. Hal will forever be tainted by his era and that's a shame. He was every bit as important to the 1950s as Regis was to the 1990s.
---Speaking of ripoffs of two of the classic greats: can someone explain to me why Garry Moore or Bud Collyer get the guillotine for no sin other than the fact that they are dead and their shows aired two generations or more ago? Garry only managed to do two of the three greatest panel shows in history passably enough for a combined 20 years. He was one of CBS's biggest stars in the '50s and '60s and he defined I've Got a Secret. He had to interact with his panel in the same fashion as Rayburn did on Match Game, only without the double entendre. Bud, likewise, was the signature of two of CBS's longest-running prime time games of the '50s and '60s. He was even doing To Tell the Truth and Beat the Clock simultaneously at night for two years. Talk about versatility: Clock was the wild party game and Truth was one of the most cerebral and intelligent games in the history of television and Bud was believable on both. But because the 18-49s don't know them, since they're in the grave, their work creates instant amnesia.
---I'll ask another pointed question, without taking anything away from the talents of Richard Dawson, who defined Family Feud in its initial run. Yet, just like Regis, Dawson earns his plaudits for one show and one show alone as a host. If we're going to use that as a barometer, what about Groucho Marx? Except for the short run of the big-money quizzes in the mid-'50s, Groucho had the highest-rated prime time game for nearly a decade and revived his entire career because of You Bet Your Life. How can you do a true retrospective on game show hosts and leave out Groucho? Just asking.
---Finally: was I watching the right show, or did I only see a passing still picture of Dick Clark? If Allen Ludden was Mr. Password, Gene Rayburn was Mr. Match Game and Bob Barker is Mr. Price Is Right, certainly Dick Clark qualifies as Mr. Pyramid. Here's a guy who, like Rayburn, had two long network runs with different versions of one of the greatest games ever.
Matt Ottinger reminded me on Shostak's show that a lot of networks employing these "top ten" shows often make their selections based on the availability of clips. Matt's right but in this case, clips are readily available from the work of any of the omitted parties. Stu Shostak probably has more episodes of The $64,000 Question than anyone short of the estate of Steve Carlin. Paul Brownstein Productions owns the You Bet Your Life library. The GSN library could have fulfilled the remainder.
My big problem with any of these "list" shows on any network: the frequent lack of accountability as to how the list was determined and who determined it. My suggestion to GSN for the next time you ever attempt one of these: do the selections the right way. Get together 10 or 15 of the living classic hosts, 10 current ones, 20 or so celebrity players, 25 media members and perhaps 25 successful contestants from a variety of shows. Have us vote on a top 10 using a descending point value for our choices. Yes, even with that, you'll have some people disappointed, even angry, because their favorite was omitted. That method may be no better than the way we choose a college football champion in America but at least it has more credibility than the mystery surrounding GSN Countdown.
Thanks for letting me vent.
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