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RECENT COLUMNS Grand Slam: a Post-Script The Father of Tournament of Champions Tribute to Tom Snyder Tribute to Bob Barker Charles Nelson Reilly Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? Ranting on the "Top 10" Hosts Dr. Frank Stanton GSN Documentaries Forecasting odds on Bob Barker's replacement Fantasy prime time network game show schedule The return of Name That Tune Tribute to Ralph Story Game Shows on 9-11-01 Survivor Tribal Segregation Tribute to Mike Douglas Chain Reaction/Starface Ken Jennings' Blog Entry Game Show Congress

ALL IN THE GAME September 12, 2007 The first Grand Slam is now history and my hat is off to Michael Davies for his belief in the project and his patience in not giving up after five years of attempting to sell it.    An equal tip of the cap to GSN for taking a chance on it, even though I feel some improvement is needed in its scheduling and in making the game more of a larger-than-life event.    Ken Jennings did not need the Grand Slam championship to solidify his name as one of the all-time greats of quiz shows. That 74-game winning streak on Jeopardy! is unlikely to ever be broken and when some of us are long gone from here, our future generations will be talking---in whatever form game shows take in that era---of that record with awe. Ken's won more than $3 million for his knowledge of trivia and academics. That's enough to make one feel secure unless you're an NFL quarterback who hangs around with P-Funk and QT.    Yet, the usual limited crop of online wags have wagged for two years about how Ken couldn't beat Brad Rutter in their head-to-head finale during the Jeopardy! Ultimate Tournament of Champions.    Grand Slam somewhat vindicates that on a neutral format in a head-to-head tournament situation with a given set of pairings, Ken can be better than Brad. Pair them up differently and Brad could have been better than Ken again. It's that simple. A different set of questions and opponents and Ed Toutant or Leszek Pawlowicz or Kevin Olmstead could have been the king.    As we said last month, pairing the players on the basis of winnings is somewhat of a flawed system; yet, I don't know any other reasonable way---other than a pure draw---you could have done so. Had Tic Tac Dough been in a later era, Thom McKee's winnings may have doubled or tripled. Had Jennings played with Jeopardy!'s original dollar values, he'd have still been a millionaire but with half as much cash. Michelle Kitt played on a million-dollar quiz show that offered players about as much chance to win $1 million as Bill Shatner has of finding a good toupee.    Yet, we saw the beauty of a tournament format. We saw upsets. We saw two people totally unheralded reach the Final Four. We saw talented, intelligent people seriously challenged by an against-the-clock format that requires intense calm as the seconds tick. We also saw a man rise to thte top who took a lot of unfair heat during his long run on Jeopardy! from dithering dunderheads who had nothing better to do than to throw smoke bombs at an achiever.    The ratings for Grand Slam were described to me as "solid...but not spectacular." GSN has made no committment to a second Grand Slam. It should. I purposedly asked the contestants, when I saw them at Game Show Congress, not to tell me the outcome. I wanted to watch the event unfold just as you did across the U.S. Here are a few observations and suggestions: Do it again and make it a 24-player field: That would guarantee a 12-week event. Our suggestion: bring back the Elite Eight from this year's field. Give them an automatic first round bye and seeding based on their order of finish this year. Add 16 players to meet in the first round. Choose 10 more out of the all-time winners' list and add six players from shows in the 2007-08 season to keep the show current. Resist going outside the game show world: OK, I'll agree you may have some great crossword players or Tuesday night bar trivia buffs. However, the International Race of Champions doesn't bring in midget racers from Lee County International Raceway in Opelika, Al. The Scripps Spelling Bee does not incorporate Scrabble champions. Keep it to the field of TV game and quiz show winners. Otherwise, it will eventually cease to be Grand Slam. Stop the multiple switches: In our view, once a player calls a switch, the other player ought to be forced to answer the question or pass, same as the play-or-pass option on the ABC version of Password. The consensus of our e-mailers agreed. The most serious complaint about the mechanics of the game was hearing four or five switches in a row on the same question. Balance the eras of pop culture questions: Our observation was that pop culture questions were largely from the current era. Obviously, that was an attempt to appeal to younger viewers. But if you're going to have people 50-plus in this tournament, you owe at least to provide a balance of questions from earlier years. Thom McKee heard precious few movie or TV questions that would have been from the '70s or '80s. Neither did Frank Spangenberg. It's honestly not going to bring or subtract a single viewer to the show to spread out the eras. It may make the game fairer. A GSN game should not automatically be represented: We won't go back through the Amy Kelly issue. I've been told by all of the other contestants what a nice person she is. I'll just repeat: she was there because GSN and the producers invited her. Her performance was arguably the weakest on the show but that wasn't her fault. A Lingo player is not a trivia player. Even the word rounds on Grand Slam aren't tailored to a Lingo player. If a second Grand Slam is done, GSN should stay out of the way and not force a That's the Question or Camouflage winner into the field. Besides, GSN airs repeats (or at least has episodes of the shows in its library) of the huge majority of game shows represented in the opening field. That should suffice. To do otherwise is the equivalent of Major League Baseball requiring every team to be represented in the All-Star Game, which is a joke. Get it off of Saturday night for the primary showing: I understand: cable has had successes as program alternatives on Saturday nights. Trading Spaces is the classic example in its heyday on TLC. But this one was mis-scheduled. Saturday night in August is a bad night for launching an all-time, all-star event. This needed to be either on a weeknight and perhaps with a sweepstakes for home viewers to participate in surrounding the tournament. Also, the online chat which was done after the Final Four needs to be done after every week's show to give viewers an interactive contact with the players. We have one other idea: keep the all-star Grand Slam as no more than an annual event. However, we believe one other Grand Slam ought to be tried that would incorporate people other than all-time game show champions. Our suggestion: College Grand Slam. This is the kind of game that provides the kind of intense challenge that G.E. College Bowl provided for more than a decade on network television. It's a different structure and format. We would think if auditions were conducted for a 16-player field on college campuses across the U.S., or online, you would have a premium field that would be interesting to watch. I have no doubt Mr. Davies would enjoy producing it. We'd love to see it. johnnygilbert.tv Miss Francis' gowns by Bonwit Teller © Copyright 2006   TVgameshows.net.    All Rights Reserved.

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