Primetime Remembered

Any seasoned Game Show viewer remembers the Game Show craze that ended too soon. ABC launches "Who wants to be a Millionaire" in 1999, hosted by Regis Philbin. Within a couple monthes, more join primetime, including Chuck Woolery's "Greed", which featured the most money ever offered by any game show, up to $2,000,000.

Some were very short-lived, for example Maury Povich hosted "Twenty One", a revival of the 50's rigged version, and "It's your chance of a Lifetime", "Winning Lines" and even "Battle of the Child genuises". All of these shows seemed to carry a hint of Millionaire, some significantly more than others. Millionaire was the show that started all the primetime game show explosion. WWTBAM once delivered record-breaking ratings, has changed... the problem remains in the fact that the network fixed something that was never even broken.

ABC moved time-slots, aired seemingly endless, overdone celebrity "special editon" shows. Removed the Phone game and only would choose contestants with auditions. Then, to make matters worse, ABC never promoted the rapidly changing air-dates, the ratings fell. Although, they may be on the right track, bringing back Regular Contestants. But still no Phone game that viewers could try for a million bucks themselves no matter where they were.

Another rival, "Weakest Link" came in when most of the competition moved out. Although the show's gameplay is entertaining, they copied the same 'rating droper' WWTBAM did. Running non-stop celebrity editions, which soon lead to it's cancellation from NBC.

Millionaire


Greed


Twenty one


Winning Lines


Weakest Link

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