SW - the news gets better and better for IATV:
Game Show Rides
Regis' Bandwagon
By LINDA MOSS December 6, 1999
Game Show Network, which launched a new
daily primetime show last week called All New
3's a Crowd, hopes to benefit from the national
sensation created by ABC's Regis
Philbin-hosted hit, Who Wants to Be a
Millionaire?, network officials said.
"It kind of bodes well for us in the long haul,"
GSN senior vice president of programming
Jake Tauber said. "It justifies what we have
been doing. We know game shows are a
powerful genre. It's interesting, compelling
television."
GSN -- which will celebrate its fifth anniversary
this month by passing the 25
million-subscriber mark -- may specialize in
game shows, but it isn't the only cable network
that's staked a claim with them. VH1,
Nickelodeon and Comedy Central have made
them a mainstay. And MTV: Music Television
last week debuted webRIOT, an interactive
game show that employs the Internet. MTV will
also premiere The Blame Game Jan. 8.
GSN is anticipating a halo effect from
Millionaire on several fronts. Tauber noted
that following the success and buzz of
Millionaire, veteran game shows such as
Jeopardy have seen bounces in their ratings.
In line with that, he has high hopes that the
primetime game-show revival will drive demand
for such programming, prompting some
viewers to call their cable operators and ask
for GSN.
GSN president Michael Fleming said his
service has already gained 6.3 million
subscribers this year, and by the end of
December, it may actually take that number to
7 million. Of GSN's 25 million homes, the lion 's
share are analog, with only about 1.3 million --
from AT&T Broadband & Internet Services --
digital.
"Over the next year, we'll exceed 30 million,"
Fleming said. "And we've about turned the
corner on profitability."
Most of GSN's subscriber gains next year will
be via digital carriage, according to Fleming,
from MSOs such as Comcast Corp., Time
Warner Cable and Cablevision Systems Corp.
GSN has been paying upfront cash launch
fees, but that will taper off, he added. GSN will
instead spend on marketing the service,
building consumer awareness so that the
network will be an asset to draw subscribers to
digital tiers and broadband applications,
according to Fleming.
GSN is focusing on the network's interactive
applications for cable operators through
enhanced-TV services such as ACTV Inc.
GSN is even working with the same Internet
media company -- Spiderdance Inc. -- that
MTV is using for webRIOT, Fleming said.
Apart from possibly helping to boost GSN's
distribution, Tauber forecast that Millionaire's
success will help GSN in terms of its dealings
with the creative community.
In the past, the brightest stars in the
TV-production world were loath to do game
shows, he said. Now, Tauber believes TV
producers will be rushing to try to duplicate the
ratings phenomenon of Millionaire, and not all
those pilots and shows can find homes on
broadcast. This means some of those shows
may wind up being offered to cable, and GSN,
he added.
GSN's program lineup is a mix of classic game
shows from the network's library and, at this
point, a half-dozen original game shows. The
latest one is All New 3's a Crowd, which
debuted Nov. 29 and is airing nightly at 9:30
p.m.
In January, GSN and Pax TV will both begin
airing a game show they are co-financing,
Hollywood Showdown. Pax TV will get the first
play of Hollywood Showdown's episodes, with
GSN able to run then very shortly thereafter.
GSN, part of Sony Corp., has ordered 65
episodes of All New 3's a Crowd, which
features Alan Thicke as its host. The show is
an updated version of an old game show that
GSN has the rights to, and has been airing,
called 3's a Crowd.
The original series, from The Newylwed Game
producer Chuck Barris, was dropped
midseason in 1980, with some saying it was
just a little bit too risqué for its day.
GSN has updated and "broadened" its new
version of 3's a Crowd, according to Tauber.
In what he described as the "politically
incorrect" first game show, the object was to
see -- via a set of questions -- who knew a
husband better, his wife or his secretary.
"That created a lot of heat" and sexual
tension, Tauber said, since in many cases, the
secretaries seemed to know the husbands
better than the wives. And there was the
undercurrent that the husband might be
romantically interested in his secretary.
But with All New 3's a Crowd, different trios will
be brought together -- such as a woman and
her current and ex-boyfriend, or a man and his
wife and mother -- to see who knows whom the
best, according to Tauber. "Typically, there is
a reasonable amount of tension attached to
such things," he added.
Shows such as webRIOT and Millionaire fall
under the genre of quiz game shows,
according to Tauber, In contrast, he noted, All
New 3's a Crowd is a relationship game show.
Other types include communications games,
like Password, and panel shows, such as
What's My Line?
Tauber said the best and most popular
quiz-type game shows, Millionaire included, all
have enough easy questions so that everyone
in the audience believes they could go on that
show and win. "It's enough to make you feel
smart," he added.
He also attributed Millionaire's success, apart
from its snazzy production values, to the way
ABC shrewdly programmed and debuted it
during the summer, when little new
programming was on.
GSN, which averaged a 0.5 primetime rating in
October, tweaked the quiz-show genre with
Inquizition, which it just renewed by ordering a
second season of 130 episodes. Unlike the
typical game show, Inquizition takes place on
a stark set with an acerbic host, the
"Inquizitor," who belittles contestants for
missing questions and even makes fun of the
show's questions themselves.
Inquizition is GSN's highest-rated
original show, averaging a 0.6 to a 0.8
rating, according to Tauber. The "dark,
offbeat" show has attracted a good
number of men 18 to 34, an attractive
demographic, he added.
Cable has avidly programmed game shows for
some time, with shows such as MTV's Remote
Control standing out, according to Tauber.
"Cable has always embraced the game-show
format because it's relatively cheap to produce
and it is compelling television," he added.
GSN's deal with Pax TV to co-fund Hollywood
Showdown provides the cable network with a
more economical way to finance original
programming. The goal is for GSN to offer, by
the end of 2003, 50 percent library
programming and 50 percent first-run shows.
When Pax TV airs Hollywood Showdown, as
part of the deal, it will also have to run promos
for GSN, according to Tauber. "That's really a
home run for us," he said.
Like several other networks, GSN has a
millennium event set. It will air a stunt,
"Y2Play," hosted by Charles Nelson Reilly,
featuring the final episodes of a number of
game shows. The stunt will air from 4 p.m.
through midnight Dec. 31. |
