The It Was a Thing on TV Podcast Network

The antepenulatimate entry in Pilot Month 2026 (that's 3rd to last entry) is one of the first national endeavors done by a weatherman at KNBC.  If you're a fan of a variety of games, this is the show for you.  Despite technical glitches, one can see a glimpse of what would become a very fruitful career from this weatherman-turned-host.

A beloved show to people of a certain age is Whew!  The format was brought back in pilot form, with elements of an immensely popular board game of the era, the one with wedges and pies.  With a combination of knowledge, luck, and guts, someone could win the Pie in the Sky.

What's up next for Pilot Month 2026?  It.  What is It?  It is simply the linking word in a Before and After like you would see on Wheel of Fortune.  It had an amazing set, but It was also a mess, with many technical issues and goofs.  It was a work in progress.  And what's the deal with the gruesome animated character which was clearly a blatant ripoff of the Whammy?  All this use of the word 'it' is giving me a headache, just like when I first saw It.

We usually don't include pilots of series which make it to television, but apparently someone made an exception.  Two pilots of the beloved series from the early 70s through the early 80s were done with the question format from the original series.  (The humorous questions would arrive about a year later.)  The first pilot can easily be found.  A word of warning about the second pilot:  There is at least one answer which doesn't fly in 2026, and probably shouldn't have flown in 1973.

In the next week, the legendary William Shatner turns 95 years old.  Our tribute to him is this entry from almost 20 years ago, which has Deal or No Deal tendencies but asks questions slightly more difficult than that show's title query.  It remains a classic among us, though the general population didn't agree.  We also get closure to what happened to the contestant on the final aired episode whose game was interrupted, never to be seen.

Our tribute for Joe Garagiola's birthday takes us back almost 4 decades, to a show that has been forgotten, for good reason.  Kline and Friends' second endeavor was not good, though we know one way a current generation could have gotten into it:  #nobanditnobandit.  (We have had a little too much fun with that lately.)

This Sunday, the 60th installment of "The Big Game" is occurring.  We have pulled up some gridiron gems to commemmorate this event.  First, in 1970, football became more popular due to the AFL/NFL merger that year, the start of Monday Night Football, and the booming popularity of "The Big Game."  Earlier that year saw Where's Huddles?  (See episode 451.)  Later, Bob Stewart of Password and Pyramid fame came up with this prediction game where a celebrity and a pro player play "You Make the Call."

It has taken us over 6 years and over 600 episodes to finally cover one of the biggest turkeys in television history.  You would think anything a person nicknamed "The Great One" touches would, by default, be amazing.  This show is proof that is not true.  Jackie Gleason hosted one full episode of this, then gave the TV audience a grand apology the following week because what worked in runthroughs did not transition over that well to television.

A personal favorite show of Greg and Mike's is this spiritual successor to The New Liar's Club, but with various types of lines from movies, songs, and factual statements, and without even a single mention of Shoddy Laroux.  The game is derivative, but the real reason we did the show is because someone wanted to bring up the end theme and its similarities to video games of the era.

One thing all three of us enjoy is a good game of pinball.  With the 50th anniversary of this show happening earlier this week, it was a natural for us to cover this show.  What may have looked good on paper was not, for reasons ranging from the machine often broke down to the physics which made traditional pinball fun were non-existent.