It Was a Thing on TV: An Anthology on Forgotten Television

National Sex Day week rolls on with a British quizzer for the smartest of the smart, where you can earn the title of Cleverdick.  It's not fetch happening; we explain that term in the beginning.

The mid-70s was a rotating door of game shows seemingly coming, then going after 13 to 26 weeks.  The Big ShowDown was no different, except it was a brilliant dice-themed game of strategy and its host had a memorable entrance on one episode.

After a long, long, long wait, The Cube is finally back for a second season on TBS. In the premiere of Season 2, Gabrielle Union and La-La Anthony try to tackle The Cube which has a whole lot of new challenges for the contestants.

Pilot Month 2023 starts now!  Over the next month or so, we will cover 11 pilots.  The first pilot is an American adaptation of a popular British game show.  Alison Sweeney and a judge from 25 Words or Less take their shot at Pointless.

Because of last night's episode of Jeopardy!, we have a new type of show.  Mike felt the need to talk about last night's episode of Jeopardy! and what could be called an historic moment.

Lost in Translation Week 2023 continues with a small show whose promotion was equally small and, not surprisingly, whose audiences and ratings were just as small.  Small Fortune didn't last long in the UK, yet it was still imported to the States where its run was equally short.

One of the most beloved games of the late 70s through the mid-80s was Tic Tac Dough.  The show had lives before and after that halcyon period.  Unfortunately, it was rigged, hosted by an imbecile, then hosted by a bigger imbecile, and recently went to pilot, but did not get picked up.

40 years ago today (the day this episode became available), there were four landmark events on daytime television in a two-hour span.  Three game shows (Sale of the Century, Hit Man, and Just Men!) premiered and what is undoubtedly The Price is Right's most famous pricing game, Plinko, debuted.

Traditional daytime TV shows were on the decline in the early 1990s, in an era ushered by Maury Povich, Jerry Springer, and Jenny Jones.  The Joker's Wild in 1990 tried to rejuvenate a show which showed its age in the mid-80s, in an era where it was handily beaten by Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!  The core of the game drastically changed but kind of reverted to its original format, but it was too late.

Reg Grundy was on a hot streak in the mid-1980s with Sale of the Century and Scrabble.  (See what we did there?)  NBC took a chance on a third Grundy show, which was a blatant ripoff of The Price is Right with history.  After 16 weeks, 2 different formats, and 3 versions of the final round, this show, like its subject matter, became history.  But we did get John Davidson's first game show hosting gig.