Game Show Network

The network licenses the Mark Goodson-Bill Todman game show library, which includes titles such as Match Game, Family Feud, Card Sharks and Blockbusters, along with various versions of Password. GSN has also featured Goodson-Todman game and panel shows from the 1950s and 1960s, such as What's My Line?, I've Got a Secret, To Tell the Truth, Beat the Clock, and other lesser-known black-and-white classics. (Later, color versions of these shows have also aired.) The black-and-white shows made up much of the channel's weeknight lineup at the channel's launch, but moved solely to Sunday nights in the late '90s and finally to overnights. The black-and-white shows have now been cut back to one hour a week on early Monday morning at 3:00 AM Eastern.

GSN, in addition to its Goodson-Todman library, features other shows such as Jeopardy!, Press Your Luck, The Newlywed Game, Love Connection and the Dick Clark-hosted versions of Pyramid (except $50,000 Pyramid), along with more recent fare like Greed, Weakest Link, Dog Eat Dog, the 2000 version of Twenty One, and the Tom Bergeron-hosted version of Hollywood Squares. In October, 2003 GSN acquired the rerun rights to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and added more episodes (including the Super Millionaire spin-off) in the spring of 2005.

Among the most well-known classic game shows previously aired on the network are Wheel of Fortune, The Joker's Wild, Tic Tac Dough, Tattletales, the original version of The Hollywood Squares, The Gong Show, The Dating Game, Let's Make a Deal and The Price Is Right.

GSN has also produced several original series. In the channel's early days, club a.m. was a three-hour block consisting of five classic game shows, surrounded by thirty minutes' worth of interstitial trivia, interviews with game show producers, personalities, contestants and fans, and interactive call-in games, all hosted by Laura Chambers and Steve Day. Prime Games was a similarly formatted show aired weeknights and hosted by Peter Tomarken. Wide World of Games was a Saturday night block of four shows built around a common theme.

After a few years, these shows were replaced by Game TV, a half-hour interview show hosted by Nancy Sullivan and Dave Nemeth; Game World, which showed highlights of current game shows from around the world; and standalone 30-minute call-in games like Super Decades and Trivia Track. Later, the channel attempted a Gong Show remake called Extreme Gong, hosted by George Gray, in which the viewers could phone in their votes as to whether to 'gong' acts off the air; and Throut and Neck, where viewers controlled video game characters with their phones. The network also programmed Burt Luddin's Love Buffet, a combination of scripted scenes and a "game show within the show." All these efforts have long since departed from the network's schedule.

Traditional game show offerings since 2000 have included All New 3's a Crowd, Whammy! The All-New Press Your Luck, Friend or Foe? (a game based around the Prisoner's Dilemma), Russian Roulette, WinTuition, Cram, and National Lampoon's Funny Money. The most successful GSN original game show has been Lingo, a Chuck Woolery-hosted remake of an '80s Canadian format in which teams guess five-letter words in a combination of Mastermind and bingo. The network has produced five seasons, and contestant searches are going on for a sixth in 2007. Other game show originals debuting in 2006 included PlayMania, a remake of I've Got a Secret, That's the Question, Starface, and a remake of Chain Reaction, which is looking for contestants for its second season in 2007.

The "Dark Period" is an unofficial nickname coined by the channel's internet fanbase referring to the period from October 11 1997 to April 18 1998, after GSN's Goodson-Todman library rights expired, with the exception of The Price Is Right and the 1994-1995 season of Family Feud. Episodes of TPIR that featured fur coats, or other animal-related prizes were not aired, following Bob Barker's animal-rights wishes; therefore, the show's GSN premiere was delayed until mid-1996 in order to remove such episodes from the rotation.

The Price is Right originally appeared on GSN in occasional preemptions of regularly scheduled series such as Match Game or Family Feud. Various versions of the show were broadcast, including those hosted by Barker, Bill Cullen and Tom Kennedy. In December 1996, TPIR began airing regularly on the schedule, with half-hour Barker eps in the morning and hour-long episodes in the afternoon and evening. The evening episodes did not air in chronological order. GSN's contract to air TPIR ended in 2000 and has not yet been renewed.

With the other Goodson-Todman shows gone, lesser-known Sony properties such as Juvenile Jury, The Diamond Head Game, the 1976 version of Break the Bank, and the Bill Cullen version of Chain Reaction found their way onto the schedule. GSN also aired a kids' game show block at this time, highlighted by Jep! and Wheel 2000 - kids' adaptations of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!.

Beginning January 1998, ostensibly to pay for the rights to get the Goodson-Todman library back, GSN gave away a few hours of its schedule to air infomercials in the early morning, a common practice among other basic cable channels, and a practice continued by GSN to this day. The "Dark Period" began at the stroke of midnight on Saturday, October 11, 1997 with an episode of The Gong Show and officially ended at 8am on Saturday, April 18, 1998 with Goodson-Todman's Child's Play, which is currently programmed on the network's weekend schedule at 9AM Eastern/6AM Pacific.

In the summer of 2003, Game Show Network began airing GSN Video Games, the first program to air on GSN that had nothing to do with traditional game shows. Although the show was short-lived and considered a disaster, it was a sign of the network's change of format from Game Show Network's "all game shows, all the time" to what would eventually become "GSN: The Network for Games".

On March 15, 2004, at 10:00 p.m. ET, GSN stopped using the name "Game Show Network" on-air, a move in line with the network expanding its programming to include the genre of reality television and various other competitions. GSN's current tagline is "The Network For Games." (However, the entity's corporate name remains Game Show Network, LLC.) The newly renamed GSN also introduced the original series World Series of Blackjack, Celebrity Blackjack, Extreme Dodgeball, Poker Royale, and the short-lived Fake-a-Date, Vegas Weddings Unveiled and Ballbreakers. GSN also added reruns of The Mole, Average Joe, Arsenio Hall's Star Search, Kenny vs. Spenny and Spy TV—all of which have since left the schedule. Traditional game shows Win Ben Stein's Money and Street Smarts were also acquired around this time and aired in various time slots; however, neither show is currently scheduled.

On April 4, 2005 GSN introduced a new daytime lineup featuring several older game shows that had not been seen on the network for some time, including the two most recent versions of Password (Password Plus and Super Password), the 1990-91 version of To Tell The Truth, the Bill Rafferty-hosted versions of Blockbusters, and Card Sharks. This daytime lineup was accompanied by the "Men From GSN" advertising campaign, a Desperate Housewives parody featuring a group of women cooing over such game show hosts as Richard Dawson and Chuck Woolery. Narration by Woolery was added on GSN for the daytime lineup schedule. For a brief time in the spring of 2005, GSN ran five-episode marathons of older game shows on Saturday nights, under the "Saturday Night Classics" banner. Also in the spring of 2005, GSN acquired approximately 100 more episodes of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (except the August 1999 & 2002 episodes), including the Super Millionaire specials.

In June 2005, GSN acquired the rights to the first seven seasons of reality series The Amazing Race for a reported US$50,000 per episode. Beginning July 11, 2005, the episodes aired twice daily, in succession; after initial ratings success, the show now only airs in the early morning 3:00 AM Eastern time slot. January 2006 saw the debut of Anything to Win, a documentary series with no game show connections. The show is now aired at 2am/ET Monday mornings. GSN also introduced High Stakes Poker, which features a private-game format among professional players rather than a traditional tournament format, and is programming a third season of World Series of Blackjack. Also debuting in January 2006 was That '70s Hour, which consisted of two back-to-back consecutive episodes of Match Game. In an unusual move, GSN showed the clapperboard before each episode, which showed the original date of taping and production number. The hour also contained Match Game trivia and brief clips of an interview with host Gene Rayburn produced shortly before his death. That '70s Hour ended in April 2006 when GSN debuted its new version of I've Got a Secret in the second half of the hour. On November 7th Match Game returned for the whole hour with the new I've Got a Secret moving to 9:30pm Eastern. On July 18, 2006, the network began offering a special seven-week run of The 50 Greatest Game Shows of All Time in the 10:00 PM hour, Tuesday through Thursday. This was part of the network's return to an almost all-traditional game show schedule.

April 2006 saw the debut of the fifth season of Lingo and two game show originals, PlayMania and a new version of I've Got a Secret. A revival of the word-association game Chain Reaction, and another new game, Starface, hosted by Danny Bonaduce, began airing on August 1, 2006. A new game show called That's the Question, hosted by Bob Goen, made its debut on October 2, 2006 but left the schedule November 27. There has been no announcement of either a renewal or a final cancellation. In a November, 2006 interview GSN senior programming vice-president Jamie Roberts was noncommittal on the show's future but said it would be a "contender" for the 2007 schedule.

In November, 2006 GSN began a series of documentaries about game shows, starting with a program on Match Game. Other subjects included game show producer Chuck Barris, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, and a "Top Ten" countdown of game show hosts. In January, 2007 Starface left the network with Match Game taking its remaining timeslots. As of 12:01 AM on January 1, 2007, GSN offered ITV (interactive television capability) only for programs aired between 7 PM and 10 PM Eastern and Pacific.^[1] The network had previously offered many more hours of interactive television. A petition to restore more hours of interactive service appeared on the network's website. Also in January, 2007 GSN began re-airing the 2000 remake of Twenty One in Sunday and Wednesday prime time hosted by talk show host Maury Povich.

Despite the forays into reality series, made-for-TV sports, and documentaries, GSN's programming has always remained mostly game shows. As the only U.S. cable/satellite network largely devoted to game shows for adults, GSN is a prototypical niche operation. President Rich Cronin stated in 2004 that, as long as the network remains on cable/satellite, it will always air Family Feud, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and Match Game, which as of 2006 are among its highest-rated classic and overall shows. Senior programming vice-president Jamie Roberts said in a November, 2006 interview that there may be "at least two new original games" in 2007. It remains to be seen whether such a concentrated focus is commercially viable in the long run. Currently, GSN is available in slightly over half of all U.S. households; it also is available from most Canadian cable and satellite providers. The network's financial performance and household availability have improved in recent years.

GSN has raised the ire of some classic game show fans by cutting portions of the end-show credits from the shows it airs to allow for more promos and commercials. These credits often contained mini-commercials for the "parting gifts" given to contestants, which could be free advertising for any of the products which may still exist. GSN also uses time-compression technology, unofficially called 'speed-ups' by viewers, that slightly speeds up the video and audio in their programs, mainly for the purpose of including more commercials in their broadcasts. Other basic cable channels also employ this practice.

• List of programs broadcast by Game Show Network
• Challenge, a similar United Kingdom cable/satellite channel

• Official Site
• GSN's message board
• GSN Unofficial FAQs
• Showbiz Notes The making of a GSN pilot