Word: game-show
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...people have paraded before the public in quite as many guises as New York City's Bess Myerson. The willowy brunet from the Bronx catapulted to prominence in 1945 as the first Jewish woman to become Miss America. In the 1950s, she was a television game-show star on The Big Payoff. By the early '70s, Myerson had entered government, making headlines as New York City Mayor John Lindsay's crusading commissioner of consumer affairs. In the city's 1977 mayoral race, the former beauty queen hitched her star to Ed Koch, accompanying the bachelor Congressman throughout his campaign. Said...
...back-to-the-basics television. "Rules just clutter up the game and confuse people," says Alex Trebek, the host and producer of Jeopardy! "People should be able to understand the show in the first half-hour, even if it's their first time watching." That may help explain why the same shows keep reappearing. Password has resurfaced as Super Password, and among the retreads planned for next fall are The New Hollywood Squares and We Love the Dating Game. Death is only a temporary state in game-show heaven. Dan Enright, producer of Tic Tac Dough and The Joker...
Little is likely to change in the meantime; little ever does. Game-show contestants are, as always, relentlessly peppy; bedroom sets and trips to Bermuda still bring squeals of ecstasy; hosts are still genial, well manicured and almost exclusively white males. Sets have, however, grown more lavish over the years, and cash prizes have mounted. The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime, which debuted last month, is so proud of offering "the biggest prize in television history" that it displays the cash in bundles stacked on a pedestal at center stage...
...next twist in TV games may be home-audience involvement. Two new shows planned for next season, Banko and WinAmerica Sweepstakes, will offer big cash prizes to viewers who play along at home with game cards to be distributed nationwide. The innovation could catch on, though the game-show community is wary. "You don't buy audiences with huge amounts of giveaway money," contends Mark Goodson, producer of such classics as To Tell the Truth and + Password. Chuck Barris, who has made a fortune as creator of such shows as The Dating Game and The Gong Show...
...engaging word game (many puzzles are devised personally by Creator Merv Griffin, who also wrote the show's theme music), partly the hypnotic allure of the wheel itself. It may also be a function of Host Sajak, whose low-key, faintly ironic style is a welcome break from most game-show gush. "As a game- show host, there's always the temptation to do a parody of one, to do a rapid- fire delivery and smile a little more," says Sajak, 39, who was a weatherman for KNBC in Los Angeles before hopping aboard Wheel in late 1981. "But that...