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What's My Line?: Syndication Begins  Oh, a few bones were tossed over the decades. In 1976, CBS gave I've Got a Secret a token four-week summer tryout but slapped it opposite television's number one show, Happy Days. Ten years later, after two seasons of being thrashed on Thursdays at 8 by The Cosby Show, CBS ordered six prime time summer episodes of The Price Is Right. Even against the Huxtables' reruns, Price was destroyed by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. A long-forgotten ditty called The Hollywood Game received a month-long Friday night shot in the late '80s. Only Bob Goen's close friends and relatives, Fred Wostbrock, and David Schwartz remember it. During the long dry spell, the most successful game show effort was ABC's periodic prime time All-Star Family Feud editions. The first one in 1978 scored a stunning 38 percent share of audience and paved the way for a recurring series of the nighttime specials. From 1967-71, ABC was still in the evening game show business. NBC gave it one more shot. ABC found a niche for The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game as Saturday night companions opposite The Jackie Gleason Show. By every good rule of television, NBC would have ushered up a fast midseason entry of a nighttime Let's Make a Deal after its blockbuster ratings in the summer of '67. In an interview with TVgameshows.net eight years ago, Deal host/packager Monty Hall told of NBC's aversion. "I went to NBC and I said, 'Let's keep this thing going. We've had 15 good weeks. We beat Ed Sullivan and The FBI. Find us a place,'" Hall said. The reaction he received was revealing of network attitudes. "This executive was very, very big at NBC. He looked me right in the eye and said, 'Oh, we don't do shows like yours during the season. We might do one every now and then in the summer. But your kind of show is not the kind we want to have on at night during the year," Hall told TVgameshows.net. "It was as if he was saying we think your show is beneath us. That really insulted me. Some weeks during that summer, we were the number one show on his entire network." The Associated Press reported NBC was negotiating for a January return of Let's Make a Deal at night to replace the disastrous Jerry Van Dyke comedy Accidental Family on Friday nights. Hall said the report was pure speculation. "I went to them again and they didn't even want to talk to me," Hall said. "That was the beginning of the end of my relationship with NBC. If our contract hadn't had another year to run in daytime, I would have taken the show then and there to another network." One year later, he did, to ABC (which happily agreed to a nighttime version), and the move sank NBC's entire afternoon schedule and elevated ABC's almost immediately. NBC opted to go with a nighttime edition of The Hollywood Squares (something CBS passed on in the summer of 1966) in January 1968 but opposite CBS's powerful Friday night movies, Squares was dead at night in 32 weeks. Over at Goodson-Todman, the purge of '67 was deadly. Instead of four profitable prime time game shows, the company was down to none. CBS, with one more year to run on the contract, kept To Tell the Truth as an afternoon show. With an almost blinding set revision and CBS daytime chief Fred Silverman's incessant tampering (which included firing panelist Tom Poston in favor of unknown Bert Convy, injecting a couples' edition of the game and pushing more celebrity segments), Truth would be gone by September 1968. Goodson-Todman and CBS were out of business with each other for the first time in 18 years. The only survivors elsewhere were The Match Game and Snap Judgment on NBC. Clearly, Mark Goodson and Bill Todman were facing the prospects of major layoffs in their company for the first time in two decades. What's My Line? executive producer Gil Fates stated the obvious in his 1978 book on the classic game: "We needed more shows." With ABC predominantly turning to young-skewing impresario Chuck Barris and CBS slamming its doors shut, the only alternative was a risky proposition. In television's first 15 years, syndication was an alternative for programming independent stations in larger American cities. Syndication was also a tough business. Independent program distributors, without the umbrella of a major network, literally had to build their own unconnected networks without the ability to air their shows at the same time across the U.S. Advertisers, both national and local, had to be found to fund the productions. Frederic Ziv, the most successful pioneer in the field, was a master at developing low-budget, on-location series that developed cult followings. The Cisco Kid in 1950, was intended for NBC, but Ziv took the expensive step of shooting his western in color and distributing it to individual stations on a market-by-market basis. Over the years, his Highway Patrol, Sea Hunt and Science Fiction Theatre were highly profitable. A few non-Ziv shows also struck gold. Liberace's half-hour filmed series distributed by Guild Films set him financially for life. Singer Patti Page gained another foothold in syndication. Desilu's Whirlybirds, for the syndication arm of CBS, enjoyed modest success. On the other hand, the syndicated disasters were many. Favorite Story, The Tracer, a revival of The Goldbergs, Meet Corliss Archer, This Is Alice, How to Marry a Millionaire, The Third Man, 26 Men, The Jim Backus Show, Australian western Whiplash, musical half-hours with orchestra leader Mantovani and singer Jill Corey, and even a filmed edition of Pantomime Quiz all quickly went to the litter bin. By 1968, the other major difficulties with syndication stemmed from shelf space and accessibilities. First, only 33 of the top 40 markets offered independent stations which did not rely on affiliations with CBS, ABC or NBC. Second, affiliates were under increasing pressure to clear their entire network schedules. In the era, prime time network programming originated at 7:30 p.m. in the East and West. A few markets aired either local or network newscasts leading up to network prime. In most East and West Coast cities, the 7-7:30 time slot was the prime slot available but a lot of stations relied on tried-and-true sitcom repeats, such as I Love Lucy, Leave It to Beaver, Make Room for Daddy or the newly-available Gilligan's Island. The other availabilities were in early morning (9-10 a.m. in the East), 12 noon or 1 p.m. (if a station did not air a midday newscast) or 4:30-6 p.m. (if a station was not gobbling up the time with either the popular Mike Douglas or Merv Griffin shows or local children's shows). Some small breakthroughs were beginning to emerge for original game show production in syndication. In 1965, the word game P.D.Q. with Dennis James was distributed in approximately 70 cities, mostly in early morning or midday time slots. The ratings were not spectacular but offered enough punch to continue for four years. A relationship half-hour, The Anniversary Game---a natural extension of The Newlywed Game, crept onto daytime schedules in about 40 markets. The big bonanza came in 1966 when, after a one-year hiatus beyond its cancellation on NBC, Truth or Consequences was distributed in syndication by Metromedia. The game possessed a distinctive brand name, a history dating back to the early days of radio, a nine-year run on NBC daytime and the incomparable Bob Barker as host. T or C cleared 111 cities within two years, many offering a choice 7 or 7:30 p.m. time slot. A few markets, such as Jacksonville, Fla. (CBS affiliate WJXT), bumped the tiring To Tell the Truth for Consequences at 3 p.m. Truth or Consequences, despite its reliance on sometimes complex out-of-studio stunts, was incredibly cheap to produce and raked in huge profits for Metromedia, which owned five major market independents. CBS still owned What's My Line? but had no intention of using it on either its daytime or nighttime network schedule. However, the network was perfectly amenable to Goodson and Todman re-licensing their baby for any other purpose. Fates and show creator/associate producer Bob Bach toyed with the format and went to Goodson with their idea of taking the best of Line and I've Got a Secret and developing a hybrid under the Line title (Fates referred to it as What's My Secret Line?). If a circus trapeze artist went before the panel, film clips of the contestant at work could be shown. The developer of the first home VCR could bring a unit for a live onstage demonstration. An early model of a waterbed manufacturer's could be rolled out for the panel to sample. As opposed to the static, structured nighttime Line, an active, energetic half-hour was on the drawing board for daytime. Also: the formal wear had to go. No longer could What's My Line? be an elegant parlor game. The emphasis had to be more on the stories behind the occupations and pure fun to entertain an audience in various dayparts. Mindful of the amount of work which went into 18 years of the nighttime show, Goodson immediately turned thumbs down on the idea. Conversely, Fates and Bach remembered the challenge in adding a daytime To Tell the Truth in 1962. The staff proved it could develop 10 more segments a week, in addition to the three required for the weekly nighttime Truth. They forged ahead with their prototype for a five-day-a-week What's My Line?. The bigger challenges were predictable in expanding what had been 30 minutes of television a week to 150. First, finding funding to produce a syndicated Line was not easy. CBS Films, the syndication arm of the network, would distribute the show. The newly-formed Viacom Enterprises, which was looking for original production, agreed to put up the dollars for the new Line (three years later, after a complex Justice Department case, CBS was ordered to sell its syndication company, as were the other networks. CBS Films was sold to and became Viacom. Ironically, three decades later, the prolific Viacom would buy and take over CBS). No small task was finding a host. John Daly, though he was soon to part ways with the Voice of Democracy in the same kind of dispute which beset many of his predecessors, was not on the short list. Daly was not interested in returning to New York to do a five-a-week game show, though he still held out hope of returning as a network newscaster (which never materialized). Some consideration was given to some of the old standbys. Garry Moore could have had the job merely by saying the word. Yet, Garry, still stung over the quick failure of his second CBS variety show, was not sure if he even wanted to return to television (he did the following year with To Tell the Truth). Henry Morgan, late of I've Got a Secret, always wanted to emcee and was a finalist for Password. Despite his mellowed personality, the producers were never sure if Morgan's irascibility would resurface. Jack Clark, the popular announcer on Password, was another possibility. Goodson, always in the market for fresh faces was always an admirer of the qualities of good newscasters. He scoured those in the New York market but also looked at tape of local journalists outside the city. Among those who caught Goodson's eye was a young correspondent whose work was distributed to the Westinghouse stations. As a reporter both in Washington and on the battlefront in Vietnam, 37-year-old Wally Bruner demonstrated a poise and energy Goodson felt could translate well as a moderator. In a TV Guide story a few years later, Goodson was quoted as saying: "I could take Dan Rather and make a great game show host out of him." Goodson later said the same of Nightline anchor Ted Koppel. Bruner was summoned to New York, did an office run-through and then a mock studio audition. A total unknown to most of the country, Bruner won the job. The choice was not met with uniform joy from station managers. Many of them were expecting a known quantity, some even Daly, and had to be sold on Bruner.  The next task was to create a panel. In his late sixties, Cerf was not interested in a long-term agreement for a daily show and, candidly, the target was for a younger demographic. The hope was that Arlene Francis was amenable to do a significant portion of the shows as a carryover from the original series. Even at 61, Miss Francis was youthful and energetic. Whether she would have an interest in a five-day-a-week game was another story. As Fates wrote 30 years ago: "I didn't know how we could do a new What's My Line? without Arlene. To be fair to her, I didn't know how we could do it with her." Unquestionably, aside from Arlene, the rest of the panel needed to be populated with younger and, whenever possible, fresher faces, to have a chance with younger viewers."My mother just had fun doing the second show," said her son Dr. Peter Gabel in an interview with TVgameshows.net last year. "Some people forgot she was one of NBC's first morning personalities and she was on for an hour live five days a week for almost a decade. So, doing What's My Line? and taping five shows in a day was a lot more relaxed for her." To make What's My Line? economical, an entire 52-week season of original episodes was not feasible. In a May 1968 edition of Broadcasting magazine, the description read: "Stations are being offered 175 first-run episodes and 17 weeks of repeats. Taping begins in August in New York." Another dilemma: finding five mystery guests for a week's output was far tougher than a single one for Sunday night. The original pitch did not promise a mystery challenger on every show. The hope was to find celebrities for three shows a week. The Bob Hopes, Lucille Balls and John Waynes of the world would not be available for a daytime show. Whether a daytime audience would accept a B or C-list celebrity as a mystery guest on a consistent basis was up for debate. Targeted, in addition to the independent stations, were ABC affiliates in 45 key cities. The reason: confidence was so weak in The ABC Evening News with Frank Reynolds and Howard K. Smith that a third of the ABC station lineup did not even carry the network newscast. That opened additional half-hours in cities such as Atlanta, Memphis and Providence on major network stations. Ultimately, 32 of those ABC stations took the show, some pairing Line with Truth or Consequences. In Atlanta, WQXI scheduled What's My Line? at 6:30 instead of ABC News. Eventually, the game would move to 7 and enjoy a five-year run. A new What's My Line? with a new host, a new panel and an uncertain road map began taping in mid-August in New York. Most of the old CBS crew handled the production. With Frank Heller retired, veteran Miss America Pageant director Lloyd Gross was recruited to call the control room shots. Stations in 76 cities signed on originally for syndicated Line. In the pre-satellite era, syndication tapes were distributed on what was termed a "bicycle" basis in order to save money. Typically, about a dozen to 15 copies of the expensive two-inch master tapes were made. Stations in the top 20 markets received the first stop on the bicycle route. They dubbed the tapes and immediately sent them on to stations in, say, markets 21 to 50. The process continued until stations in the smallest markets were reached. What's My Line? was slated for a mid-September debut in the nation's biggest cities. However, stations in the second 100 markets would not air the premiere until mid-October because of the time required for tapes to be bicycled to them. One other side note on syndication contracts in the 1960s: to pick up a show in the midst of its run (for example, in season two) often required a station to purchase all previous episodes. Many stations in smaller markets in that era waited to buy a syndicated show, first-run or off-network, until gauging its performance in bigger cities. A number of smaller-town stations picked up What's My Line? in year two but had to either air the first-year shows or pay for them in order to obtain the second season. Some station managers opted to play off the first-year shows in scattered weekend or late-night time slots. The delayed airings explained some of the viewer anger when they saw episodes with Bennett Cerf appear well after the publisher died. The full package policy changed after CBS, by government decree, sold its syndication arm to Viacom in 1971. What's My Line? had a big spike in clearances for its fourth year because Viacom no longer required stations to buy all previous seasons.  Among the cosmetic changes: a brighter blue set with square sections depicting various occupations and new flute-driven theme music from the fledgling Score Productions, which developed a more contemporary, if forgettable, harpsichord-driven theme for the final CBS daytime season of To Tell the Truth. The animated opening from the final two years of the network show was used but the segment-ending gunfire was cut as a concession to critics who found the ending too violent.Arlene Francis was not in a third of all the shows in the fall season of 1968. A cornucopia of younger performers began to make the entrances. Lucie Arnaz (who uttered a comment about chilling New York temperatures that had to be edited), Broadway actors Tony Roberts, Larry Blyden and Bert Convy, actress Meredith MacRae (moonlighting from Petticoat Junction), New York Mets pitcher Tom Seaver, WABC Eyewitness News anchor Melba Tolliver, radio personality Sherrye Henry, former Yankee Jim Bouton, actress Joanna Barnes, singer Dana Valery, film critic Gene Shalit and a pleasant, if offbeat, chap named Gawn Granger were among the early favorites. Arnaz, in fact, on one of the earliest editions, became the first celebrity to be bleeped. Bruner, conversing with the panel, asked how they were dealing with excessively cold temperatures in New York. Arnaz, a regular on her mother's Here's Lucy!, blurted out, "When I got off the plane, it nearly froze my nippies off." With concise editing, viewers never knew of the tart tongue of Little Lucie. The other bookend was found with one of TV's most popular children's show hosts of the late 1950s and early '60s. Soupy Sales was not the first choice as a permanent male panelist. In fact, I've Got a Secret's Morgan---who had mellowed considerably from some of his acerbic days on the Secret panel---turned up frequently at panel left in the first season. Goodson still believed in Morgan's wry personality but even though Henry was more agreeable, he appeared to be old hat. Convy was another possibility but the furor with viewers over his replacing the abruptly-dismissed Tom Poston on the final season of CBS's To Tell the Truth was a significant strike against him.  Sales, whose ABC Saturday noontime show enjoyed a three-year run and propelled him into a modest movie and nightclub career, was the perfect counterpoint for Miss Francis. He threw more pies on television than The Three Stooges did in movies. At 42, the North Carolina native was the quintessential game show panelist. "Soupy didn't take himself seriously. He just showed up and had a good time," said the late Josh Blieden, son of future What's My Line? host Larry Blyden in a 1999 interview with TVgameshows.net. "It was good exposure and good money for working one day a week. He was the perfect one to do some of those stunts with the products the contestants sold."Despite the fears about not offering a mystery guest daily, somehow producer Bob Bach managed to deliver them. Actress Kathy Garver, in New York to promote CBS's Family Affair in March 1970, told TVgameshows.net about her experience. "I had done Hollywood Squares and I thought it was wonderful to be asked to do What's My Line?," Garver said. "My family watched it every Sunday night when I was growing up and I always waited to see who was going to be the mystery guest. I never dreamed I would one day be one." Garver stumped the panel, using her "very high, little girl, catlike voice." A decision was made to change the mystery challenger segment to a time limit (usually two or three minutes) rather than the nighttime traditional race to ten "no" answers. "Take off your blindfolds and meet.....," the trademark post-game call of Bruner, was heard far more on the syndicated series. As Fates wrote, every possible element of the original show was "cut to the bone" to accommodate the additional commercial time required in syndication. In these days before national barter ads became the rule on syndicated programs, local stations received six minutes of commercial time (double the amount of the network version) and were allowed to keep all the money from their ad sales after ponying up a license fee for Line. After the first few weeks, and a few tentative moments from Bruner---who initially tended to read the same introductions and closings from the TelePrompTer, the new What's My Line? settled into a rhythm with a more upbeat and livelier approach, though slow-paced by today's standards. The one element not upgraded for syndication was the cash payoffs. A $50 check was still the top prize for a stump or Bruner "throwing over all the cards." As for mystery guests, who were earning $750 by the time the network edition ended, their pay was downgraded to the union scale of $320, similar to the payment for guests on network late night talk shows.  What's My Line? was on its way with new life. By February, when the selling season began in earnest for the 1969-70 season, the old lady in new clothes picked up another 42 stations to reach 118 for a second year. For Bruner, the success meant steady and bigger paychecks than in his years as a broadcast journalist. He would meet his second wife, Natalie, after she was a contestant on Line.Wally Bruner Jr. told TVgameshows.net in a series of e-mail exchanges a decade ago his father never really considered the show greatly different from his work as a newcaster. "He had to have the same basic presentation skills," said the younger Bruner. "He had to be a good listener, as he was required to do as an interviewer. He had to have the same type of organizational skills to keep the show moving. Dad also had a lot of curiosity in people and he enjoyed finding out about what all of the contestants did for a living." Yet, Bruner said his father was acutely aware of the inevitable comparisons. "Dad had a tough job to fill the shoes of John Daly," Bruner Jr. said. "But he had a lot of support from Arlene and Johnny Olsen (who stayed on as announcer during the Bruner years). He had a great relationship with Johnny." In the show's second syndicated season, young Wally----just an infant----was in a Line segment where the panel was involved in diapering a baby. While it was gaining stations, the ratings of What's My Line? in syndication were not overwhelming on a national basis. "It was never a hit," Goodson-Todman producer-director Ira Skutch told TVgameshows.net in an interview in 2004. "It was a good show. It was well-done but the ratings were never huge. The stations wanted it because it was cheap to buy and it had a ready-made brand name." In fact, syndicated Line arguably saved the Goodson-Todman company. By the end of its first season, the veteran game show producers were off network lineups across the board for the first time in history. Snap Judgment and the seven-year-old The Match Game were both canceled by NBC, CBS was out of the game show business and ABC had not bought a Goodson-Todman show since canceling The Price Is Right in 1965. Local stations, however, were anxious for Goodson-Todman to deliver the same economics as did What's My Line?. So, in the fall of 1969, not only was Line entering year two, it spawned revivals of To Tell the Truth and Beat the Clock and newcomer He Said, She Said! (a prototype for the more successful Tattletales five years later). Stations in 45 cities picked up repeats of the CBS color episodes of Password. Though not a spectacular ratings performer, What's My Line? was often paired back-to-back with Truth in early evening hours to provide strong counterprogramming to local news or sitcom reruns. Goodson-Todman was rebounding. Wally Bruner's career was thriving----until an unexpected turn. Part 2: What's My Line? Takes Off Part 3: The Rest of the Fifties Part 4: Candid Camera and What's My Line? Part 5: Daly & Dorothy....The Stalwart & The Tragedy Part 6: End of the Line: the Nielsen Nosedive Part 7: The Final Show on CBS  For legal reasons, TVgameshows.net and its webmaster cannot examine or listen to any personal proposals or portfolios for new game shows of any kind. Creators or developers are encouraged to seek out entertainment agents in New York, Los Angeles or Nashville to consider their ideas. Producers or distributors will not look at proposals without agency representation. Unsolicited pitches will usually be returned unopened, for legal reasons. TVgameshows.net cannot be responsible for providing information or recommendations on specific agents or agencies for legal and journalistic reasons, based on the professional advice of an entertainment attorney. You must do such research on your own. TVgameshows.net is a non-incorporated news website. The material used is the creation of the webmaster, unless otherwise noted. Use of stillframes from broadcasts is part of fair use news arrangements. Any reproduction or other use of the accounts published here without the expressed written consent of TVgameshows.net is strictly prohibited. At no time has TVgameshows.net ever been offered for public sale, such as in a stock offering or any financial transaction. Any attempt to engage in such practice without the written consent of the website owner is illegal and strictly forbidden.   Miss Francis' gowns by Bonwit Teller Copyright 2008 TVgameshows.net. All Rights Reserved. |
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