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PART 2 AUDIO ARCHIVES Power of 10 millionaire Jamie Sadler That's the Question! host Bob Goen Jeopardy Summer Teen champion Meryl Federman Camouflage host Roger Lodge Jeopardy! College Champ Cliff Galiher $343,000 1 vs. 100 winner Barry Lander Player of the Year Michele Falco Scott St. John, Executive of the Year Richard Hayes of The Baby Game Ira Skutch, Match Game producer Miguel Ferrer of Celebrity Jeopardy! Geoff Edwards of Treasure Hunt and Jackpot! Bob Harris, author of "Prisoner of Trebekistan" Johnny Gilbert of Jeopardy! Bob Goen of That's the Question Ken Jennings, author of "Brainiac" Sara Bronson of Deal or No Deal $1.86 Millionaire winner Ed Toutant Network TV's top winner Dr. Kevin Olmstead Kathy Garver of Family Affair Burton Richardson of Family Feud Dylan Lane of GSN's Chain Reaction Author Wesley Hyatt on Emmy-winning game show players Laird MacIntosh of Treasure Hunters Ricki Lake of Game Show Marathon Wink Martindale Michael Davies Peter Marshall Lin Bolen |
 ALFONSO RIBEIRO: FROM SILVER SPOONS TO GSN'S NEW NIGHTLY GAME CATCH 21 The mid-1990s saw him dig in for 51 episodes as Dr. Maxwell Stanton in the comedy In the House. In 1999, he migrated from sitcoms to a weekend syndicated show developed by Dick Clark. Your Big Break pitted celebrity musical impersonators against each other in a battle of Aretha Franklin, Judy Garland or Chuck Berry clones. Ribeiro also cut his teeth as a director, calling the shots on One on One and All of us. He made his TV directing debut on Fresh Prince in 1995. Ribeiro has always hung around game and contest shows. He played one of the many celebrity editions of Weakest Link and tried his hand at Dancing with the Stars and The Singing Bee. Merrill Heatter, long itching for a return to television, teamed with Scott Sternberg to develop a new card game for GSN. Catch 21 marks Heatter's first-ever creative effort for the cable gamer. With GSN on the lookout for fresh talent to helm its evening originals, Ribeiro was tapped for Catch 21 (premiering Monday, 7:30 p.m., EDT/PDT). The 37-year-old Ribeiro took time to reflect on his journey from a child actor to game show host in this week's TVgameshows.net Cover Story. TVGS: You have a career in television that dates back to Silver Spoons in the '80s and, in fact, my good friend Stu Shostak did the warmup for that show. So, now it's a game show. Tell us first about Catch 21, the game. AR: It's a cool game. It's based on the classic game of 21 and the goal is to make a 21 out of your hand. You have three players who start with one hand each. To get more cards, you ring in and try to answer a multiple choice question. You keep going with the trivia and the cards and the last one standing after three rounds has a chance to win $25,000. TVGS: So tell us about your journey that led to hosting a game show. You're one of several actors GSN has introduced to the genre. Corbin Bernsen and Patrick Duffy have both done them. Now you. AR: I have always loved game shows. I watched them when I was a kid growing up and I watched them when I was in high school. When they asked me if I would consider doing this, I thought, 'How cool is that?' Merrill Heatter is one of the absolute giants in this business. Scott Sternberg has been doing these shows for more than 20 years. For me, I had the emcee experience of doing Your Big Break. I put my finger on that and really enjoyed doing it. It wasn't a game show as most people think of it but it was a contest, so there were a lot of the same elements. So, they came to me and asked if I would be interested in doing this new game shows for GSN. As I say, 21 is a classic game. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to get into the game show world. TVGS: I've talked to Dylan Lane, who did Chain Reaction for GSN, and I talk to a lot of the classic emcees a lot. Most of them tell me unless the game itself is not a good one, don't judge the overall performance until the show is in its third or fourth week because it usually takes that long to get a game into a rhythm and a tempo. AR: I'd have to say in my case, it was not all the way to the third week. We've done 40 shows and I'd have to say it was around the end of the second week of shows that I began to feel like we were hitting our stride. We did all 40 episodes in eight days. We were banging out about five or six episodes a day. The greatest thing was when Merrill said to me after we finished a couple of weeks of shows, 'I don't really have any notes for you.'" TVGS: Since you've never hosted a traditional game show, what did you do to prepare for this? AR: We did a lot of rehearsal. But I decided to go home and play the game myself. By the time we did the first show I probably had played the game at home about 400 or 500 times. I think as a host, it's really important to be into the game forward and back, so you are aware of what the player is doing and potentially thinking. It really helps to anticipate because you've placed yourself in their situations. TVGS: Since you played the game so much beforehand, then you were obviously prepared for the options and strategies a contestant might have. Now you're supposed to be objective or at least to root for everybody who's playing the game, but what goes through your mind when you see a contestant doing something that you know is probably the wrong move? AR: My heart breaks for them. I'll see them doing something that I know is a mistake and I have to hold myself back from yelling out, 'OH NO! Why did you do that?' But it's a card game that also has a question-and-answer element and strategy. So, sometimes, I watch players make totally, totally wrong moves and sometimes they still win. And still others will make what appear to be all the right moves and still lose the game. It's almost like when a contestant leads all the way on Jeopardy! and then loses it all on Final Jeopardy! TVGS: Since you have the two key elements of Catch 21, what do you think is more important: having a good grasp of general knowledge or being better at card strategy? AR: My opinion would be having knowledge. If you can answer the questions, you can work your way through the game. You do have to have an understanding of how to play the card game but you probably won't get on the show if you don't. I think it's most important to work your way through the questions. TVGS: Our good friend Shelley Herman, who's been one of our regulars at Game Show Congress, is preparing a lot of that material. You talked about Your Big Break. That show was remade a few years back in the summer by Fox as Performing As..... When you did it, it was primarily a weekend syndicated show and it was scheduled all over the place. In some cities, you were on Saturday afternoons, in others you were on Saturdays or Sundays after midnight. Do you think that erratic scheduling was more responsible for the show not lasting beyond a year? AR: I agree with that. It was hard for a lot of people to find it and if it was on a station that had a lot of sports, you might not have found it at the same time every week. What's interesting, though, is a lot of these shows like American Idol or a lot of the other talent shows we've seen in recent years came out of Your Big Break. We were probably a little ahead of our time. Because it was just once a week and only on the weekends was tough. It wasn't like a five-day-a-week show where you could say, well, if I miss it today, I can pick it up tomorrow, or a big network show that gets a lot of promotion. I think the scheduling hurt the show. But I learned a lot from doing it. I learned a lot about being myself on camera and how to put the spotlight on the contestants. That's really helped me in doing Catch 21. TVGS: What do you hope viewers come away with on Catch 21? AR: I hope they just have fun. I hope they play along with us while we play the game. I'd love to have them sitting at home and learning things from our questions, saying, "Wow! I didn't know that." I hope they have a good half-hour of entertainment with a good game and playing along with the cards. TVGS: With the fact that you have a $25,000 top jackpot, can you at least tell us if we're going to see a contestant or two pull it off. AR: Well, let me say that when we gave away $25,000----so that should tell you----the looks were so excited on the faces of the contestants. They were so excited and we were so excited for them. TVGS: Well, you have a tremendous game show pedigree behind you on this show. Mr. Heatter created some of the greatest games in the history of television and none any more enduring than The Hollywood Squares and Scott has a good history with the genre, so we hope you have every chance of success. AR: Thank you so much. And, oh yes, let's remind everybody. We start on Monday night, July 21st, at 7:30 and that's 6:30 Central time on GSN. We're on right after Bingo America and we want everybody to watch. TVGS: See, he's already got it down. He's already his own promotion department for Catch 21. AR: (Laughs) I guess you're right about that. I do thank you and I hope every has a great time watching Catch 21 every night and playing along with us.   Miss Francis' gowns by Bonwit Teller © Copyright 2007 TVgameshows.net. All Rights Reserved. |
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