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Beginning Sept. 11
CULVER CITY----The game is still the thing but the look will be distinctly different for both Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! this fall.
King World and Sony Pictures Television announced Thursday the two perennial favorites will air in high definition beginning Sept. 11.
The shift is concurrent with an overhaul of Sony studios in Culver City. The two hits are the first game shows to make the move to HD. In an interview with Broadcasting and Cable, CBS vice president for engineering and advanced technology Bob Seidel said: "HD syndication will require stations to go to phase two (of their transition to high definition content): local playback of HD content."
How many stations will offer the HD option of the two games will depend on station managers' willingness to purchase conversion equipment.
Saget Tapped to Host
NBC's 1 vs. 100
Former America's Funniest Home Videos host and Full House co-star Bob Saget has signed to host NBC's 1 vs. 100, the network's next quiz from Endemol.Taping of five one-hour episodes is scheduled this weekend. NBC has hopes of the game serving as a companion to Deal or No Deal.
1 vs. 100 will be Saget's first crack at a true game show, though Funniest Home Videos offered a weekly contest for cash prizes.
Saget was the original host of Videos when it premiered in 1989. During the show's first season, the series shot to the number one slot in the Nielsens three times.
He left the show in the mid-1990s to concentrate on directing. In 2002, he was Monty Hall's first choice to helm a proposed syndicated version of Let's Make a Deal which never surfaced.
Saget has signed an exclusive deal with NBC, which could include either a producing or starring role in a scripted series in 2007-08, depending on the success and time constraints of 1 vs. 100.
Jeopardy! Returns to NYC
for Celebrity Shows,
5,000th Episode in October
Jeopardy! returns to New York City and Radio Music Hall in October for a two-week celebrity event and its 5,000th episode.Executive Producer Harry Friedman announced Monday the quiz will tape Oct. 5, 7 and 8. The episodes will air between Nov. 8-21 as the premiere event for the fall rating sweeps.
"It's become a tradition for us to bring Jeopardy!'s milestone events to New York City, truly the greatest city in the world," said Friedman in a statement. "It's the ideal location for two weeks of Celebrity Jeopardy! shows that will raise over a million dollars for our guests' favorite charities."
The players will be announced shortly. Each game's winner will receive a minimum of $50,000 for his or her charity. The two runners-up will earn $25,000.
Viewers may download ticket applications online this week at: 7online.com. From Aug. 14-26, ticket applications will be available in The New York Times.
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1925-2006
Douglas, who played on several game shows during his long syndicated career, was admitted to the hospital yesterday. His wife of more than 60 years, Gen, told reporters her husband's death came as "a real shock." Douglas had been receiving treatment after suffering dehydration on a golf course earlier in the summer.
The Mike Douglas Show changed the face of late afternoon television and exploded the possibilities of taped syndication after its premiere in 1961. For its first three years, out of its original Cleveland base, the show---spotlighting Douglas's low-key affable personality and appealing singing voice---was seen on Westinghouse's Group W stations. In late 1963, the series expanded into national syndication and paved the way for similar efforts by Merv Griffin, David Frost and Dinah Shore.
Born Michael Delaney Dowd in Chicago Aug. 11, 1925 (though some sources list his birthyear as early as 1920), Douglas began his career as a teenage singer and was on staff at WKY in Oklahoma City before he joined the Navy during World War II.
He joined Kay Kyser's band as a singer after the war and ultimately became a regular on his Kollege of Musical Knowledge on both radio and television.
With the switch to rock-and-roll in the 1950s, Douglas's musical style was less commercial. Eventually, he was hired by WGN to host Hi, Ladies!, a midday hour which became the prototype for his later megasuccess.
Westinghouse chief executive officer Don McGannon, who was constantly bucking the networks by scheduling locally-produced programming to pre-empt their shows, was looking for a personality to front a 90-minute talk/variety format which could appeal to housewives. McGannon's program director Woody Fraser remembered Douglas from Chicago.
With KYW in Cleveland as its flagship station, The Mike Douglas Show began in 1961 as an easygoing format with a twist. Douglas would share the stage each week with a celebrity co-host. The first: actress/singer Carmel Quinn.
The Douglas show was a platform of informality. Mike frequently went into the audience to sing. Cooking and physical demonstrations which bridged the gap between daytime's intimacy and nighttime's larger arena were staples. Douglas presented television's first regular female bandleader (Ellie Frankel). The show was the first to arrange chairs in a semicircle for conversation.
In 1965, a complicated government ruling forced Group W to swap its Cleveland station---call letters and all---with one in Philadelphia. The Mike Douglas Show went along. Within three years, when tickets became in such demand, Douglas moved his daily festivities to a studio in Philadelphia's Independence Mall to accommodate larger crowds.
By 1967, the Douglas show was airing on 175 stations. Local station managers loved the series as a news lead-in because of its strong female appeal and the fact that its 90-minute format reduced their need to buy multiple programs.
The adult appeal of Douglas and Griffin, who were both syndicated by Group W for a while, hastened the end of local children's shows on opposing stations. In a 2002 documentary, "The Legend of Cousin Tuny," in Jackson, Tn., former children's show host Doris Freeman said Mike and Merv were contributing factors to the end of her 12-year-old show in 1968. "The stations didn't have to put all of their resources into a local show every afternoon and they could sell Mike's show to bigger and better advertisers," said Freeman.
During the mid-1960s, Douglas was the first daytime syndicated star to be photographed on the cover of TV Guide. Networks began looking at him for nighttime possibilities. In 1965, shortly before the release of his unexpected hit "The Men in My Little Girl's Life" (which peaked at number three on the Billboard charts), Douglas made his debut on the panel of What's My Line?. In 1966, he sang his hit about a girl's journey from childhood to marriage and family on The Ed Sullivan Show. In 1967, Allen Funt tapped him as a guest co-host twice during Candid Camera's last season. The same year, he was a celebrity player on the final season of CBS's nighttime Password. Eventually, he was one of the hundreds who sat in a cubicle on The Hollywood Squares.So successful was The Mike Douglas Show, Douglas was recruited to substitute for Johnny Carson on one of Carson's many Monday absences. By the early 1970s, Variety reported Douglas was television's highest-paid performer other than Carson.
On Douglas's 10th anniversary episode in 1971, he was surprised----and not altogether pleased because of their rivalry in the Group W family, according to one biography----by Frost with a "This Is Your Life"-style retrospective. Leading off was a montage of Douglas's many offerings of "On a Wonderful Day Like Today." The show's producer Roger Ailes estimated Douglas opened the show 76 times with "Wonderful Day" to that point.
By the mid-1970s, Douglas was regarded as a daytime television icon. However, Dinah Shore's entry into the afternoon talk market created a three-way logjam and a battleground in major markets. In 1977, WCBS in New York made a critical decision to try both Douglas and Shore for a month each at 4 p.m. Only one would survive. Douglas won the showdown.
In December 1974, Douglas experienced one of his highest-rated weeks when he welcomed five different game show hosts as daily rotating co-hosts. Allen Ludden, Bob Eubanks, Gene Rayburn, Art Fleming and Dennis James all made the trek to Philadelphia. Ironically, except for Rayburn---whose Match Game was the top daytime show on the networks at the time---all of the emcees lost their existing shows to cancellation in less than a year. Douglas played each host's game in the respective days' closing segments.
By 1978, the late afternoon battle was still intense but some stations in major markets began testing issues-oriented talkmeister Phil Donahue in early afternoon slots. After years in Philadelphia and with his long-time champion McGannon retired, Douglas was pushed by Group W to pack up and move to Hollywood in order to have access to better and more timely guests.
The move has long been debated by media analysts as potentially the beginning of the end of The Mike Douglas Show. Despite the upgrade in guests and a higher-gloss look, the show lost its intimate appeal of the Philadelphia years. City of Brotherly Love viewers, angry over Mike's departure, abandoned his show in droves. Griffin, for the first time, not only defeated Douglas head-to-head in Philadelphia but crushed Mike in the Nielsens.
In early 1980, Douglas was shocked to learn----after his employees had been told----he was being ditched by Group W for John Davidson, a frequent guest on his show. Douglas was experiencing a demographic aging in a number of key markets and Westinghouse executives were ready for a change. The move led to public emotions. Douglas was miffed at Davidson for not calling him before the news went public.
In what was considered a television miracle, within four weeks, Douglas managed to re-package his show with a different distributor. The Mike Douglas Show would continue as a straight barter show in September 1980 to stations with Syndicast as the syndicator. The difference this time: Douglas was bankrolling most of the production himself out of the years of profits from his Westinghouse series. The decision was risky and, ultimately, disastrous.
Despite a lineup of impressive stations, including his old Chicago home of WGN, Douglas could not maintain the strength of his original series. For yet unexplained reasons, caustic Chicago Sun-Times critic Gary Deeb made Douglas the equivalent of a personal target with a series of vitriolic columns, much as he had a few years earlier toward legendary sportscaster Curt Gowdy. Within 26 weeks, WGN moved Douglas to 3 a.m. after drawing miniscule ratings at 12:30 in the afternoon.
In 1981, Douglas continued but with a seriously-reduced station lineup and the loss of New York City and Chicago. By January, he was forced to switch distributors to low-budget MT Television. At the end of March 1982, The Mike Douglas Show quietly departed.
Only two months later, Ted Turner hired Douglas as his biggest-name personality for his two-year-old Cable News Network. Douglas presided over Mike Douglas People Now, a quieter celebrity talk show with no live audience. Disappointed in the low budget at CNN, Douglas left the show six months later, giving way to WTBS personality Bill Tush.
Mike and Gen Douglas put their multimillion-dollar Los Angeles home on the market and retired to West Palm Beach. In the spring of 1984, trade publications listed Douglas as a leading candidate to host Sandy Frank's revival of Name That Tune for the following fall. The same magazines had also listed former host Tom Kennedy and Peter Marshall as "close to a deal." Kennedy, Marshall and Douglas all said they were never approached. Frank ultimately hired Jim Lange.
Douglas largely retired to the golf course, singing at occasional charity benefits but reclusive to most of his loyal television audience. On the first week of her talk show in the mid-1990s, Rosie O'Donnell paid tribute to the man whose show she said her series would emulate. Douglas came out to a big roar from the audience but said to O'Donnell: "Come on, they don't know who I am." He related a story once told to him by Elvis Presley. A fan of the Douglas show, Presley once saw singer Robert Goulet---not one of The King's favorites---appear on the talk/variety show. Elvis contended he pulled out a pistol and shot his TV set. "Does Robert Goulet know this?" asked O'Donnell. "He does now," said Douglas.In 1997, Douglas was reunited with his Philadelphia base when he was presented with a star on the Philadelphia Walk of Fame.
He also began to record again, taping two tape/CD sets of standards from the '40s and '50s. For all intents, however, Douglas was relegated----unfairly, many analysts believe----to those history and trivia books of television's earlier eras.
Later tonight, TVgameshows.net webmaster Steve Beverly offers personal reflections on the impact Douglas had on television in his All in the Game column.
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