TVSquad

Terry Kniess, the Double Showcase winner on The Price is Right who got his bid right on the money, may have been a "dark day" for Drew Carey, but he's no cheater.

In fact, there have been more egregious and blatant attempts to guarantee a win in a pricing game by skewing the odds in their favor, sometimes right in front of the host's eyes.

For instance, here's a "Shell Game" contestant who does something so outrageous, so ballsy, so completely devious that Bob Barker can't help but rip her to verbal shreds in front of the entire nation. And not only does she get away with it, but she actually wins the game!

If you go by all of the various stories in the media, it would seem that TV viewers just aren't into award shows anymore. The ratings are often down year to year, and if people are tuning in it seems to be more for the fashions, the red carpet, and maybe to see a particular category/performance by someone on the show.

So it's interesting that there are so many new genre award shows popping up. TV Land has had their own awards (The TV Land Awards) for a number of years now (the latest airs next week with Neil Patrick Harris hosting), and Bravo has The A-List Awards, whatever they are (it aired earlier this week). Now GSN is getting into the game (no pun intended) with The Game Show Awards, a show dedicated to giving awards to game shows, game show hosts, even game show sponsors!

GSN debuted its new version of The Newlywed Game last night. At least, I think they did. It might have been a 30-minute-long infomercial for eHarmony with a game show scattered here and there.

If you haven't heard, the show is brought to you by eHarmony, the web site where people find love and happiness. If for some reason you tuned into the show and forgot that it was brought to you by the dating web site, then the many commercials for it would have reminded you.

If you still weren't quite sure who sponsored the show, the eHarmony question that host Carnie Wilson reads during the game would remind you. Still not sure? Then the eHarmony.com logo that is on every single card that the contestants hold up several times during the game are a dead giveaway.

I love GSN, but there are several things wrong with it.

I don't know about you, but I've had it up to here (hand planted right around nose height) with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? The network airs the show way, way too much. I'm sure it's popular and there are probably promotional considerations involved, considering it's actually a show that's still on the air (GSN airs both the older Regis Philbin episodes and the newer Meredith Vieira ones), but we really don't need the show on as much as it is.

What would I put on instead? More classic game shows!

The Newlywed Game was a staple of television on and off for 34 years, finally going off the air in 2000. After bouncing around the idea of a revival for awhile now, GSN is officially moving forward with their remake of The Newlywed Game, shooting for a spring launch. They admit that things will have to be revamped a bit as far as how they approach the couples with the questions because times and marriages have changed.

One of the biggest changes is that they're going to go ahead and build their set right next to the set for Divorce Court. Since so many marriages end up that way anyway, and The Newlywed Game is about testing how well the contestants know one another, it would make sense that some of the couples might want to head right over there. Hell, they could air the episodes back-to-back for a one-two punch of entertainment. Nothing like watching people's lives fall apart on national television.

Father's Day has always been a weird holiday for me. I never knew my father, as he died when I was only a year old in the '60s, so to me Father's Day has never been anything more than just another day to me. I sometimes wonder how I would be if I had known my father growing up.

(Wait, did I just get serious there for a moment? Quick, say something snarky! Moment of Truth sucks! OK, back to the post.)

This Sunday, June 15, GSN will celebrate Father's Day with a poker-filled marathon. Actually, the celebrating starts tomorrow, Friday, at noon. World Poker Tour host Vince Van Patten will join his father Dick on an episode of GSN Live, which will be followed by episodes of game shows that the elder Van Patten appeared in. Then on Sunday at 3pm, the network will have a six hour marathon of classic World Poker Tour matches, followed by the two hour premiere of the 5th Annual Poker Stars Caribbean Adventure tournament, hosted by A.J. Benza and Daniel Negreanu.

The Game Show Network will have a special tribute to Merv Griffin, who died earlier this week of cancer at age 82.

On Saturday and Sunday, August 18 and 19, GSN will run two different Griffin marathons, from 10am to 3pm. The shows included in the marathons will include a Chuck Woolery-hosted episode of Wheel Of Fortune and the first episode that featured Vanna White. We'll also see the first NYC-based episode of Wheel (not sure why this is so special, but I guess I'll wait and see) and a Jeopardy Masters Tournament of Champions. On Sunday night we'll see a 1960 episode of Play Your Hunch, a game show Griffin hosted, and then at 3:30am we'll see a To Tell The Truth episode that Griffin guest hosted.

That's a lot better than their tribute to Kitty Carlisle earlier this year, when they ran her game show appearances in the wee hours of the morning and that was it.

GSN has bought the rights to the (very) short-lived ABC game show Show Me The Money, hosted by William Shatner. That's a total of seven episodes, including two that never aired.

Wow, what a get! Seven episodes of a lame TV show that lasted for five episodes. Did GSN get some sort of great deal on this? Are they that hard up for shows? It will run Tuesday night, but maybe it should be a daily show, so they can go through the entire run of the show is a week. Maybe they'll have a week long marathon and show the same seven episodes over and over and over again.

A network buys a short-lived game show but no one is currently running Kate and Allie or The Odd Couple, both of which lasted years. Crazy.

We told you the other day that longtime To Tell The Truth panelist and patron of the arts Kitty Carlisle Hart had died at 96, and one of us here mentioned that GSN will probably air a tribute to her. And in fact, they are going to give her a tribute this weekend.

At 3AM.

Yup, that's right. GSN is going to air Carlisle Hart's very first appearance on the game show at 3AM Monday morning.

Well, this is going to take up a little while this afternoon.

The Game Show Network has a new game on their site called Astronaut Moonstalker, and though it sounds like one of those cheesy movie you always see on The Sci-Fi Channel, it's actually a space game based on the female astronaut who put on a diaper to drive 900 miles and kidnap a romantic rival.

It's a fun, well-designed game. Using the arrow keys on your keyboard, you pilot a spacecraft around rocks, monsters, and space debris to land next to the happy couple and break them up (by telling the woman bad things about the guy). You also get bonus points if you collect the red hearts that are floating through space, and your progress is tracked by a "diaper meter." Play the game after the jump (or play the bigger version at the link above).

If you're an insomniac who loves trivia, GSN has a new late night block you just might be interested in. The new block, named "Playmania" after the live call-in game show of the same name, will feature two new live call-in quiz shows:

The first, called quiznation, is an update of the original Playmania program, featuring trivia and puzzles viewers at home can answer via the Web, text messaging, or by calling in. The first question: why didn't they capitalize the title of the show?

The other series, 100 Winners, lets people call in and answer trivia questions. If they guess correctly, they get to choose one of 100 boxes that each contain a prize. All 100 boxes must be taken by the end of the show. If not, host Mel Peachey is executed via firing squad. Or maybe not.

100 Winners will debut on February 20 at midnight, and quiznation will debut February 23, also at midnight.

I've been wondering if this show was even still in production. Every time I turn it on it seems to be an episode that I've already seen, or even if I haven't seen it, it's an episode from a year or two ago. But now GSN has announced that the Chuck Woolery-hosted spelling game show will be back for a sixth season. Shandi Finnessey will be back as his co-host, typing away at the computer and starting each game, and there will be four special episodes where online champions face off against TV champions.

OK, so this game isn't exactly Jeopardy. It might not even be Wheel Of Fortune, but I enjoy it. And as I've said here before, I like it when Shandi says "Lingo balls."

The new season starts on April 2.

When you think about it, this is the perfectly logical next step for Bonaduce. Not just to host a game show, but to host a game show that will focus on contestant's knowledge of celebrities.

The name of the show will be Starface and it will follow the revamped Chain Reaction Tuesdays through Saturdays at 9:30 on GSN. It starts on August 1.

[via TV Tattle]

You know, if I was 37 years older, I think I'd have the hots for Betty White. She seems like a cool lady. And if I haven't said too much, please read on.

This Xmas day, GSN is having a marathon of Betty White episodes:

• noon: What's My Line (1955 - her first game show appearance)
• 12:30: Password (1963, with her husband, host Allen Ludden)
• 1:00: Tattletales
• 1:30: Match Game PM
• 2:00: Password Plus
• 2:30: To Tell The Truth
• 3:00: Family Feud
• 3:30: Body Language
• 4:00: Match Game
• 4:30: Match Game

[via TV Tattle]