TVSquad

Reality is not relative when it comes to television. Reality television, my friends, is here to stay. So when I let you know that GSN will air Carnie Wilson: Unstapled, a new reality show starring the former singer from Wilson Phillips and the host of The Newlywed Game, you shouldn't be surprised. At least not about another celebrity reality program. The fact that it's going to be on GSN -- that's the Game Show Network -- however, that's a bit of a shocker.

GSN has fallen in love with Carnie Wilson. Kelly Goode, GSN senior vice president for original programming and development, gushed about CW, saying, "Carnie is incredibly funny and earthy. ... She's a personality the viewers have fallen in love with. And she's a hit on The Newlywed Game.

I'm not really sure if there's anything else to say about this clip from GSN's upcoming 2009 Game Show Awards (this Saturday at 8). It's 70s pop culture icon Charo presenting at the ceremony as well as taking on Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings in a trivia contest that is obviously tilted in her favor.

It's hard to imagine that anyone would consider TV's sweet-natured grandma Betty White as their "sworn enemy." Except, of course for maybe Mom from Futurama and the bizarro version of Bea Arthur.

But apparently that's the label that Price is Right host Bob Barker has bestowed upon the Golden Girl. It turns out the two aren't pals or confidants. Buzzer Blog reported that Barker threatened not to show up to GSN's 2009 Game Show Awards where he accepted a lifetime achievement award along with Mark Goodson and Monty Hall if White was there.

It gets weirder. The whole thing was caused by an elephant. This is starting to sound less like Hollywood gossip and more like a job for Mythbusters.

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.

At the beginning of the year the beautiful and sexy Jay Black presented a wonderful dissertation on the state of channel drift in cable television that discussed many of the reasons for this phenomenon. Being someone who likes to jump on an idea and trample it to death, I decided to expand on Jay's initial premise and provide some specific examples of cable networks that have drifted one way or another. Yet, being someone who likes to add something to an existing idea before the trampling begins, I decided a twist was in order.

Since a drift can range from 'small, but noticeable' to 'am I on the right channel?' a ratings system needed to be designed to determine how far a channel has gotten away from its origins. So, in the fifteen examples I list after the jump, you will see one of four categories...Minor Shift, Moderate Shift, Major Shift and Mother of All Channel Shifts. It is these four categories that you can use to agree or disagree with my findings once they are presented. So, without a continuing narration, here are the cable networks that have encountered some sort of channel drift.

Chuck Woolery is coming back to television. While he will be hosting a game show, this time around it has nothing to do with love or its connections. Woolery is set to host The Meow Mix Game Show on GSN. Meow Mix is said to be a cat-centric competition in which cats and their owners compete for up to $1 million for themselves and $100,000 for their favorite feline charity.

The show itself is supposed to "put a twist" on classic game shows like Jeopardy and ... The Newlywed Game. I'm sorry, but The Newlywed Game? What in the hell are we dealing with here? The person who dreamed this up must have been chasing the dragon when they thought it was a good idea to compare their cat show to a program in which seemingly every question involved the phrase, "making whoopie."

If the endless reruns of The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air just aren't providing your recommended daily allowance of Carlton, then I have some good news for you. Alfonso Ribeiro will soon be back on our televisions in an all new project. He's set to host a new show for GSN called Catch 21, starting on July 21st.

The show combines the card game 21 with pop-culture trivia questions and will feature three contestants facing off against each other. Forty episodes have been ordered and they will air weeknights at 7:30PM. It is created by Merrill Heatter and executive produced by Scott Sternberg (Hey Paula). Fans of GSN may also recognize that the show is also based on the game of the same name on the GSN website. I'll give it a go. If they can keep the speed of the questions up (Beat The Geeks), instead of endlessly stalling for dramatic effect (Who Wants To Be A Millionaire), it could be a fun prelude to prime time.

[ via Cynopsis ]

As previously announced on TV Squad, both The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game are coming back to TV. Now, they have hosts. GSN has announced that actress Kim Coles will be performing hosting duties for the pilot of The Dating Game while comedian Judy Gold will be hosting The Newlywed Game.

This marks the first time The Newlywed Game will have a female host. Hosts of previous incarnations have included Bob Eubanks (who hosted most of the show's incarnations), Jim Lange, Paul Rodriguez and Gary Kroeger. The Dating Game has had a previous female host in Elaine Joyce. Other hosts for that show have included Jim Lange, Jeff MacGregor, Brad Sherwood and Chuck Woolery.

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.

I'll be the first to agree that at some point after Chris Moneymaker's World Series win, poker on TV got a little bit out of hand. For a while it seemed that you couldn't turn on the TV without stumbling over some new poker-based show. Things have settled down somewhat lately, with a few survivors remaining. For my poker watching vote, there remains a big three. The World Series, despite ESPN's screwed up scheduling, World Poker Tour, and the newcomer, High Stakes Poker.

Now it looks like two of the three could be in trouble. It seems that the expected dates for the renewals of WPT and High Stakes over at GSN have come and gone. The speculation is that the new CEO at GSN, David Goldhill, wants to move away from the interest in poker that the former CEO, Rich Cronin, brought to the network. Goldhill would instead like to get back to more traditional game shows.

I used to watch both The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game when I was a kid, and it wasn't until years later that I realized how filthy both of them were. Both would have all of these double entendres and suggestive questions, and the answers from the contestants were often something you wouldn't even say to a friend in private. Example from The Newlywed Game:

Bob Eubanks: "Where's the weirdest place that you and your husband have made whoopee?"
Woman: "In the a**?"

Now, this wasn't shown on TV until Eubanks showed the clip on an episode of NBC's Most Outrageous Moments a few years ago (the original answer was never shown on TV and the woman was given a chance to give another answer, and another contestant gave a similar answer years earlier), but many of the questions and answers were suggestive in that way.

When I first heard that Dennis Miller was going to host a game show, I thought to myself "yeah, I covered that already." But I didn't know that the show I had written about had already ended and this was a new game show he was going to host.

The previous one was Grand Slam, the GSN show that pitted former game show champs (like Ken Jennings) against each other. Looks like that show only lasted one season (hopefully I can catch the reruns), but Miller isn't through with game shows yet. He's going to host the new NBC show Amnesia, which will premiere on NBC in the 1 vs. 100 slot when that show ends its season.