Match Game

During the 1970's, groundbreaking television that touched on controversial subjects such as race, sex, and out of wedlock pregnancy dominated networks. Sitcoms that dealt with these topics included All in the Family -- one episode included Sammy Davis, Jr. kissing the bigoted Archie Bunker -- and Three's Company, a series that revolved around single bachelor Jack Tripper pretending he was gay in front of his landlord in order to live with two young girls. However, not only did sitcoms enter uncharted territory but so too did game shows, especially in the case of Match Game.


In 1973, Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, legendary game show producers, brought to CBS a revival of The Match Game, a bland game of simple fill-in-the-blanks involving celebrities and contestants that ran from 1962 to 1969. While revived edition of the show was renamed Match Game '73 in order to reflect the year, the program still featured the zany Gene Rayburn as host. In an unusual development, Match Game '73 skyrocketed to even greater popularity than the original 1960's program. Within weeks, the show became the #1 highest rated program on daytime television. During the 1973-74, 1974-75, and 1975-76 seasons, Match Game remained at #1 in daytime TV, earning extremely high ratings, especially in the 12-34 year old demographic. The program was also the most popular game show on TV from 1973 to 1977 and the #2 most watched game show in the 1977-78 season as well. Airing in the 3:00 p.m. hour, the game show was particularly adored by teenage fans who rushed home from school to catch the program. A key element of this incredible success was the show's tendency to include sexual double-entendres in fill-in-the-blank questions and its pushing of the boundaries in terms of celebrity and contestant responses to questions.

This version of Match Game was heavily influenced by a set of comedy writers on the production team. Among these writers was Dick DeBartolo, who also wrote for the comedic Mad magazine. DeBartolo and his team of fellow writers penned often hilarious and racy fill-in-the-blank questions that left the audience laughing. These questions included, "Contrary to popular belief, Eve was not made out of Adam's rib but was instead made of Adam's _____" or "The big bad wolf said, 'I just came from a house where this old lady had the biggest _____s I ever saw!'" After Rayburn would read such a question, celebrities would proceed to write down answers in secret and if a contestant's subsequent answer to the question matched the responses of celebrities, the contestant would earn one point per match. The contestant with the highest number of matches after two rounds would win $100 and proceed to a second round featuring an audience survey. These questions naturally made the Standards and Practices Department at CBS nervous. Consequently, CBS agreed to permit Match Game contestants and celebrities to use words such as "boobs" and "derierre" in response to questions but barred the use of more explicit words, including any references to genitalia.

The fact that contestants and celebrities were permitted at all to use words such as "boobs" was an extaordinary development given the long history of the network's Standards and Practices Department being sensitive to such language on television. Nevertheless, CBS was still incredibly cautionary in its monitoring of Match Game. When Gene Rayburn accidentally quipped in 1974 that a contestant had pretty 'nipples,' intending to instead say 'pretty dimples,' the network refused to air the error. However, CBS restored the clip, which has been relayed on countless TV specials of game show bloopers. When a celebrity panelist used a word in a response that was considered to racy by Standards and Practices, the reply was often censored on the screen.


The groundbreaking quality of the questions and their replies, combined with the excellent comedic chemistry of Rayburn and the celebrity panelists, catapulted Match Game to enormous success. The program was nominated several times for a daytime Emmy award for Outstanding Game Show, earned #10 on TV Guide's 2001 list of the 50 greatest TV game shows of all-time, and was named the #1 greatest game show of all time in GSN's list of 50 greatest game shows in 2006. Host Gene Rayburn -- an emcee who engaged in acts like climbing the audience, knocking down the doors, roller-skating on stage, and belly dancing with a contestant -- was nominated for a daytime Emmy award for Outstanding Game Show Host and earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 1999. Today, the popular game show of the mid-1970's lives on in cable reruns as it has long held the title of the #1 most watched show on GSN's schedule.



SOURCES:



1. Match Game - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_Game

2. Match Game '73 - IMDB - www.imdb.com/title/tt0069608/

3. Match Game - GSN - The Network for Games - www.gsn.com/shows/matchgame

4. Gene Rayburn, former 'Match Game' host, dead at 81, December 2, 1999 - CNN Archives - www.cnn.com/1999/SHOWBIZ/TV/12/02/obit.rayburn.ap/index.html





IMAGES:

1. Nypost.com

2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_Game

3. The New York Times, "The Real Match Game Story: Behind the Blank," November 25, 2006; http://www.nytimes.com/