Blankety Blanks (U.S. game show)

Last updated
Blankety Blanks
Created byBob Stewart
Presented by Bill Cullen
Narrated by Bob Clayton
Country of originUnited States
No. of episodes50
Production
Running time30 Minutes
Production company(s) Bob Stewart Productions
Distributor Sony Pictures Television
Release
Original network ABC
Original releaseApril 21 
June 27, 1975

Blankety Blanks is an American game show that aired on ABC from April 21 to June 27, 1975. This Bob Stewart Production starred Bill Cullen as its host with Bob Clayton announcing. [1]

Game show type of television or radio program where contestants compete for prizes

A game show is a type of radio, television, or stage show in which contestants, individually or as teams, play a game which involves answering questions or solving puzzles, usually for money or prizes. Alternatively, a gameshow can be a demonstrative program about a game [while usually retaining the spirit of an awards ceremony]. In the former, contestants may be invited from a pool of public applicants. Game shows often reward players with prizes such as cash, trips and goods and services provided by the show's sponsor prize suppliers.

American Broadcasting Company American broadcast television network

The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television network that is a flagship property of Disney–ABC Television Group, a subsidiary of the Disney Media Networks division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, California on Riverside Drive, directly across the street from Walt Disney Studios and adjacent to the Roy E. Disney Animation Building.

Stewart Television was an American game show production company formed by Bob Stewart in 1964 originally based in New York City.

Contents

Gameplay

Two teams are composed of a celebrity and a contestant attempted to solve puzzles and fill in "Blankety Blanks" in the form of puns. For example, the Blankety Blank response to "When Richard Nixon spilled coffee on Gerald Ford's lap, he said ____ ____" would be "Pardon Me!"

Richard Nixon 37th president of the United States

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th president of the United States from 1969 to 1974. He had previously served as the 36th vice president of the United States from 1953 to 1961, and prior to that as both a U.S. representative and senator from California.

Gerald Ford 38th president of the United States

Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. was an American politician who served as the 38th president of the United States from August 1974 to January 1977. Before his accession to the presidency, Ford served as the 40th vice president of the United States from December 1973 to August 1974. Ford is the only person to have served as both vice president and president without being elected to either office by the United States Electoral College.

At the start of each game, a category and keywords within a puzzle was revealed. The puzzle had numbers 1–6 that each hid a clue to that puzzle, with each clue being one half of a statement. Cullen then pulled out a card from a rotating wheel of 100 situated next to him and placed it into an electronic reader, which chose at random one of the four players and a point value from 100–1000 in 10-point increments.

The chosen player (either the contestant or the celebrity) picked a number and the associated clue was revealed. Unlike some celebrity-civilian games of the period, the celebrity or contestant could not assist his or her partner playing at the moment. A correct answer won the team the designated money amount, but an incorrect answer or no answer at all resulted in the game continuing, with Cullen selecting another card.

Play continued until the puzzle was solved, at which point the team who solved the puzzle attempted to turn the points into money by solving the Blankety Blank. In this part of the game, the celebrity and the contestant were allowed to work together. Each correct Blankety Blank solve gave the opposing team a strike, with three strikes eliminating a contestant from the game. If a team failed to solve the Blankety Blank, no strikes were given and the point value in-play was held until that team solved another puzzle.

Starting with the fourth week, the number of cards in the rotating wheel was reduced to 60, the point values ranged from 100–750, and any points earned from solving a puzzle accumulated in a team's bank. Solving a Blankety Blank doubled the points in the team's bank. The first team to reach $2,500 won the championship.

Broadcast history

The $10,000 Pyramid's success on ABC's daytime schedule since May 6, 1974 prompted the network to order another show from packager Stewart. Blanks replaced reruns of The Brady Bunch at 11:30 AM (10:30 Central), opposite the top-rated Hollywood Squares on NBC and the soap opera Love of Life on CBS. In an unusual move, when ABC cancelled Blanks, Brady Bunch returned to that timeslot in preparation for its eventual huge success in syndication later that year.

<i>The Brady Bunch</i> American sitcom

The Brady Bunch is an American sitcom created by Sherwood Schwartz that aired from September 26, 1969, to March 8, 1974, on ABC. The series revolves around a large blended family with six children. Considered one of the last of the old-style family sitcoms, the series aired for five seasons and, after its cancellation in 1974, went into syndication in September 1975. While the series was never a critical success or hit series during its original run, it has since become a popular staple in syndication, especially among children and teenaged viewers.

<i>Hollywood Squares</i> television series

Hollywood Squares is an American game show in which two contestants play tic-tac-toe to win cash and prizes. The show piloted on NBC in 1965, and the regular series debuted in 1966 on the same network. The board for the game is a 3 × 3 vertical stack of open-faced cubes, each occupied by a celebrity seated at a desk and facing the contestants. The stars are asked questions by the host, and the contestants judge the truth of their answers to gain squares in the right pattern to win the game.

NBC American television and radio network

The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial terrestrial television network that is a flagship property of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. The network is headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, with additional major offices near Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia. The network is one of the Big Three television networks. NBC is sometimes referred to as the "Peacock Network", in reference to its stylized peacock logo, introduced in 1956 to promote the company's innovations in early color broadcasting. It became the network's official emblem in 1979.

Cullen himself was quoted in a magazine saying that this show "didn't get a fair shake". Most daytime games of that era normally were given a thirteen-week minimum run to prove themselves; Blanks had such low ratings that ABC pulled it after only ten weeks. The fact that it was too similar to Match Game , a popular CBS game show, did not help matters either.

<i>Match Game</i> television series

Match Game is an American television panel game show that premiered on NBC in 1962 and was revived several times over the course of the next few decades. The game featured contestants trying to come up with answers to fill-in-the-blank questions that are often formed as humorous double entedres, the object being to match answers given by celebrity panelists.

Theme

The theme to this show was later used on another Bob Stewart show, Double Talk , via a practice known in the trade as "recycling". In addition, the theme used for the show's 1975 pilot was later re-used on an unsold 1977 Stewart pilot, Get Rich Quick. Bob Cobert composed the theme.

Double Talk is an American game show that aired on the ABC network from August 18 to December 19, 1986. The show was a Bob Stewart-produced word game which borrowed elements from Stewart's previous show Shoot for the Stars and his then-current editions of Pyramid.

Robert Cobert is an American composer who has worked in television and films. He is best known for his work with producer/director Dan Curtis, especially on the TV mini-series The Winds of War (1983) and War and Remembrance (1988). Together, the scores for these constitute the longest film music ever written for a movie. His early work included composing the soap opera Dark Shadows and the two tie-in films, and for composing the score for the 1972 TV movie The Night Stalker, together with The Night Strangler, which became the pilots for the TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. His other scores include the horror film Burnt Offerings (1976), the comedy film Me and the Kid (1993), and the TV movies The Norliss Tapes (1973), Dracula (1973), Scream of the Wolf (1974), Melvin Purvis: G-Man (1974), The Turn of the Screw (1974), The Great Ice Rip-Off (1974), Trilogy of Terror (1975), Dead of Night (1977), Curse of the Black Widow (1977) and Trilogy of Terror II (1996).

Episode status

The series is believed to have been destroyed as per network practices of the era (ABC, specifically, continued this practice until 1978). Only the pilot (taped February 10 with Anita Gillette and Soupy Sales) and Premiere (taped April 4 with Anne Meara and William Shatner) are known to exist.

Wiping, also known as junking, is a colloquial term of art for action taken by radio and television production and broadcasting companies, in which old audiotapes, videotapes, and telerecordings (kinescopes), are erased, reused, or destroyed. Although the practice was once very common, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, wiping is now practiced much less frequently.

Anita Gillette American actress

Anita Gillette is an American actress. She is notable for her extensive Broadway credits, her many appearances as a celebrity guest on television game shows, her guest-starring and recurring roles in American television series and for her roles in feature films.

Soupy Sales American comedian, actor and radio/television personality

Milton Supman, known professionally as Soupy Sales, was an American comedian, actor, radio/television personality, and jazz aficionado. He was best known for his local and network children's television show, Lunch with Soupy Sales (1953-1966), a series of comedy sketches frequently ending with Sales receiving a pie in the face, which became his trademark. From 1968-75, he was a regular panelist on the syndicated revival of What's My Line? and appeared on several other TV game shows. During the 1980s, Sales hosted his own show on WNBC-AM in New York City.

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References

  1. Terrace, Vincent (2011). Encyclopedia of Television Shows, 1925 through 2010. McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN   978-0-7864-6477-7. P. 113.