A game show is a genre of broadcast viewing entertainment where contestants compete in a game for rewards. The shows are typically directed by a host, who explains the rules of the program as well as commentating and narrating where necessary. The history of the game shows dates back to the late 1930s when both radio and television game shows were broadcast. The genre became popular in the United States in the 1950s, becoming a regular feature of daytime television.
Front Page Challenge was a Canadian panel game about current events and history. Created by comedy writer/performer John Aylesworth and produced and aired by CBC Television, the series ran from 1957 to 1995.
Second City Television, commonly shortened to SCTV and later known as SCTV Network and SCTV Channel, is a Canadian television sketch comedy show that ran intermittently between 1976 and 1984. It was created as an offshoot from Toronto's Second City troupe. It is a rare example of a Canadian show that moved successfully to American television, where it aired on NBC from 1981 to 1983.
Royal Canadian Air Farce, and often credited simply as Air Farce, was a Canadian sketch comedy series starring the comedy troupe Royal Canadian Air Farce, that previously starred in an eponymous show on CBC Radio, from 1973 to 1997. The top-rated television show was broadcast on CBC Television, beginning in 1993 and ending in December 2008. The Air Farce Live name was adopted in October 2007. For the show's final season which began October 3, 2008, the series was renamed Air Farce—Final Flight!
Gerald Isaac Stiller was an American comedian and actor. He spent many years as part of the comedy duo Stiller and Meara with his wife, Anne Meara, to whom he was married for over 60 years until her death in 2015. Stiller saw a late-career resurgence starting in 1993, playing Frank Costanza on the sitcom Seinfeld, a part which earned him an Emmy nomination. In 1998, Stiller began his role as Arthur Spooner on the CBS comedy series The King of Queens, another role that garnered widespread acclaim.
George Louis Costanza is a fictional character in the American television sitcom Seinfeld (1989–1998), played by Jason Alexander. He is a short, stocky, balding man who struggles with numerous insecurities, often dooming his romantic relationships through his own fear of being dumped. He is also relatively lazy; during periods of unemployment he actively avoids getting a job, and while employed he often finds ingenious ways to conceal idleness from his bosses. He is friends with Jerry Seinfeld, Cosmo Kramer, and Elaine Benes. George and Jerry were junior high school friends and remained friends afterward. George appears in every episode except "The Pen".
George Alexander Trebek was a Canadian-American game show host and television personality. He was best known for hosting the syndicated general knowledge quiz game show Jeopardy! for 37 seasons from its revival in 1984 until his death in 2020. Trebek also hosted a number of other game shows, including The Wizard of Odds, Double Dare, High Rollers, Battlestars, Classic Concentration, and To Tell the Truth. He also made appearances, usually as himself, in numerous films and television series.
Muppets Tonight is an American live-action/puppet family-oriented comedy television series, created by Jim Henson Productions and featuring The Muppets. The series ran for two seasons between March 1996 to February 1998, originally airing on ABC, before later being aired and rerun on the Disney Channel. The show was a continuation of The Muppet Show, with Kermit the Frog and the Muppets running their own television channel and studio, only to request one of their own to run a new show to fill in a timeslot in their channel's scheduling.
Square One Television is an American children's television program produced by the Children's Television Workshop to teach mathematics and new abstract mathematical concepts to young viewers.
Blue Collar TV is an American sketch comedy television series that aired on The WB from July 29, 2004 to July 26, 2006 starring Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, and Larry the Cable Guy. The show's humor dealt principally with contemporary American society, and especially hillbilly, redneck, and Southern stereotypes. The show was greenlighted on the heels of the success of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, which the series' three lead actors toured with in the early to mid-2000s. It was created by Fax Bahr and Adam Small, in addition to J.P. Williams and Jeff Foxworthy. "Blue collar" is an American phrase used to describe manual laborers, as opposed to white collar for office or professional workers.
"Bill Swerski's Superfans" was a recurring sketch about Chicago sports fans on the American sketch comedy program Saturday Night Live. It was a prominent feature from 1991 to 1992, and its characters have made various other appearances since its inception. The sketch is notable as a media portrayal of the Inland North dialect of American English that predominates in Chicago, most famously through the distinctive pronunciation of the phrase "Da Bears".
Celebrity Jeopardy! is a series of sketches that aired regularly on the television comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live between 1996 and 2002, the years when Will Ferrell was a cast member. It parodies the same-named special event on the television quiz show Jeopardy! that features competition between notable individuals with all winnings going towards charitable organizations, and significant reductions to the game's level of difficulty. Fifteen sketches aired between December 1996 and February 2015: two sketches per season from 1996 to 2002, and one each in 2005 and 2009, when Ferrell returned to the show as host. The sketch was revived for the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special on February 15, 2015.
"The Contest" is the eleventh episode of the fourth season of the American television sitcom Seinfeld, and the 51st episode overall. Written by Larry David and directed by Tom Cherones, the episode originally aired on NBC on November 18, 1992. In the episode, Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer hold a contest to determine who can go for the longest time without masturbating.
"The Junk Mail" is the 161st episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. It was the fifth episode of the ninth and final season. The episode aired on October 30, 1997. In this episode, Jerry is gifted a van by a childhood friend and cannot turn it down for fear of hurting his feelings, Elaine mistakenly thinks she has fallen in love when the sight of a man triggers memories of an old commercial he appeared in, and Kramer, tired of getting swamped with junk mail, tries to stop all delivery of his mail, only to uncover a conspiracy by the United States Postal Service to keep the public from realizing that mail is pointless. Produced when e-mail was becoming a mainstream form of communication, the episode reflected the popular prediction of the time that postal service would soon become obsolete.
"The Understudy" is the 110th episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. This is the 24th and final episode for the sixth season. It aired on May 18, 1995. This is the second episode in the series not to open with a stand-up routine.
Keith Morrison is a Canadian broadcast journalist. Since 1995, he has been a correspondent for Dateline NBC.
"I Lost on Jeopardy" is a song by American musician "Weird Al" Yankovic from his second album, "Weird Al" Yankovic in 3-D, released in 1984. The song is a parody of "Jeopardy" by The Greg Kihn Band, released in 1983, and its refrain "Our love's in jeopardy". The parody's lyrics center on the game show Jeopardy!, and features a guest vocal from Don Pardo, who announced for Jeopardy! from 1964 to 1975. The music video uses a set inspired by the 1964-75 version of the game show, and in addition to Pardo, features cameos from the show's host Art Fleming as well as Dr. Demento and Greg Kihn. The song was released just prior to the revival of Jeopardy! in 1984, though contrary to popular theory, the revival was already in the works and was not inspired by Yankovic's song.
Jeopardy! is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin. The show is a quiz competition that reverses the traditional question-and-answer format of many quiz shows. Rather than being given questions, contestants are instead given general knowledge clues in the form of answers and they must identify the person, place, thing, or idea that the clue describes, phrasing each response in the form of a question.
Andy Cowan is an American writer and script consultant for television and other media. He is the creator and host of the comedy/therapy podcast, The Neurotic Vaccine, launched in 2022 from Benztown + McVay Media Podcast Networks. The Neurotic Vaccine wound up landing among the top comedy interview podcasts in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Italy, Greece, Denmark, Ireland, and Romania, and in 2023 was a multiple final Quill (podcasting) Award nominee for Best New Podcast and Best Comedy Podcast. From 2010–2011, he co-hosted his radio comedy therapy talk show, Up & Down Guys, on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.
