Mindreaders

Last updated
Mindreaders
Mindreaders.JPG
Mindreaders title logo.
Created by Mark Goodson
Bill Todman
Directed by Ira Skutch [1]
Presented by Dick Martin
Narrated by Johnny Olson
Theme music composer Score Productions
Country of originUnited States
No. of episodes109 [2]
Production
ProducerMimi O'Brien
Production locationsStudio 4, NBC Studios,
Burbank, California
Running time22 minutes
Release
Original network NBC
Original releaseAugust 13, 1979 (1979-08-13) 
January 11, 1980 (1980-01-11)

Mindreaders is an American game show produced by Goodson-Todman Productions (now part of Fremantle) which aired on NBC from August 13, 1979, through January 11, 1980. Although NBC originally agreed to a 26-week run, the network canceled Mindreaders after 22 weeks. The host was Dick Martin and the announcer was Johnny Olson, [1] with Jack Narz subbing. The program was taped at Studio 4 at NBC in Burbank, California.

Contents

Mindreaders was also the final new Goodson-Todman game to be developed under the supervision of co-producer Bill Todman, who died a few weeks before its premiere.

Gameplay

Two teams of four members competed, each consisting of three contestants and a celebrity captain; one team consisted only of men, the other only of women. All questions used on the show were of the yes/no type.

Main game

The host read a question to the three contestants on one team, and each of them locked in an answer. The captain predicted how each of his/her teammates answered, one at a time. Each correct prediction kept the team in control, but a miss allowed the captain of the opposing team to predict the responses given by any remaining members of the controlling team. Each correct response awarded $50 to the team of the captain who gave it, while each miss gave the money to their opponents. Control alternated between teams on each new question. The first team to reach $300 won the game and advanced to the bonus round; both teams kept any money earned in the game. [1]

Bonus round

The bonus round was played in two parts.

Judge the Jury

A "jury" of 10 randomly selected audience members participated in this round. Martin read a question, for which the jury members secretly locked in their answers, and one contestant on the winning team had to predict how many of them had given a specified response. The team won $500 for an exact guess, and $200 for being within two persons either way. Each contestant had one turn in this round; if none of them won any money on their turn, the bonus game ended immediately.

This mini-game of 10 audience members (designed by producer Mimi O'Brien) answering a question was later instituted for the 1986 revival of Card Sharks in 1988.

Celebrity Turnabout

Each of the three contestants separately predicted how their captain answered one last question. If at least two of them guessed correctly, the team's "Judge the Jury" winnings were multiplied by 10, for a potential maximum of $15,000.

Returning champions

Unlike most game shows of that time, Mindreaders did not use the typical "returning champions" carry-over; instead, the same two teams competed against each other for three consecutive games, after which all six contestants retired. Each team's total winnings were divided equally among its three contestants.

Music

The show's theme was composed by Score Productions, and was later used for the unsold Goodson-Todman pilot Puzzlers in 1980 and was also used as a re-arranged version of a commercial cue for Celebrity Charades in 1979. In addition, the win cue from the show was also used for later Goodson-Todman pilots including Puzzlers in 1980, as well as the 1983 pilots for Star Words and Body Language .

Broadcast history

NBC placed Mindreaders in a problematic timeslot, 12:00 Noon (11:00 AM Central), where it faced ABC's The $20,000 Pyramid and CBS' The Young and the Restless as well as low clearances by NBC affiliates in the Eastern Time Zone, who usually ran local newscasts there. Despite NBC's hopes that Martin's legacy from Laugh-In and his guest appearances on Match Game (a show still in syndication at the time and which had a very similar format) would translate into instant audience appeal, the ratings were flat, as were those of the shows preceding it in that time slot since the network moved Jeopardy! from there in January 1974.[ citation needed ]

Episode status

Unusual for a Goodson-Todman series, especially one in production as late as 1980, most of the Mindreaders archive was destroyed to recycle videotape. NBC was, at the time, still recycling some of its videotapes, mostly restricted to game shows by this point; and was the last of the major networks to be doing so.[ citation needed ] YouTube has a few of the episodes available.

Buzzr aired the originally unaired pilot episode of the series with Charles Nelson Reilly and Sarah Purcell as the celebrity guests on 25 September 2021 as part of their annual Lost and Found special block. This episode was noted as being sourced from the UCLA video archives, not those of Fremantle, the current owners of the Goodson-Todman library.

Related Research Articles

<i>Hollywood Squares</i> American television game show

Hollywood Squares is an American game show in which two contestants compete in a game of 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.

<i>Match Game</i> American television game show

Match Game is an American television panel game show that premiered on NBC in 1962 and has been revived several times over the course of the last six decades. The game features contestants trying to match answers given by celebrity panelists to fill-in-the-blank questions. Beginning with the CBS run of the 1970s, the questions are often formed as humorous double entendres.

<i>Card Sharks</i> US television game show

Card Sharks is an American television game show. It was created by Chester Feldman for Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions. The game features two contestants who attempt to predict the outcome of survey questions to gain control of a row of oversized playing cards, then determine whether the next card drawn is higher or lower. The title Card Sharks is a play on the term "card sharp", a person skilled at card games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Goodson</span> American TV producer (1915–1992)

Mark Leo Goodson was an American television producer who specialized in game shows, most frequently with his business partner Bill Todman, with whom he created Goodson-Todman Productions.

<i>Eye Guess</i> American television game show

Eye Guess was an American game show created by Bob Stewart and hosted by Bill Cullen, which aired on NBC from January 3, 1966, to September 26, 1969. The game combined a general knowledge quiz with a Concentration-style memory element, where the answers were shown to the players and their recall of their positions was tested.

<i>Password</i> (American game show) American television game show

Password is an American television game show in which two teams, each composed of a celebrity player and a contestant, attempt to convey mystery words to each other using only single-word clues, in order to win cash prizes.

<i>Double Dare</i> (1976 game show) American television game show

Double Dare is an American television game show, produced by Mark Goodson—Bill Todman Productions, that ran from 1976 to 1977 on CBS. The main game pitted two contestants in isolation booths attempting to correctly identify a person, place, or thing based on one-sentence clues. The bonus round then pitted the champion of the main game against a panel of three Ph.Ds, referred to as the "Spoilers". Alex Trebek was the host, with Johnny Olson and later Gene Wood announcing. The show was created by Jay Wolpert.

<i>Tattletales</i> American television game show

Tattletales is an American game show produced by Goodson-Todman Productions in association with Fremantle. The program had two runs on the CBS daytime schedule between February 1974 and June 1984. It was hosted by Bert Convy, with several announcers including Jack Clark, Gene Wood, Johnny Olson and John Harlan providing the voiceover at various times. Wood was the primary announcer during the show's first run, and Olson was announcing during the 1980s.

<i>Now You See It</i> (American game show) American TV series or program

Now You See It is an American television game show created by Frank Wayne for Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions. The object of Now You See It is to answer general knowledge trivia questions by finding the answers hidden in a grid, similar to a word search puzzle.

<i>Body Language</i> (game show) American game show

Body Language is an American game show produced by Mark Goodson Productions. The show aired on CBS from June 4, 1984, until January 3, 1986, and was hosted by Tom Kennedy. Johnny Olson announced until his death in October 1985; Gene Wood and Bob Hilton shared the announcing duties afterward, having substituted on occasion before then.

<i>Childs Play</i> (game show) American TV series or program

Child's Play is an American television game show in which adult contestants tried to guess words based on definitions given by children. The Mark Goodson-produced series debuted on CBS on September 20, 1982 and ended on September 16, 1983.

<i>He Said, She Said</i> (game show) American TV series or program

He Said, She Said was an American game show hosted by Joe Garagiola, with Bill Cullen occasionally filling in when Garagiola was covering baseball games. The show, which asked couples questions about their personal lives, aired in syndication during the 1969-1970 season, and was taped at NBC Studios in New York City.

<i>The Price Is Right</i> (1956 American game show) American game show

The Price Is Right is an American game show produced by Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions, wherein contestants placed successive bids on merchandise prizes with the goal of bidding closest to each prize's actual retail price without surpassing it. The show was a precursor to the current and best-known version of the program, which premiered in 1972 on CBS's daytime schedule. It makes The Price Is Right one of only a few game show franchises to have aired in some form across all three of the Big Three television networks.

Get the Message is a television game show produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman which aired on ABC's daytime schedule for nine months in 1964.

<i>Showoffs</i> American television game show

Showoffs is an American television game show which ran on ABC from June 30 to December 26, 1975. Bobby Van was host, with Gene Wood as announcer. The Mark Goodson-Bill Todman production involved two teams competing in a game of charades.

<i>Missing Links</i> (game show) American TV series or program

Missing Links is a Goodson-Todman game show hosted by Ed McMahon which originally ran on NBC from September 9, 1963 to March 27, 1964, then moved to ABC for its final nine months, with Dick Clark replacing McMahon as host.

Snap Judgment is an American daytime game show hosted by Ed McMahon and announced by Johnny Olson which ran on NBC from April 3, 1967, to March 28, 1969, at 10:00 AM Eastern. The program was created and produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman.

<i>Password Plus</i> and <i>Super Password</i> American television game shows

Password Plus and Super Password are American TV game shows that aired separately between 1979 and 1989. Both shows were revivals of Password, which originally ran from 1961 to 1975 in various incarnations. With only subtle differences between them, both Password Plus and Super Password retained the format of play as their predecessor, with two teams of two people each—a celebrity and a contestant—attempting to guess a mystery word using only one-word clues. A new feature included a series of five passwords as clues to an overarching puzzle for the teams to solve.

<i>Blockbusters</i> (American game show) American television game show

Blockbusters is an American game show, created by Steve Ryan for Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions, which had two separate runs in the 1980s. On this program, contestants answered general-knowledge questions to complete a path across or down a game board composed of hexagons. The first series of the show debuted on NBC on October 27, 1980, and aired until April 23, 1982. In the first series, a team of two family members competed against a solo contestant. Blockbusters was revived on NBC from January 5 to May 1, 1987, but featured only two solo contestants competing.

<i>People Puzzler</i> American game show

People Puzzler is an American television game show hosted by Leah Remini and broadcast by Game Show Network. It premiered on January 18, 2021. The show is inspired by the celebrity and pop-culture themed crosswords in People magazine.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Schwartz, David; Ryan, Steve; Wostbrock, Fred (1999). The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows (3 ed.). Facts on File, Inc. p.  141. ISBN   0-8160-3846-5.
  2. Preempted on January 1, 1980 by the 91st Annual Tournament of Roses Parade. "TV Listings". Daily News. New York City, New York. January 1, 1980.