While many early panel shows stuck to the traditional quiz show format in which celebrities tried to get the right answers and win, the primary goal of modern panel shows is to entertain the audience with comedy, with the game or quiz structure providing subjects for the comedians to joke about.[4][5] Panel shows also feature comedic banter, friendly ribbing and camaraderie among the panelists.[6][7] Scoring is often deemphasised in panel shows. The American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? acknowledged this with the introduction, "Welcome to Whose Line Is It Anyway, the show where everything's made up and the points don't matter." QI's opaque scoring system is purportedly a mystery even to its creator,[8]I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue dispenses with points altogether, and many other shows mention points only occasionally or at the end, instead of continuously displaying scores in front of players.
Frequently, a panel show features recurring panelists or permanent team captains, and some panelists appear on multiple panel shows.[9] Most shows are recorded before a studio audience.
International production
United States
The first known example of a panel show in the world is the radio program Information Please, which debuted on 17 May 1938 on the NBC Blue Network. An evolution of the quiz show format, Information Please added the key element of a panel of celebrities, largely writers and intellectuals, but also actors and politicians. Listeners would mail in questions, winning prizes for stumping the panel.
U.S. panel shows transferred to television early in the medium's history, with the first known example being Play the Game, a charades show that aired on DuMont and ABC beginning in 1946. The celebrity charades concept has been replicated numerous times since then. The most popular adaptation was Pantomime Quiz, airing from 1947 to 1959, and having runs on each of the four television networks operating at the time. Other charades shows have included Stump the Stars; Movietown, RSVP; Celebrity Charades; Showoffs and Body Language.
TV panel shows saw their peak of popularity in the 1950s and '60s, when CBS ran the three longest-running panel shows in prime time: What's My Line?, I've Got a Secret and To Tell the Truth. At times, they were among the top ten shows on U.S. television, and they continue to experience occasional revivals. All three Goodson-Todman primetime shows were cancelled by CBS in 1967 amid ratings declines and trouble attracting younger viewers, although the programs were consistently profitable by being among the cheapest television shows to produce.[10][11] Their cancellations came as attention to demographics and a focus on younger viewers gained currency among advertisers.[12] The departures of these three New York–based shows were also part of a mass migration of television production to Los Angeles, leaving only one primetime show produced on the East Coast.[11][13]
Later years saw several successes in the format, with Match Game;[14]The Hollywood Squares;[15][16][17][18]Win, Lose or Draw; Celebrity Sweepstakes; Password[19] and Pyramid primarily running in the daytime and airing in their greatest numbers during the '70s and '80s. These panel shows marked a shift in the format: whereas CBS' primetime shows had panelists guessing secrets about the guests, these new shows largely featured civilian contestants playing games with celebrity partners, or competing to predict or evaluate the panelists' responses to a prompt or question. Later, Nickelodeon premiered the youth-oriented panel game Figure it Out in 1997,[20][21] the U.S. version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? had a primetime run from 1998 to 2004 on ABC and a revival in 2013 by The CW,[22] while Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! has become a popular weekend show on NPR since 1998.
In 2015, ABC announced primetime revivals for Match Game, which ran from 2016 until 2021, and To Tell the Truth, which ran from 2016 to 2022.[23] From 2013 to 2017, Comedy Central aired @midnight, an internet culture and social media-themed panel game which used a more quiz show-styled presentation—with the celebrity guests buzzing in to earn points for punchlines and responses in various segments.[24][25] In 2024, a reboot of the show, now titled After Midnight and hosted by Taylor Tomlinson, premiered on CBS.[26]
The streaming service Dropout has received attention for many of its shows' similarities to panel shows, notably Game Changer.[27][28][29]
Panel shows are particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where they have found continued success since the BBC adapted its first radio panel shows from classic parlor games.[3] Perhaps the earliest UK panel show is the BBC radio adaptation of Twenty Questions, which debuted on 28 February 1947. Panel shows can have decades-long runs in the UK: Twenty Questions lasted until 1976, while Just a Minute has remained on the air, and had Nicholas Parsons as host from 1967 until 2019. Other long-running games on radio include I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue since 1972, The News Quiz since 1977, My Word! from 1956 to 1988,[30] and My Music from 1967 to 1994.[31][32]
The British version of What's My Line? may have been the first television panel show in the UK, with an original run from 1951 to 1963 and several remakes in later years. The word game Call My Bluff aired from 1965 to 2005, the charades show Give Us a Clue ran from 1979 to 1992, and the improv game Whose Line Is It Anyway? aired from 1988 to 1998. Current British panel shows have become showcases for the nation's top stand-up and improv comedians, as well as career-making opportunities for new comedians.[5] Regular comics on panel shows often go on to star in sitcoms and other TV shows.
The modern British panel show format of TV comedy quizzes started with Have I Got News for You, a loose adaptation of BBC Radio 4's The News Quiz. HIGNFY, as the show is sometimes known, began airing in 1990, and has been the most-viewed show of the night, regularly attracting as much as a 20% audience share.[33][34][35] The show's success grew after its transfer from BBC Two to the flagship BBC One in 2000.
British comedy panel shows feature mainly male guests. A 2016 study that analysed 4,700 episodes from 1967 to 2016 found that 1,488 of them had an all-male lineup, and only one an all-female cast. The proportion of women rose from 3% in 1989 to 31% in 2016.[36]
Early Japanese panel shows include 話の泉 ("Source of the Story"), based on Information Please on NHK Radio 1 from 1946 to 1964; 二十の扉 ("Twenty Doors"), based on Twenty Questions on NHK Radio 1 from 1947 to 1960; ジェスチャー ("Gestures"), a charades show on NHK General TV from 1953 to 1968; and 私の秘密 ("My Secret"), based on I've Got a Secret on NHK General TV from 1956 to 1967.
Some games involve bizarre physical stunts. Brain Wall, adapted in English-speaking countries as Hole in the Wall, has comedians attempt to jump through oddly shaped holes in moving walls without falling into water, DERO and its successor TORE have celebrities solve mental and physical challenges to escape traps and hazards or presumably die trying, VS Arashi has a team of celebrities compete against J-pop group Arashi and their Plus One guest(s) in physical games, Nep League has various celebrity teams competing in various quizzes that test their combined brainpower in the fields of Japanese, English, General Knowledge, Etc., and AKBingo! similarly features members of pop group AKB48 and others competing in physical challenges and quizzes.
Other shows include 日本語探Qバラエティ クイズ!それマジ!?ニッポン ("Is it really!?"), a celebrity word game; くりぃむクイズ ミラクル9 ("Miracle 9"), a show somewhat similar to Hollywood Squares; Numer0n, a celebrity numbers game; and オールスター感謝祭 ("All Star Thanksgiving"), a semi-annual celebrity quiz. There are many other games featuring celebrities within Japan's variety genre.
Prime Minister Ōta is a show featuring many comedians and politicians debating fictional proposals in a sort of game show version of a legislative chamber.
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.
I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue is a BBC radio comedy panel game. Billed as "the antidote to panel games", it consists of two teams of two comedians being given "silly things to do" by a chairman. The show was launched in April 1972 as a parody of radio and TV panel games, and has been broadcast since on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service, with repeats aired on BBC Radio 4 Extra and, in the 1980s and 1990s, on BBC Radio 2. The 50th series was broadcast in November and December 2007.
William Lawrence Cullen was an American radio and television personality whose career spanned five decades. Known for appearing on game shows and later as a prolific game show host, he hosted 23 shows, earning the nickname "Dean of Game Show Hosts". Aside from his hosting duties, he appeared as a panelist/celebrity guest on many other game shows, including regular appearances on I've Got a Secret and To Tell the Truth.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! is an hour-long weekly news radio panel show produced by WBEZ and National Public Radio (NPR) in Chicago, Illinois. On the program, panelists and contestants are quizzed in humorous ways about that week's news. It is distributed by NPR in the United States, internationally on NPR Worldwide and on the Internet via podcast, and typically broadcast on weekends by member stations. The show averages about six million weekly listeners on air and via podcast.
To Tell the Truth is an American television panel show. Four celebrity panelists are presented with three contestants and must identify which is the "central character" whose unusual occupation or experience has been read aloud by the show's host. When the panelists question the contestants, the two impostors may lie whereas the "central character" must tell the truth. The setup adds the impostor element to the format of What's My Line? and I've Got a Secret.
What's My Line? is a panel game show that originally ran in the United States, between 1950 and 1967, on CBS. The game show started in black and white and later in color, with subsequent U.S. revivals. The game uses celebrity panelists to question contestants in order to determine their occupation. The majority of the contestants were from the general public, but there was one weekly celebrity "mystery guest" for whom the panelists were blindfolded. It is on the list of longest-running U.S. primetime network television game-shows. Originally moderated by John Charles Daly and most frequently with regular panelists Dorothy Kilgallen, Arlene Francis, and Bennett Cerf, What's My Line? won three Emmy Awards for "Best Quiz or Audience Participation Show" in 1952, 1953, and 1958 and the Golden Globe Awards for Best TV Show in 1962.
Twenty questions is a spoken parlor game which encourages deductive reasoning and creativity. It originated in the United States and was played widely in the 19th century. It escalated in popularity during the late 1940s, when it became the format for a successful weekly radio quiz program.
I've Got a Secret was an American panel game show produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman for CBS television. Created by comedy writers Allan Sherman and Howard Merrill, it was a derivative of Goodson–Todman's own panel show, What's My Line?. Instead of celebrity panelists trying to determine a contestant's occupation, however, as in What's My Line, the panel tried to determine a contestant's secret: something that is unusual, amazing, embarrassing, or humorous about that person.
Bob Stewart was an American television game show producer. He was active in the TV industry from 1956 until his retirement in 1991.
Frederick MacAulay is a Scottish comedian. For 18 years, until March 2015, he presented a daily BBC Scotland radio programme MacAulay and Co. He has appeared on numerous TV shows.
You Don't Say! is an American television game show that had three separate runs on television. The first version aired on NBC daytime from April 1, 1963, to September 26, 1969, with revivals on ABC in 1975 and in syndication from 1978 to 1979. The last two incarnations were executive produced by Ralph Andrews and produced and directed by Bill Carruthers.
Miles Hugh Barrett Jupp is an English actor, singer, and comedian. He began his career as a stand-up comedian before playing the role of the inventor Archie in the children's television series Balamory. He also played John Duggan in The Thick of It, Nigel in the sitcom Rev and appeared on many comedy panel shows. Between 2015 and 2019, Jupp was the host of The News Quiz on BBC Radio 4, replacing Sandi Toksvig.
Pantomime Quiz, initially titled Pantomime Quiz Time and later Stump the Stars, was an American television game show produced and hosted by Mike Stokey. Running from 1947–59, it was one of the few television series – along with The Arthur Murray Party; Down You Go; The Ernie Kovacs Show, The Original Amateur Hour; and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet – to air on all four TV networks in the US during the Golden Age of Television.
Would I Lie to You? is a British comedy panel show aired on BBC One, made by Zeppotron for the BBC. It was first broadcast on 16 June 2007, starring David Mitchell and Lee Mack as team captains. The show was originally presented by Angus Deayton, and since 2009 has been hosted by Rob Brydon.
Down You Go is an American television game show originally broadcast on the DuMont Television Network. The Emmy Award-nominated series ran from 1951 to 1956 as a prime time series primarily hosted by Dr. Bergen Evans. The program aired in eleven different timeslots during its five-year run.
Play the Game, also known as Let's Play the Game, was one of the earliest game shows to be broadcast over an American television network, and the first known example of a television panel show. In 1941-42, CBS aired an early game show, CBS Television Quiz.
Richard Thomas Osman is an English author, television presenter, producer, novelist, and comedian. He is the creator and former co-presenter of the BBC One television quiz show Pointless. He has presented the BBC Two quiz shows Two Tribes and Richard Osman's House of Games, and been a team captain on the comedy panel shows Insert Name Here and The Fake News Show. He has made appearances on British panel shows including Would I Lie To You? and QI.
Take a Good Look is an American television game show created by and starring Ernie Kovacs, which aired from 1959 to 1961 on ABC's Thursday-night block at 10:30 PM Eastern Time.
@midnight with Chris Hardwick is an American late night Internet-themed panel game show, hosted by Chris Hardwick, that aired Monday through Thursday nights between October 21, 2013, and August 4, 2017, on Comedy Central. It was syndicated internationally in Australia on SBS2 and The Comedy Channel, in the United Kingdom on Comedy Central Extra, and in Canada formerly on MuchMusic and later on The Comedy Network.
References
↑ Russell Davies, host (9 April 2011). "Episode 2". Let's Get Quizzical. 1 minutes in. BBC Radio 4 Extra. Retrieved 19 May 2011. In the old days, quizzes and panel games were easy to tell apart, because quiz competitors were people you'd never heard of, and panellists were more or less well-known figures. More recently, though, the rise of the celebrity quiz has complicated the picture.
↑ Cynthia Lowry (1 January 1963). "Newest Quiz Game Bows". The Telegraph-Herald. Dubuque, Iowa. The Associated Press. Retrieved 18 May 2011. Skillful chefs of television cooked up a panel show called What's My Line? more than a decade ago. ... Now still another variation of the good old recipe has been launched, The Match Game.
↑ "Wally Cox (obituary)". Los Angeles Times. 15 February 1973. Retrieved 18 May 2011. ...was a regular on the NBC daytime panel show The Hollywood Squares,...
↑ Cynthia Lowry (25 November 1971). "Hollywood Squares easy income source to its guest stars". Eugene Register-Guard. Associated Press. Retrieved 18 May 2011. ...NBC's Hollywood Squares, the most popular game or panel show on television today.
↑ Vernon Scott (21 February 1969). "Dual Format TV Show Reflects Generation Gap". Schenectady Gazette. UPI. Retrieved 18 May 2011. The daily Hollywood Squares series is a tic-tac-toe game with a panel of nine performers...
↑ Cynthia Lowry (17 May 1963). "Panelist, Show Host Plan Marriage in Vegas June 14". Ocala Star-Banner. The Associated Press. Retrieved 18 May 2011. Apparently romance finally bloomed on a panel show—but in truth Password had little or nothing to do with it.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
