March 28, 2024: What is Game Show Studying?: Deal-Making

[On March 30,1964, the legendary game show Jeopardydebuted. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that classic and a handful of othergame show histories! Add your thoughts, obviously in the form of a question, incomments!]

OnAmericanStudies contexts for three generations of defining, deal-making gameshows.

1)     The Price is Right (1956): There’sno way to talk about The Price is Right(the original version—starting in 1972 it was rebooted as The New Price is Right which remainson the air to this day) without connecting it to the late 1950s quiz showscandals about which I wrote on Tuesday. Partly because the stakes weresignificantly lower on Price than onthose contemporary game shows, and partly (and relatedly) because thecontestants seemed much more like ordinary people than the ostensiblysuper-smart quiz show contestants, Price notonly survived the surge in cancellations that plagued the game show genreduring and after those scandals, but really thrived as a contrast to thoseshows. To this day daytimegame shows tend to feature more “everyday” contestants and tones comparedto the heightened drama of prime-time shows, and that trend is closely tied tothis prominent early example.

2)     Let’s Make a Deal (1963): Theblossoming popularity of The Price isRight in the early 1960s was bound to produce competitors, and one of thefirst and most successful was Let’s Makea Deal. Deal was pretty similarto Price, and the two (in their respectiverebooted forms) have really endured as the two most successful daytime gameshows. But in my experience with them, I would say that (at least in its first1960s iteration) Deal leaned even abit more fully into a contestant pool that paralleled one of its principal intendedaudiences: traditional, stay-at-home housewives. Just look at the June Cleaverpearls on the first contestant in the 1963 debut episode hyperlinked above! DaytimeTV has always been closely tiedto images (and certainly also realities, but I would say even more images)of that community, and we can see them reflected in a daytime game show likethis one.

3)     Dealor No Deal (2005): Deal or No Dealwasn’t the first primetime deal-making game show, but I would argue it was andremains one of the most popular, especially in its early years. Interestingly,a great deal of Deal (or No Deal) closely mimicked daytimeshows like (Let’s Make a) Deal, asillustrated most succinctly by the bevy ofattractive and seductively-dressed womensupporting the male host. But while (Let’sMake a) Deal often featured one such female co-host at a time, Deal (or No Deal) featured twenty, andthat was kind of the whole deal with this primetime show: very similar to thedaytime ones, but with everything turned up to 11. Partly that’s just thedifference between daytime and primetime TV, but I would say it also reflectsthe early 21st century’s increasing sense of the need for individualentertainment options to stand out amidst an ever-more-crowded cultural landscape.But one thing I know—as long as there are TVs, somewhere one will be showing adeal-making game show.

Last gameshow histories tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other game shows you’d highlight?