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UNSOLD PILOTS Since the new fall season is percolating let's look at more shows that never made it to our TVs. A bunch of years ago Lee Goldberg wrote one of the best books ever about television called Unsold Television Pilots. Johnny Carson featured the book on the Tonight show back in 1990 and recounted some of the crazy TV shows that never made it on the air - then used it as a jumping off point for some corny sight gags.
Game Show Fail: Here's a unsold 1971 pilot for a game show starring Bob Barker called Simon Says where members of the studio audience fill out questionnaire ahead of time and a 'computer' selects them to tell their unusual stories. They are then given the opportunity to win prizes if they can answer some trivia questions. This weird format allowed the host to use one of his best skills, the ability to connect with ordinary people and elicit laughs, an ability he honed during his decades long run on Truth or Consequences.
Notice the announcer was Johnny Olson who joined Bob Barker just a year later on The New Price Is Right and almost 40 years later the show is still going strong. Here's a portion of the third episode of TNPIR from August 23, 1972 where Johnny Olson calls the contestant's names and yells "C'mon down!" for the very first time.
What Might Have Been: David Letterman was on track to be one of the great game show hosts of all time, no doubt, if The Riddlers had been picked up in 1977. The Riddlers was a lot like Match Game, the hottest daytime TV show in 1977, in that it had a celebrity panel answering questions. But it's Letterman that shines here, he's hilarious in the role of game show host. This was just a couple of years after he left Indiana local television and he had not yet begun his brilliant but short-lived 1980 daytime run on NBC, that's where Carson took notice of him and bumped the comic up to late night.
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