Death to GSN

The oldies boards have long specialized in fantasy schedules for GSN. You can probably guess what the schedules look like. There are always lots of obscure moldies from three or five decades ago, along with permanent banishment of Satan incarnate, Steve Harvey. (By the way, was Steve the daddy of Rosemary's baby? Sometimes the game show Interwebs seem to think so.)

It's futile to point out that these lineups would remove most of GSN's audience, revenue and executives. The oldies boards wouldn't mind all three getting the heave-ho, especially the last one. But I still have to smile over the latest effort at a GSN death schedule. The poster announces at the start that reality shows are verboten, which means no more Amazing Race or Skin Wars. The first has been gone for a decade and the second vanished many months ago, so that part of the dream has already come true.

Funny thing, the poster includes the U.S. and Brit versions of Gladiators on the dream lineup, though their place in our little genre is at least disputable. (I regard them as more of what Sports Illustrated used to call trash sport.) In fact, the current GSN schedule is wall-to-wall traditional game shows. No Gladiators or other questionable stuff in sight.

Of course, Steve Harvey is gone from the dream, although Gene Rayburn and friends on Match Game also get the pink slip. Match Game '90 earns a slot on the schedule, though, so go figure. And there's the usual collection of aged obscurities, like Wordplay and Go and Debt. Woolery Wheel of Fortune also gets a weekday slot, which would grind the twenty or so eps into rerun dust in a hurry.

All in all, it's a great schedule to reduce GSN to somewhere around 90th place among cable networks. Just above the Tennis Channel, maybe.

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