GSN shuffles, and it's really...something

For the first time in a long, long time GSN is bringing oldies to prime time.

Each Saturday night beginning December 23, our little game show network will run a four-hour oldies block 7:00 PM-11:00 PM (Eastern time). The block for the first few weeks will be an hour each of Match Game, Press Your Luck, Jim Perry's Card Sharks, and Monty Hall's Let's Make a Deal. This is not just a holiday stunt, according to the accompanying GSN e-mail.

I'm starting to think that Game Show Forum has staged a coup and taken over the management suite at GSN. Okay, if such a revolution ever really happened, you'd see Whew in prime time on the network. But the oldies block is still a noticeable shift for GSN. It's the strongest indication yet that the new management team of Mark Feldman and Fran Shea is committed not just to traditional game shows - the schedule has been all traditional for quite a while now - but to old traditional game shows.

The natural question: is this prime time block a reaction to Buzzr? It's hard for me to believe that the oldies diginet is much of a concern to GSN at this point. There have been published claims of a growing audience for Buzzr, though, so maybe GSN is getting a mite worried. Or maybe Mark Feldman is a secret Game Show Forum member. (Just kidding, I think.)

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