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Sex, lies and game show videotape

Vulture ran a story about Buzzr's acquisition of Match Game Hollywood Squares Hour. The diginet can use any and all media notice, so Buzzr chief Mark Deetjen was happy to talk to the site.

He said that Buzzr would only run four eps of the show before adding it to the regular lineup later this year. He pleaded time and expense issues with converting the ancient videotapes for broadcast.

I'm not a tape technician and I don't play one on the Internet. But I suspect that the expense of tape cleanup is not the only problem, or even the most important one. After all, Buzzr is part of the Fremantle empire, which is part of the Bertelsmann galactic empire, which had revenues of over $20 billion (with a "b") last year. Money for cleaning up the tapes of a short-lived game show would not amount to a rounding error on the company's books.

My guess is that Buzzr wants a trial run to see if the show gets any audience. Also, there's the issue of Fremantle not wanting to lavish product on Buzzr due to internal accounting. The diginet is not exactly churning out massive revenue. Check their ads if you don't believe me. So the beancounters are probably not crazy about gifting Buzzr with all the riches of the Fremantle library.

Sooner or later more eps of Match Game Hollywood Squares Hour will show up, after getting cleaned up.

One more note. Last year Deetjen promised two non-Fremantle "name-brand" shows on the diginet. Looks like Concentration and Hollywood Squares are those names, as a commenter pointed out.

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