It is a game show

In the middle of a holiday season that's slow on game show news, I played my old trick of hitting the random page button on a game show wiki. This time it was the Heatter-Quigley Wiki, and I hit the site's jackpot. Back came the entry for the production company's greatest hit, Hollywood Squares.

As you would expect, the wiki went full bore on the show, with plenty of verbiage and images and a link to the site's episode guide for the classic. A funny note was the entry's low-key beginning. The Hollywood Squares is a game show. Why, yes it is, and the show has survived in reboots and spinoffs for six decades now. Tic-tac-toe with the stars has proven to be one of our little genre's most enduring formats.

My favorite image from the entry is the behind-the-scenes view in the screenshot. I like all the old-fashioned cathode-ray tubes lined up on the floor. Reminds me of my father's old TV repair shop, where he would have sets in various states of renovation scattered about.

There's not much more to say about Hollywood Squares, beyond the obvious observation that you have to script the celebs. Otherwise things don't work well, as Mark Goodson discovered when he tried to combine the format with Match Game.

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