I’m a student of data and at times almost too honest for my own good, so trust me, I know what a significant portion of my “massive” audience cares about. So while I can devote as much deserved attention as possible to shows jockeying for Emmy awards and looking to reach millions of people no matter how many days their sponsors will allow them to aggregate, I’m acutely aware that the really big programming event of the spring took place between the hours of 7 and 8 pm ET last night in real time.
The return of THE HANDMAID’S TALE or THE LAST OF US? Pshaw. TV INSIDER’s Dan Clarendon knew darn well how to grab our attention when he excitedly dropped this yesterday morning:
O, how X-citing! Tic Tac Dough is back on our screens, 35 years after the last iteration ended. Brooke Burns is hosting the revival, which premieres on Monday, April 14, at 7/6, on Game Show Network. “It’s the same game but with an amazing new look,” Burns says in a GSN promo for the reboot. “And me!”
And Clarendon is apparently accurately tapped into the zeitgeist of a great deal of those who cared about this when he made these additional observations:
Except it’s not quite the same game, as fans have pointed out online. For one, the set appears to be virtual — with CGI cubes popping out from the game board to reveal the questions — with no studio audience.
Also, the questions are now multiple-choice, leading one YouTube commenter to complain, “Oh, great, a dumbed down version of Tic Tac Dough.”
And it appears that the jackpot doesn’t roll over and that contestants won’t have a chance to go on streaks like Tom McGhee, who famously won $312,700 — $200,000 in cash, three sailboats, eight cars, and 16 vacations — on the show in 1980, per The Atlantic.
“Winner gets the typical GSN $1,000 and goes to the bonus round, which will also be significantly different, for the typical GSN $10,000,” one Reddit user observed. “So basically, it’s Tic Tac D’OH.”
To those who have such strong opinions–dare I say you sound as empty with your complaints as anyone bitching about the political state of affairs in our country. And it’s quite obvious you’ve never been in any position to actually consider what it takes to profitably produce television in 2025.
When TIC TAC DOUGH was giving away those massive prizes all those years ago, it was at times the highest-rated daily series airing in prime access. In its original 1950s incarnation, it aired six times a week on NBC, including a weekly prime time version. But then the show was abruptly pulled from the airwaves when it was revealed that the show’s producer and daytime emcee Jack Barry, and his partner Dan Enright, had been supplying contestants with questions and answers in advance. That helped create the rights ownership chasm that saw the IP in the hands of NBCUniversal and not Sony (although the latter did control the rerun rights to those McKee–that’s how it’s actually spelled–episodes).
That’s essentially why Sony and GSN were unable to get a reboot on the air until now. Take it from someone who valiantly tried to do so during my executive stints at both of those companies while TIC TAC’s frequent prime access companion THE JOKER’S WILD went through several attempts at a new version, eventually succeeding when Turner bought into the idea of Snoop Dogg hosting a highly stylized and pot joke-laden revival with an over-the-top nightclub setting and electronics that ran the start-up cost into the millions. While SNOOP JOKER managed to eke out three seasons on two of their networks (how this show somehow wound up on one whose tagline was “we know drama” is perhaps one of the most confounding decisions I was ever forced to confront), its audience never exceeded six figures. And I know it didn’t make a dime for Sony.
Meanwhile, GSN’s regimented formula given its own realities has the network in perhaps its most stable and financially viable state since I was able to help it produce its best financial results ever in the early 2010s. In 2024 it retained 98 per cent of its average HH audience from 2023, a proportion that no other established non-news cable network was able to better. And it outdrew the likes of AMC, WE, Syfy, BET, Nat Geo and yep, MTV.
So here’s my sage advice to the purist who Clarendon felt deserved special attention in his piece who offered up this astute insight from their own experience:
Another Reddit user, meanwhile, complained about the green screen use. “It’s the most bare-bones production ever,” they wrote. “As a former contestant, nothing is cooler than being on a set of a game show. This cheapens the experience for the contestants and, by proxy, the viewers at home.”
Don’t just take my counterpoint. Instead, perhaps heed the words that were quoted in the recently released second edition of QUIZMASTER by its unabashed genre champion author Adam Nedeff:
“In the old days, the set for a quiz show consisted of a velvet drape, a little stand to hold the master of ceremonies’ copy of the question cards, and two microphones before which the contestands stood. An entire set, I guess, in those days, might have cost, even considering company prizes, three or four hundred dollars.
Today? I just finished a pilot for NBC and the set price…for building the set alone for a simple game show…was, I figure, above $165,000…I think too much attention is paid to the buildings, to the lighting, to the special effects…I think it could be better spent in human beings and playing a little more with people”.
Those observations and price quotes were offered up in 1979 to GOOD MORNING, AMERICA by none other than Bill Cullen, still acknowledged decades after his death as the most successful talent in the genre ever to grace a screen of any kind. All the passage of time has done has upped that ante significantly. If he, and for that matter TIC TAC DOUGH itself, were able to thrive without the trappings of “modern” execution back then, you should be able to find it in yourselves to be a notch more tolerant now.
And the truth is, I know most of you will. And you’ll be just as forgiving to BINGO BLITZ, the “new” companion piece that follows TIC TAC that takes many of the same elements–an attractive female host with a scripted career background (in this case, Valerie Bertinelli), trivia questions that afford contestants to connect boxes, and yep, another chase for a grand that could turn into an occasional 10 grand bonus round win–and lathers, rinses and repeats them. Remember, you’re in a rather niche fandom, and nobody starts these things up for real with the goal of losing money.
If trading off the sawing of plywood by union workers and saving on massive electricity bills to power actual chase lights can keep these shows going longer than the most recent attempts to do so did (that 1990 TIC TAC revival lasted just 65 original episodes; a previous GSN effort called BINGO AMERICA quickly fizzled after a much-ballyhooed premiere), my sense is you’ll be whining a whole lot less than you may be today.
You can always choose to flip on THE HANDMAID’S TALE.
Until next time…
2 thoughts on “A Few Xs And A Lot More Os. It’s A Playbook That Works, Like It Or Not.”
“To those who have such strong opinions–dare I say you sound as empty with your complaints as anyone bitching about the political state of affairs in our country. And it’s quite obvious you’ve never been in any position to actually consider what it takes to profitably produce television in 2025.”
It’s been a few years but I have worked in television, on projects with or without a budget. But I don’t think it takes a mass comm degree to criticize a show. I get it technology has changed the game, but I can still think the virtual set looks cheesy and cheap just like I would’ve said had my former employer opted to do the entire newscast from a green screen.
It’s likely your former employer may now be producing that newscast with that dreaded green screen now, especially if the station is owned by an increasingly cost conscious conglomerate like Sinclair or Nexstar. And a lot has changed in a very short time, especially in light of recent consolidations and accelerated declines. The reality is what it is, and there’s little any of us can do about it.