Fun and games on the free encyclopedia

Once upon a time I worked for free on Jimbo Wales' farm, a.k.a. Wikipedia.

In fact, I piled up more than eleven thousand edits and even a featured article on the site. Then I finally got tired of the middle-school cliquishness and paranoia that plagues the project. Besides, I figured it would be more fun to write my own blog.

But once in a while I scratch the Wiki itch and chip in a few anonymous edits to Jimbo's big pile of stuff. Yesterday I added a couple of favorable sentences to the America Says article to balance the sour appraisal by critic Bradley Clarke. (He's the guy I mentioned in my previous blog post.)

To give the devil (or Jimbo) his due, Wikipedia does have a bunch of pretty decent articles on game shows. In this blog's sidebar, there's a link to the long list of Wikipedia's game show entries. I also use the separate Wikia site on U.S. game shows, which offers more tidbits on almost any show you could want to research.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HQ co-founder dies at age 35

Image
Colin Kroll, co-founder of live game show app HQ , has died of an apparent drug overdose. He was 35. Mr. Kroll's girlfriend called police late last night because he wasn't answering phone calls at his Manhattan apartment. Officers found him unconscious in his bedroom with drug paraphernalia. Attempts to revive him failed, and his death is tentatively ascribed to an overdose of cocaine and heroin. Mr. Kroll had faced career issues before he hit it big with HQ . There were reports about his aggressive and possibly harassing executive style, though no formal complaints were ever filed. Twitter fired him before he founded HQ with Rus Yusopov. At its peak of popularity the live game show app attracted more than two million players and spawned a host of imitators. The show has since declined in popularity, though it still draws a sizeable audience. Rus Yusopov remembered Mr. Kroll in a tweet earlier today. "I will forever remember [Colin] for his kind soul and big heart. He ma
Read more

Live in Tunica

Image
Game Show Forum doesn't spend all their time parsing tiny details of long defunct shows. Once in a while a poster actually comments on something that happened less than three decades ago. For instance, this thread discusses a GSF member's experience at The Price is Right's live show when it trundled through Tunica, MS. Long story short: he had a blast and won $350. Todd Newton helmed this particular show, and the poster burbles with enthusiasm for Todd's hosting skills... I was beyond impressed with both the hosting and announcing [by Todd Newton and Randy West] and their interaction throughout was really great...as much as I have defended CBS's choice of Drew Carey over the years, while I understand their reasoning, they made a mistake not picking Todd Newton...his hosting was effortless and he kept us laughing and engaged throughout...and he and Randy make a great team. According to then TPiR showrunner Roger Dobkowitz, Todd Newton did get an audition for the
Read more

Some real news about Buzzr!

Image
This makes three posts in a row about Buzzr, just when I was lamenting a dearth of news. As an update to a previous post noted, Buzzr has announced on Twitter and Facebook that Classic Concentration will arrive on the diginet October 1. They came up with a cute rebus for the news. I assume it's the Alex Trebek 1987-91 show and not some other version of Concentration . Alex's mustache will be back on the air, and that's a major game show happening in itself. This may be one of the "non-Fremantle" shows that GM Mark Deetjen was talking about. Concentration began as a Barry-Enright project, of course, and was then owned by NBC, though the Goodson bunch took over production duties for the 1987-91 version. It's complicated. See Wikipedia for the gory details. As I sourly note in a comment on a previous post, this sounds like news that will thrill the game show Interwebs but do little to expand Buzzr's audience beyond the oldie hardcores. I don't see TV
Read more