Some real news about Buzzr!

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 stations falling over themselves to carry the diginet just because they've added another thirty-year-old game show. In fact, Buzzr seems to have given up on expanding regular TV carriage by giving away its live feed on its Internet site.

By the way, I wouldn't be surprised if Buzzr uses its Twitch feed to preview Classic Concentration. That outlet needs all the viewers it can get.

In other news Buzzr will start airing color eps of To Tell the Truth - it looks like the Garry Moore 1969-77 version - on October 1 as well. All my comments, including the sour ones, about Classic Concentration also apply to this news. Except TTTT is definitely not a non-Fremantle show. It was Mark Goodson's favorite show.

Finally, a commenter notes that Game TV in Canada seems to have dropped its Buzzr-branded late night block of programming. Again, regular (or "linear") TV doesn't seem promising for Buzzr in its current form. I'm reading tea leaves, but I detect some Ron Glankler influence in Buzzr's move toward OTT streaming.

UPDATE: There's also news that Buzzr will run color Password from the 1960s and syndie What's My Line starting in October. I wonder if the overstuffed (with ads) B&W shows will get cut back. We'll see soon enough. Right now the online Buzzr schedule only runs through the week of September 17-23.

UPDATED UPDATE: Just saw this on the Buzzr Twitter feed...

Coming to #BUZZR starting October 1st!!! (ALL TIMES ET)
Classic Concentration M-F @ 1:00p & 1:30p
Tattletales M-F @ 2:00p
To Tell The Truth ('73 Moore) M-F @ 2:30p
What’s My Line ('72, Blyden) M-F @ 3:00p
Password ('66, Ludden) M-F @ 3:30p 

So the afternoon B&W block is definitely gone. Don't know if the black and white shows will survive elsewhere.

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