The Big Showdown
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The Big Showdown was a game show that aired on the ABC television network from December 23, 1974 to July 4, 1975. Jim Peck was the host, and Dan Daniel, then a disc jockey on New York City's WMCA radio, was the announcer. The series was recorded at ABC's New York studios and packaged by Don Lipp and Ron Greenberg, with assistance by MCA Television. Greenberg had previously packaged NBC's The Who, What or Where Game (1969-1974)
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[edit] Front game format, round 1 (The Big Showdown)
Three contestants competed, one a returning champion.
Peck read the first question of the game to the contestants as a one point toss-up for control of the board. The player who answered it got to choose from six categories, with questions ranging from 1-6 points (symbolized on the game board as faces on a die) in value, depending on the category. The player who answered the first question began the game by choosing a category, with its corresponding point value. All of the questions were toss-ups (ala Jeopardy and Sale of the Century); with the first player to buzz in and answer correctly gaining control of the board. There were no penalties for answering incorrectly; however, any player missing a question got locked out for the rest of the question, with the other players eligible to buzz in and answer.
A number was determined before the round to be the "payoff point," and the first player to hit it would win a cash bonus varying from $25 to $500 (set by a randomizer dial in host Peck's podium). A player had to hit the payoff point exactly- if a contestant was in danger of surpassing it with any correct answer, he or she would be locked out of that particular question, and a player could not select a category that was worth more than the value needed to hit the target number. In the event of a "double block" (two contestants who could not attain the payoff point on a particular category), the player who selected the category got to hear the entire question unopposed. Trailing contestants often used this as a vital strategy to disable the contestant(s) in the lead, in order to gain an upper hand.
Once the target number is reached, that player won the cash bonus, and a new target number was established, raised proportionally to several points above the leading contestant's score. The first round consisted of at least four target numbers, sometimes five, depending on the amount of time used before going into the "speedround" (discussed below).
Two sets of categories were played (the first one using only two target numbers; the second set of categories using its third and subsequent target numbers), and a 90-second "speedround" finished off the first segment (with each payoff point after the one currently in play worth $100). At the end of the round, the player with the lowest point score retired from the game with his or her winnings, and the two remaining contestants advanced to the "Final Showdown." In the event of a tie for second place, Peck asked the two players a tie-breaking question from the one-point category, with the first to buzz in with a right answer moving on to the second round, and an incorrect response eliminating that player from the game.
[edit] The Final Showdown
In the "Final Showdown," the two remaining contestants competed to hit a payoff point of seven. Three categories were played (again represented by faces on a die), and the point values were 1, 2, and 3, respectively. The same rules from the first round applied; a player could not exceed seven points, and all questions were toss-ups. The first player to reach seven points won the game and an additional $250.
[edit] The bonus round
The champion of the day now had a chance to win $10,000 by rolling dice. The dice were standard six-sided dice, but the sixes were covered up with a board on which the words "Show" and "Down" were printed on one die apiece. Model Heather Cunningham joined the show at this point to assist the contestant by handing him or her the dice to roll.
The player would then throw the dice onto a long table (similar to that used on High Rollers, but with a well at the end in order for host Peck to remove the dice). If "Showdown" came up on the first roll, the contestant would win $10,000 instantly. If not (which happened almost all of the time), the number shown (between one and ten) would serve as the payoff point. The contestant then had 30 seconds to roll the dice as many times as he or she possibly could, with Cunningham handing off new pairs of dice for each roll and Peck removing a completed roll from the well. Every time the player hit the payoff point, it netted the contestant $250 and an extra five seconds of rolling time after the conclusion of the original 30 seconds. If "Showdown" came up, the contestant earned $5,000, plus any money won by hitting the payoff point.
If after the initial 30 seconds the player had not rolled "Showdown," but had hit the payoff point at least once, he or she would receive whatever bonus time he/she had earned (five seconds per point) to roll "Showdown;" the payoff point bonus, of course, went out of play at this point. If the player rolled "Showdown" during the bonus time, he or she earned $5,000.
Statistically, a player should have won $10,000 on at least one show out of 36 attempts, but far more than 36 shows went by without a winner. The results in the $5,000 rolls demonstrated that the dice were unbiased, but as the weeks went by, the producers likely became somewhat embarrassed by the big prize never being awarded. Finally, on the 100th show sometime in March or April 1975, the winner rolled "Showdown" on her first roll, winning the $10,000 prize. The producers wanted regular viewers who may have missed that day's episdoe to know the prize had been hit, so on the next week's shows, they used a clip of the $10,000 roll to open the show. Beginning sometime in January, the show began with a montage featuring clips of players making $10,000 and $5.000 rolls; this was almost identical to the opening sequence of the program preceding Showdown on ABC's daytime schedule, The $10,000 Pyramid.
It should be noted that the sides of the dice showing "Show" and "Down" did not count as a six. Instead the point total on any roll where only one of the words was displayed was the number showing on the other die. Therefore, with this set of dice it was possible to roll a count of one. It also changed the probability of rolling certain numbers from those of standard dice. The probabilities with this set of dice are:
1: 2 out of 36
2: 3 out of 36
3: 5 out of 36
4: 5 out of 36
5: 6 out of 36
6: 5 out of 36
7: 4 out of 36
8: 3 out of 36
9: 2 out of 36
10: 1 out of 36
[edit] Jim Peck's fall
During the program's 68th episode (about half-way through the series' run), Peck was walking down the spiral staircase at the back of the set to his podium at the program's opening as usual. This time was not like the others, however--he hit one step (all of which were quite shallow), slipped, and fell. He got up, dusted himself off, and laughed along with the audience (and announcer Daniel, who can be clearly heard laughing into his micrphone), remarking sarcastically afterward, "Sure! You people would applaud a lynching!" Later on in the same episode, he walked back to the staircase, giving the offending stair a swift kick.
[edit] Broadcast History/Scheduling
ABC placed Showdown at 2:30 p.m./1:30 p.m., replacing an updated remake of Queen for a Day titled The Girl in My Life. The show faced several obstacles not of its own making to attaining ratings success:
- Although the program went up against a fast-declining soap opera on CBS, The Edge of Night, it unfortunately faced NBC's The Doctors, which was at the height of its popularity at the time. NBC thus won the ratings in that timeslot handily, much as it had done against The Girl in My Life and the earlier Dating Game.
- Unlike its competitors, ABC schedulers of that day purposefully scattered programs of different genres across its daytime grid from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Eastern, often attempting to counterprogram other popular shows with alternatives appealing to another audience (in this case, a game generally favored by teenagers and college students against two soaps, whose clientele was predominantly housewives). It was not until ABC began to gradually consolidate its reruns, games, and soaps into contiguous blocks in the late 1970s that the network finally became a true full-fledged force in daytime television. By that point, all three networks generally placed their games before 12:30 p.m., with soaps afterward; reruns usually appeared at the "fringe" times of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
- ABC debuted Showdown on a date that possibly impaired its ability to make an effective first impression, the day before Christmas Eve. Because much of its core audience was likely too busy making household preparations for the holiday, many probably did not catch the premiere, around which the network usually does most if not all of its promotion for a new show. By the time the holidays were over, they probably were unaware of the program, and tuned to CBS and NBC instead.
- Games featuring fairly difficult quizzes, which had been quite successful in the early 1970s, began to go out of fashion rapidly as the 1970s reached its halfway point. Among the cancellations that occurred during Showdown's six-month run were ABC's Split Second, CBS' The Joker's Wild, and NBC's Jeopardy. Despite the intense and challenging gameplay, Showdown could not buck the trend toward escapist prize-oriented shows such as Price is Right and Wheel of Fortune or comedy showcases like Hollywood Squares and Match Game.
Concurrently with the tenure of Showdown, ABC ran another Don Lipp offering (in conjunction with Dick Cavett), Money Maze. In a rare coincidence, both Showdown and Maze premiered and ended on the same dates. The two games represented Lipp's only effort as a packager.
Jim Peck, a Milwaukee TV personality, made his national debut on this show. Other than several syndicated shows, he only hosted ABC programs.
[edit] Episode Status
The "fall" episode (episode #68; see above) and the pilot are believed to be the only two episodes of the series that still exist, although one clip of a bonus round from another show does exist. The show's pilot was virtually the same as what made it to air. The pilot, simply called "Showdown", featured a slightly different set and theme, and Mark Frederickson was the announcer. The title of the show was changed likely due to an earlier unrelated game show called "Showdown" which aired in 1966.
