You Don't Say!
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You Don't Say! was an American television game show that had three separate runs on television. The first version aired on NBC daytime from April 1, 1963 to September 26, 1969 (with a nighttime run in 1963-64). Years later, ABC ran a revival from July 7 to November 28, 1975 (replacing The Money Maze). A final version appeared in syndication during 1978-79, but did not last the entire season.
Ralph Andrews Productions produced all three versions of You Don't Say!, with Desilu Productions co-producing the original NBC run.
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[edit] Hosts and Announcers
The original version and ABC version of YDS! were hosted by Tom Kennedy; Jim Peck hosted the syndicated version.
Jay Stewart and John Harlan announced for the show (Stewart, on the earliest episodes of the original; Harlan, the rest of the original and its two subsequent revivals).
[edit] NBC 1963-69 format
Two celebrity-contestant teams competed.
The object was to convey the name of a famous person by giving clues, leading to words that sounded like part of the person's name. The contestant then had to sound the words out to figure out the person in question.
The celebrities were not allowed to use anything that might give away the answer or to give a clue that would lead to the proper name of the person. They also could not say the clue to the contestant, with the penalty being loss of control for any violation.
Each correct guess won a point, with three points winning the game.
Bonus Board
The winning contestant played the Bonus Board for a chance at $300.
A famous name (sent in by a home viewer) was given to the celebrity, who tried to convey the name to the contestant by way of clues. Guessing the word on the first clue won $300. The second clue netted $200, and the third, $100.
If a contestant swept the front game and got the name right on the first try, he or she also won a new car.
Players stayed on until losing twice or winning seven times (NBC's limit at that time).
[edit] ABC 1975 format
When You Don't Say! returned in 1975, it also returned with a new format, influenced largely by the success of CBS' Match Game.
Gone were the two teams. Instead, two individual players competed, with four celebrities on a panel.
The celebrities once again tried to convey the identity of a famous person or place to the contestants. One celebrity gave a clue to the controlling contestant, who had five seconds to guess who it was with a correct word guess. If it wasn't guessed, the next celebrity in line gave a clue to the next contestant. This continued until one player guessed the word, with a maximum of four clues.
A correct guess on the first clue was worth $200, and decreased in $50 increments for each clue needed afterwards. $500 won the game and a chance to win $10,000 more at the Bonus Board.
'70s Bonus Board
The Bonus Board changed also.
A contestant was faced with the task of giving the clues to four famous names or places to the celebrities. The contestant had a maximum of six (originally five) clues to give to the stars. A celebrity guessing one right was worth $500, two $1000, three $2000, with all four stars netting the player $5000. If it only took four clues, the contestant won $10,000.
Again, players competed until losing twice (or hitting the $20,000 ABC winnings limit in place at the time).
[edit] 1978 Syndicated format
Peck's version was played very similar to the ABC version, with the following exceptions:
- Two contestants would play on the first two games of the week, while two more would play the next two days. In a tournament fashion, the highest scorers from those games would play each other on Friday.
- Instead of cash being awarded on a scale for each correct answer, every answer scored only one point, regardless of the number of clues necessary, with five winning the game; while correct answers were worth $100 apiece on the Monday-Thursday shows and $200 on Fridays, these payouts were not reflected in the scoring.
- If the game ended in a tie due to time running out, the player who needed fewer clues during the course of the game was declared the winner.
- The Bonus Board was played for a flat $5000 on Monday-Thursday, with the Friday game being played for $10,000 in prizes.
[edit] Scheduling History
NBC's answer to CBS' hit game Password (see "Notes" below), YDS! joined the network's afternoon lineup in spring 1963 at 3:30 Eastern/2:30 Central. Its nemesis throughout most of its run was the popular CBS soap The Edge of Night, which led it in the ratings. However, weak competition from numerous ABC soaps helped keep YDS! afloat for a solid five years. This changed, however, when ABC scored a surprising success at 3:30/2:30 with One Life to Live, which premiered in July 1968. The new, youth-oriented, intrigue-driven soap stole quite a portion of the YDS! audience; furthermore, games featuring celebrities were increasingly going out of style, in favor of hard quizzes such as Jeopardy. In what may have been the largest housecleaning of its daytime schedule ever, NBC dropped YDS! and three other games, Personality, Eye Guess, and the original Match Game before the begininng of the 1969-70 season. Taking its place on the lineup was a soap titled Bright Promise, which ran until 1972.
Six years later, with CBS' revival of Match Game bringing celebrity games back into vogue, Andrews managed to interest ABC in a similar revival of YDS! Kennedy, ten days after ending a three-year stint helming ABC's Split Second, once again stepped up to the podium on July 7. However, the 4 p.m./3 Central timeslot, at which many affiliates either tape-delayed the network feed until the next morning or preempted entirely (despite the success of the likes of Dark Shadows, Password, and The $10,000 Pyramid there), proved to render the revival stillborn, despite facing NBC's fast-fading soap opera Somerset and two low-rated CBS games, Musical Chairs and Give-n-Take.
Meanwhile, an old problem would prove to drive the nail in the ABC YDS! coffin. The Edge of Night had been CBS' lowest-rated soap since its 1972 move to 2:30 Eastern/1:30 Central. With As the World Turns set to expand to a full hour, CBS decided to get rid of the 19-year-old show (which debuted on the same day in 1956, and was packaged by the same company, Procter and Gamble Productions, as ATWT). In the first instance of a daytime serial moving to another network, P&G agreed to CBS' terms, and sold Edge to ABC, who decided that the only viable slot for that show, given its long history of attracting audiences other than housewives, was 4/3. Desparate to get some affiliates back on board, ABC banked on the show's instant familiarity. Therefore, on November 28, YDS! ended its five-month run, ironically giving way to its old enemy Edge the next Monday.
The Peck version did not sell to many markets, probably because of the 1975 ABC disaster. The few stations which did buy it ran it in non-peak slots, never in proximity to primetime (save for WPIX in New York, which aired it at 8:30 PM as part of a primetime syndicated game show block). With little if any promotion, the show folded up after about a half season.
[edit] Notes
- Before its NBC premiere, You Don't Say! was given a trial run on Los Angeles station KTLA from November 1962 to early 1963, with Jack Barry as host; since Barry was still considered anathema to the networks in the wake of the 50s quiz show scandals, he was replaced by Tom Kennedy when the show went national.
- Goodson-Todman Productions sued YDS! packager Ralph Andrews during the NBC run, because they thought that the format was too similar to G-T's Password. Although Goodson-Todman did not win the case, they did win an unusual concession from Andrews: Kennedy's podium on You Don't Say! had to be moved to the end of the playing table, from the center where it originally stood, since the original set layout did indeed look very similar to that of Password.
- You Don't Say!'s replacements upon its cancellations on both networks was a soap opera: on NBC, it was Bright Promise; on ABC, the defected-from-CBS Edge of Night.
- Much like the original version, the 1975 revival was also given a trial run on KTLA in Los Angeles before its network premiere; it ran on Sunday nights from April to June of 1975, with Clark Race as host, though Tom Kennedy actually appeared as a panel celebrity.
