Match Game
Match Game is an American television panel game show that premiered on NBC in 1962 and has been revived several times over the course of the last six decades. The game features contestants trying to match answers given by celebrity panelists to fill-in-the-blank questions. Beginning with the CBS run of the 1970s, the questions are often formed as humorous double entendres.
The Match Game in its original version ran on NBC's daytime lineup from 1962 until 1969. The show returned with a significantly changed format in 1973 on CBS and became a major success, with an expanded panel, larger cash payouts, and emphasis on humor. The CBS series, referred to on-air as Match Game 73 to startwith its title updated every new year, ran until 1979 on CBS, at which point it moved to first-run syndication and ran for three more seasons, ending in 1982. Concurrently with the weekday run, from 1975 to 1981, a once-a-week fringe time version, Match Game PM, was also offered in syndication for airing just before prime time hours.
The 1973 format would be used, with varying modifications, for all future revivals. Match Game returned to NBC in 1983 as part of Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour, then had a daytime run on ABC in 1990 and another for syndication in 1998; each of these series lasted one season. It returned to ABC in a weekly prime time edition on June 26, 2016, running as an off-season replacement series. Production ended in 2019, but ABC again revived the show in 2025.
All versions of the series were hosted by Gene Rayburn from 1963 until 1984. The 2025 version is presented by Martin Short.
The series was a production of Mark Goodson/Bill Todman Productions, along with its successor companies, and has been franchised around the world, notably as Blankety Blank in the UK and Blankety Blanks in Australia.
In 2013, TV Guide ranked the 1973–79 CBS version of Match Game as No. 4 on its list of the 60 greatest game shows ever. It was twice nominated for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show, in 1976 and 1977.
1962–69, NBC
The Match Game premiered on December 31, 1962. Gene Rayburn was the host, and Johnny Olson served as announcer, for the series premiere, Arlene Francis and Skitch Henderson were the two celebrity panelists. The show was taped in Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, NBC's largest New York studio, which since 1975 has housed Saturday Night Live, among other shows. The show originally aired in black and white and moved to color on June 24, 1963.Both teams were given a question and each player privately wrote down their response, raising their hand when done. Then each player was asked individually to reveal their response. A team scored 25 points if two teammates matched answers or 50 points if all three contestants matched. The first team to score 100 points won $100 and played the audience match, which featured three survey questions. Each contestant who agreed with the most popular answer to a question earned the team $50, for a possible total of $450.
The questions used in the game were pedestrian in nature to begin: "Name a kind of muffin," "Write down one of the words to 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' other than 'Row,' 'Your,' or 'Boat,'" or "John loves his _____." The humor in the original series came largely from the panelists' reactions to the other answers. In 1963, NBC canceled the series with six weeks left to be recorded. Question writer Dick DeBartolo came up with a funnier set of questions, like "Mary likes to pour gravy all over John's _____," and submitted it to Mark Goodson. With the knowledge that the show could not be canceled again, Goodson gave the go-ahead for the more risqué-sounding questions, a decision that caused a significant boost in ratings and an "un-cancellation" by NBC.
The Match Game consistently won its time slot from 1963 to 1966 and again from April 1967 to July 1968, with its ratings allowing it to finish third among all network daytime TV game shows for the 1963–64 and 1967–68 seasons. NBC also occasionally used special episodes of the series as a gap-filling program in prime time if one of its movies had an irregular time slot. Although the series still did well in the ratings, it was canceled in 1969 along with other game shows in a major daytime programming overhaul, being replaced by Letters to Laugh-In which, although a spin-off of the popular primetime series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, ended in just three months, on December 26.
The Match Game continued through September 26, 1969, on NBC for 1,760 episodes, airing at 4:00 p.m. Eastern, running 25 minutes due to a five-minute newscast slot. Since Olson split time between New York and Miami to announce The Jackie Gleason Show, one of the network's New York staff announcers filled in for Olson when he could not attend a broadcast.
On February 27, 1967, the show added a "telephone match" game, in which a home viewer and a studio audience member attempted to match a simple fill-in-the-blank question, similar to the 1970s' "head-to-head match". A successful match won a jackpot, which started at $500 and increased by $100 per day until won.
Very few episodes of the 1960s The Match Game survive.
''Match Game 73–79'' (1973–79, CBS)
In the early 1970s, CBS vice president Fred Silverman began overhauling the network's programming as part of what has colloquially become known as the rural purge. As part of this overhaul, the network reintroduced game shows, beginning in 1972. One of the first new offerings was The New Price Is Right, a radically overhauled version of the 1950s game show The Price Is Right. The success of The New Price Is Right prompted Silverman to commission more game shows. In the summer of 1973, Mark Goodson and Bill Todman took a similar approach in adapting The Match Game by reworking the show, moving it to Los Angeles, adding more celebrities, and increasing the amount of prize money that could be won. It was this show that reintroduced five-figure payouts for the first time since the quiz show scandals of the late 1950s.The new version had Rayburn returning as the host and Olson returning as the announcer. The gameplay for this version had two solo contestants attempting to match the answers given by a six-celebrity panel. Richard Dawson was the first regular panelist. CBS News coverage of the Watergate hearings delayed the premiere one week from its slated date of June 25 to July 2.
The first week's panelists were Dawson, Michael Landon, Vicki Lawrence, Jack Klugman, Jo Ann Pflug, and Anita Gillette. Rayburn reassured viewers of the first week of CBS shows that "This is your old favorite, updated with more action, more money, and, as you can see, more celebrities." The first few weeks of the show were somewhat different from the rest of the run. At first, many of the questions fit into the more bland and innocuous mold of the earlier seasons of the original series. In addition, many of the frequent panelists on the early episodes were not regulars later in the series but had appeared on the 1960s version, including Klugman, Arlene Francis, and Bert Convy.
However, the double entendre in the question "Johnny always put butter on his _____" marked a turning point in the questions on the show. Soon, the tone of Rayburn's questions changed notably, leaving behind the staid topics that The Match Game had first disposed of in 1963 for more risqué humor. Celebrity panelists Brett Somers and Charles Nelson Reilly began as guest panelists on the program, with Somers brought in at the request of Klugman, who felt she would make a nice fit on the program. The chemistry between Somers and Reilly prompted Goodson–Todman and CBS to hire them as regular panelists, Somers remained on the show until 1982, while Reilly continued appearing through the 1983–84 and 1990–91 revivals, with a brief break in 1974–75 when Gary Burghoff, Nipsey Russell, and Rip Taylor substituted for him. Burghoff and Russell continued to appear as semi-regular panelists afterward.
Celebrity panelists appeared in week-long blocks, due to the show's production schedule. A number of celebrities, including Betty White, Dick Martin, Marcia Wallace, Bill Daily, Fannie Flagg, Elaine Joyce, Sarah Kennedy, Patti Deutsch, Mary Wickes, Bill Anderson, and Joyce Bulifant, were semi-regular panelists, usually appearing several times a year. Celebrity panelists also included personalities from other Goodson–Todman-produced game shows, such as The Price Is Rights Bob Barker, Anitra Ford, Janice Pennington, and Holly Hallstrom and Passwords Allen Ludden. The panelists were all seated in a strict order: The male guest panelist of the week, Somers, and Reilly usually sat in the top row from the viewer's left to right, and the female guest panelist of the week, Dawson, and a semi-regular female panelist occupied the bottom row.
Format
Two contestants competed on each episode. On the CBS version, the champion was seated in the upstage seat and the challenger was seated in the downstage seat. On the syndicated versions, which had no returning champions, positions were determined by a backstage coin toss. The object was to match the answers of the six celebrity panelists to fill-in-the-blank statements.The main game was played in two rounds. The opponent was given a choice of two statements labeled either "A" or "B". Rayburn read the statement, and the six celebrities wrote their answers on index cards. After they finished, the contestant verbally gave an answer. Rayburn then asked the celebrities, one at a time beginning in the upper left-hand corner of the panel, to respond with their answers.
While early questions were similar to those from the NBC version, the questions quickly became more humorous and risqué. Comedy writer Dick DeBartolo, who had participated in the 1960s Match Game, contributed broader and saucier questions. Frequently, the statements were written with bawdy, double entendre answers in mind. One example was, "Did you catch a glimpse of that girl on the corner? She has the world's biggest ."
Frequently, the audience responded appropriately as Rayburn critiqued the contestant's answer. For the "world's biggest" question, Rayburn might show disdain to an answer such as "fingers" or "bag" and compliment an answer such as "rear end" or "boobs", often also commenting on the audience's approving or disapproving response. The audience usually groaned or booed when a contestant or celebrity gave a bad or inappropriate answer, whereas they cheered and applauded in approval of a good answer. Sometimes, they howled at a risqué answer. At other times, their reaction was deliberately inappropriate, such as howling at a good answer or applauding a risqué answer, to perverse effect.
The contestant earned one point for each celebrity who wrote down the same answer, up to six points for matching everyone on the celebrity panel. After one contestant played, the second contestant played the other question.
A handful of potential answers were prohibited, the most notable being any synonym for genitalia. In instances where a celebrity gave the censorable answer, the word "Oops!" was superimposed over the index card and the celebrity's mouth, accompanied by a slide whistle masking the spoken response.
Popular questions featured a character named "Dumb Dora" or "Dumb Donald." These questions often began, "Dumb Dora/Donald is so dumb..." To this, in a routine taken from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, the audience responded en masse, "How dumb is she/he?" This expanded to the generalized question form "- is SO ..." To this, the audience responded, "How is he/she?" Rayburn finished the question or, occasionally, praised the audience or derided the audience's lack of union and made them try the response again. Other common subjects of questions were Superman/Lois Lane, King Kong/Fay Wray, Tarzan/Jane, The Lone Ranger/Tonto, panelists on the show, politicians, and Howard Cosell. Questions also often featured characters such as "Ugly Edna", "Unlucky Louie/Louise," "Horrible Hannah/Hank," "Rodney Rotten," and occasionally "Voluptuous Velma".
Some questions dealt with the fictitious country of "Nerdocrumbesia" or the world's greatest salesman, who could sell anything to anyone. Other questions, usually given in the second round to allow trailing contestants to catch up quickly, hinted at more obvious answers based on the context of the question. One such question was "James Bond went to an all-night restaurant. When the waitress told him they were out of coffee, he ordered a ." Because James Bond's signature drink is a martini, shaken, not stirred, the panelists and contestants were expected to choose that answer. In the most extreme cases, the questions were puns with only one answer that made sense. "Did you hear about the religious group of dentists? They call themselves the Holy " was written so that only "Molars" made sense.
Rayburn always played the action for laughs and frequently tried to read certain questions in character, such as "Old Man Periwinkle" or "Old Mrs. Pervis". He also did the same with Confucius and Count Dracula. Regular panelist Charles Nelson Reilly, a Broadway director, often responded with comments such as "I like it when you act" and "That character was really very good. Along with the other two that you do," to the amusement of the audience.
In the second round, the contestants attempted to match the celebrities whom they had not matched in the first round. On the CBS version, the challenger always began the second round. This meant that a champion who had answered only one question could be ahead of a challenger who had played both questions, rendering the final question moot. On the syndicated versions, the leader after a round played first in the next round. In case of a tie score, the contestant who had not selected their question in the previous round made the selection in the tiebreaker round.
On Match Game PM, the third round was added after the first season as games proved to be too short to fill the half-hour. Again, the only celebrities who played were those who did not match that contestant in previous rounds. On Match Game PM, the questions with the most obvious answers were typically used in the third round.
If the contestants had the same score at the end of the game, the scores were reset and the contestants played one tiebreaker question each, again attempting to match all six celebrities. Tiebreaker rounds were repeated until a winner was determined. On Match Game PM, or on the syndicated daytime show if time was running short, a time-saving variant of the tiebreaker that reversed the gameplay was used. The contestants wrote their answers first on cards in secret, then the celebrities were canvassed to give their answers verbally. Originally, this included regulars Somers, Reilly, and Dawson only, but when Dawson left the show, the canvass was expanded to include all six panelists in the usual order. The first celebrity response to match a contestant's answer gave that contestant the victory. If there was still no match, which was rare, the round was replayed with a new question. On the CBS version, the tiebreaker went on until there was a clear winner. If it came to the sudden-death tiebreaker, only the final question was kept and aired.
The CBS daytime version had returning champions, and the gameplay "straddled" between episodes, meaning episodes often began and ended with games in progress. In this version, champions stayed until they were defeated or had won $25,000, whichever occurred first. Originally, this amount was the network's winnings limit. Anything above that amount was forfeited, but the rule was later changed so that although champions retired after winning $25,000, they kept any winnings up to $35,000. During the six-year run of Match Game on CBS, only one champion, Carolyn Raisner, retired undefeated with $32,600, the highest total ever won on Match Game.
On the daily 1979–82 syndicated version, two contestants competed against each other in two games, with two new contestants replacing them afterward. The show was timed so that two new contestants appeared each Monday. This was necessary as the tapes of the show were shipped between stations, and weeks could not be aired in any discernible order. This was a common syndication practice at the time, known as "bicycling". Usually, three pairs of contestants competed in a total of six games over the five episodes for each week.
On Friday episodes that ran short, during the first season, a game was played with audience members for a small cash prize, usually $50. The game was played with regular panelist Brett Somers first. A word or phrase with a blank was asked of Somers, and she wrote it down on her card. Rayburn then circulated amongst audience members who raised their hands to play, and if the audience member matched the answer Somers had written down, they won $50. Rayburn continued picking audience members until someone matched the answer. If there was more time left, the same game was played with Charles Nelson Reilly responding to and writing down an answer for another audience member to guess.
Episodes of Match Game PM were self-contained, with two new contestants appearing each week.