Maxene Fabe and "Wheel"

^Actually, a Wheel incident is mentioned on Page 8: an overhead light blew out right as a contestant hit Bankrupt. Taping halted for 15 minutes, then the director told the contestant "We got the shot of the [W]heel, but we lost you. Look disappointed." She obliged.

That was a necessary stopdown, unlike what happened in Season 28 or 29 where they stopped tape because the contestant didn't give an acceptable response to (I think) hitting $3,500. And the time last season where they stopped for 10 minutes because the video wall froze.

She also mentions Wheel on Pages 28 and 30 while talking about Lin Bolen; the former notes that Wheel is her only show still on the air, while the latter states that her biggest "young studs" find was Chuck Woolery, "well-known to his fans for his enthusiasm over the show's prizes and his casual approach to cue cards". And Wheel isn't one of your 40 greatest game shows because...?

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Some other things I found amusing, sometimes morbidly:
* Fabe claims that the people who work on game shows, from the packagers and network down, are nice...and that she couldn't detect any of the cynicism the critics claimed was present. It was closer to a true statement in 1979.
* Stereotype categories already existed in '79, including "Swinging Single", "Young Married", "Uniform", and "Character".
* Fabe also says that people shouldn't bother to audition "if you have an obvious handicap or a potentially unsettling occupation or a "disturbing" marital status". She doesn't clarify what she means by any of these.
* She mentions that "Charley" O'Donnell is a warm-up guy/announcer for Merv Griffin's company. (She also uses "Gene Woods".)
* Fabe says Walter Cronkite was set to host It's News to Me until CBS got image-conscious. She also claims it was hosted by Jack Paar; neither is true -- it was hosted by Bud Collyer, then Cronkite.

Some parts of this book were clearly written in 1977, but Fabe didn't care enough to double-check things in '79: Family Feud having a front-game goal of 200 points (not dollars) and families can only return if they won Fast Money (which is wrong), the Nielsen graph for the three networks from 1973-77, and The New Treasure Hunt being referred to as still on the air.

This thing is in a state of flux, really.

* The Match Game floor plan illustration on Page 71 has a semicircular table for the contestant area rather than two podiums, signifying that this is from the 1973 pilots.
* Wheel is mentioned again on Page 74, noting that a cameraman is positioned in mid-air to shoot down onto the playing area. It also mentions that Ed Flesh was a "disciple" of Marty Pasetta.
* Pages 74-76 mention "the worst sets ever", which somehow includes Video Village and Double Dare.
* "The prize must be a pure extension of the format. It cannot be indiscriminately given. To be meaningful to the contestant, and more important, to the audience, it must be fairly won or lost." -Ralph Edwards
* Page 78: "...the network allots a budget to the game show offering merchandise prizes. Does the game show then go out and use its allowance to purchase the products it uses as prizes the way you or I would, outright, at a department store? No." Suuuure they don't...
* Page 80: "Delivery usually takes ninety days from the show's air date, as opposed to the date the show was taped and that wait can be as long as six weeks!" And Wheel tends to hold episodes for ten months. Or what about shows that don't air at all?
* Fabe claims Gambit was "a short-lived" game on Page 81. If four years is "short", then...?
* Page 82 states that The Price Is Right prides itself on offering unusual prizes. They did get out of that phase, though...
* And then on Page 84, it mentions about prize taking/leaving, but exchanging it for cash is out of the question because "the world saw you win that yacht, and that's what you get". Except that shows do sometimes substitute a prize with its value in cash.
* An incident is mentioned where a big winner on Be My Guest (Rose Schmetterling) couldn't get what she won because the show had run out of money, so they gave her a gift certificate for the amount she won...in cold cuts. Which she couldn't redeem.
* Short-sightedness on P.88: "Still, so long as the money to be amassed in games is so astronomical, the real question will continue to be: Will the next solid-gold show be on Network #1, Network #2, or Network #3?" Answer: syndication.
* The Joker's Wild is constantly referred to using "is", and John Rhineheart is referred to as being a "former" NBC West Coast representative.
* Fabe claims that Jeopardy! had been on for eleven years at the end of 1973, being at Noon. Wrong.
* Page 103 mentions a Doctor I.Q. Jr. series. Lew Valentine, James McClain, and Stanley Vainrib (who?) are mentioned as having played the mental banker at some point.
* Page 119 again says that out of more than 700 games, "forty of them would succeed". There were considerably more than 40 successful game shows.
* For reasons I can't fathom, Pages 123-124 (covering Winner Take All) were torn out at some point.
* Some interesting stories about the original Break the Bank on P.130, including a woman who eventually won $13,000 after her young daughter slipped away and ran onstage.
* Apparently, one "famous" guest panelist on What's My Line? was fielding answers from a hand-signaling friend in the audience, and never came back.

A break here to note Fabe's inconsistency and just plain wrong facts: according to her, Jack Narz never hosted Beat the Clock; Anything You Can Do aired on ABC in 1971; Johnny Carson was lured away by NBC to do The Tonight Show in 1960; the original Price debuted in September 1954 and used the two-Showcases endgame (the "Showcase Showdown"); Say When!! only aired in 1961 (none of this crap about airing until 1965); and The New Price Is Right debuted in 1974...

*headdesk*

* There was also an instance on Masquerade Party where Gloria Swanson stormed out of the studio as, despite spending two hours to put together her costume, she was identified immediately.
* Name That Tune is mentioned as having returned in 1970, but fails to mention Richard Hayes or Dennis James.
* Apparently Strike It Rich was revived in syndication during 1973, hosted by Tom Kelly.
* Oh, and the announcer for Woody Woodbury's tenure wasn't Carson's original announcer (Bill Nimmo) -- it was Del Sharbutt(?!)
* I've never heard of Lunik orbiting the same Sun as Earth...

Dotto is mentioned in the "scandals" portion of the book, and as the show which was the smoking gun (unlike Quiz Show, which was written by a bit player of the scandals as historical revision {mostly to inflate his role}), but its extreme popularity is not pointed out.

There's a few other things, such as failing to mention how Hugh Downs was also doing Today on NBC, but at this point I stopped caring.

Finally, Fabe's "ten worst shows" are a mixed bag: some (like You're In The Picture) are deservedly present, but the list includes such shows as Dream House, Make Me Laugh, Sense and Nonsense, and Supermarket Sweep.