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"Blackout — it's not your average game show!" Describe Blackout here.CBS Game Show hosted by Bob Goen and produced by Jay Wolpert, whose other major contribution to the game show world was Whew! Thankfully, the game this time around isn't as unnecessarily complicated.Nice job blacking out, there.In each round, two celebrity/civilian teams had to successfully fill in the four blanks of a sentence with clue words. One team had its celebrity record 20 seconds of themselves describing one of the words in the puzzle, while the other player wore headphones so they couldn't hear it. (They would switch seats the following round.) However, once the description was played back to the contestant, the other team could hold down a plunger in front of them known as the "Blackout Button." The Button allowed its user to mute out up to seven seconds of the description, hopefully removing enough key information to prevent the contestant from guessing correctly, since doing so would earn their team $100 and a chance to solve the puzzle. (An extra second of Blackout time would be accorded for each duplicated key word). Teams alternated giving, censoring, and solving until a team solved two puzzles, which gave them the chance to play for $10,000 in the bonus round.In the event of a tie, there would be a sudden death round where the leading player would have the option of describing the single word (for ten seconds) or censoring three seconds of the description. Again, every duplicated key word would allow the opponent to mute out an extra second of the playback. Since neither teammate could hear the description, the wrong word would automatically lose.Blackout is a cult classic whose brevity can be chalked up to bad timing and stiff competition — it replaced The $25,000 Pyramid on January 4, 1988 and faced not only the still-popular Sale Of The Century on NBC but also a massive outcry from viewers toward the network for killing off the Dick Clark-hosted game. The resulting low ratings caused Blackout to be canned on April 1. The show was then replaced with a final 13 weeks of Pyramid, which would be canned (for good this time) on July 1st in favor of Ray Combs' Family Feud.Tagline spoken in several promos for the series. Game Show Tropes in use:
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