A network that's dedicated to game shows.
Founded in 1994 and currently owned by Sony Pictures Television, Game Show Network originally featured reruns of classic TV game shows from the 1950s onward. At first, the network's rerun lineup ran the gamut from Goodson-Todman stalwarts (such as The Price Is Right, Password, Family Feud, and Match Game) to programs produced by Sony themselves (such as Pyramid, Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, Tic-Tac-Dough, The Newlywed Game, and The Joker's Wild). In the late 1990s, the network began creating its own games, starting with live call-in programs and eventually branching out into original formats and revivals.
The network has caught flack by a subset of game show fans for airing contemporary and recent shows note , including the network's own original programming, instead of retro reruns. Their treatment of classic game show reruns since the 2000s hasn't done them any favors. The network eventually lost the rights to the Goodson-Todman library for good, save for a few standouts, and instead focused on a larger push towards original programming.
Beginning in March of 2004, the network began using the abbreviated "GSN" moniker; ushering in one of the most infamous eamples of Network Decay. GSN expanded its programming scope to not only include reality competitions, but poker, and even programs that were only tangibly related to game shows or any kind of competition, if at all. Things would cool down towards the end of The New '10s, as the network's programming would shift back towards more traditional game shows and formats. This shift culminated in a 2018 refresh that would even restore Game Show Network's full name.note
Compare and contrast Buzzr, a digital subchannel network run by Fremantle (the current owners of the Goodson-Todman library among others), and the former "Nickelodeon Games and Sports for Kids" network.
Original GSN programming, counting revivals of existing formats:
- 20Q
- America Says
- American Bible Challenge
- As Seen On...
- Baggage
- Big Saturday Night
- Bingo America (semi-revival of National Bingo Night, using the same ball cage)
- Black And White Overnite (also known as "Sunday Night In Black & White")
- Burt Luddin's Love Buffet
- Camouflage (hidden words rather than hidden pictures)
- Carnie Wilson: Unstapled
- Caroline and Friends
- Catch 21 (revival of Gambit)
- Chain Reaction (revival of 1980s-90s game show)
- The Chase (update of the UK show)
- Chuck Woolery: Naturally Stoned
- Club A.M. (and its successor, GSN Live)
- Common Knowledge
- Cram
- DJ Games
- Decades (and its revival, Super Decades)
- Divided (based on UK series)
- Drew Carey's Improv-A-Ganza
- Emogenius
- Extreme Gong (revival of The Gong Show)
- Fake-A-Date
- Faux Pause
- Friend or Foe?
- Grand Slam (US debut of a British format)
- Hellevator
- Hollywood Showdown
- How Much Is Enough?
- Idiotest
- Inquizition
- Late Night Liars
- Lingo (revival of the 1980s game show)
- Lovers Lounge
- Mall Masters
- The Money List
- National Lampoon's Funny Money
- The Newlywed Game (2009 revival)
- 1 vs. 100 (Carrie Ann Inaba revival)
- PlayMania
- The Pyramid (2012 revival)
- Russian Roulette
- Skin Wars (Reality competition with professional body painters)
- Skin Wars: Fresh Paint (Features people from several artistic fields doing body painting for the first time)
- That's the Question
- Throut And Neck
- Trivia Track
- Whammy! (revival of Press Your Luck)
- When Did That Happen?
- Winsanity
- WinTuition
This network provides examples of:
- Ad Bumpers: They occasionally do ones themed to both reruns of old shows, and to their original works.
- April Fools' Day: In 2003, the hosts of the network's original shows at the time traded places, except for Chuck Woolery who stayed with Lingo. That day's Lingo featured four of the hosts playing a charity game against each other, with remaining host Todd Newton serving as announcer/comic relief.
- Credits Pushback: Originally nonexistent. Until 1999, the only thing Game Show Network did during the credits was a brief, unobtrusive voiceover for other network programming that echoed those of the classic games and was typically placed over the "coming up" voiceovers of the original episode. It wasn't until the 2000s, and especially since the "GSN" era, that this trope was used and abused to point of fan backlash.
- Digital Destruction: They have been giving older shows a film look more often that not recently instead of making videotape look smooth and fluid, including slightly newer shows, such as Deal Or No Deal and Catch 21. They had previously done this for the one episode of All-Star Secrets they showed, and the unsold pilot, Babble.n
- Kids Block: "Kids Zone", a block of youth-centered episodes of adult game shows (e.g., "Teen Week" of Wheel of Fortune), junior versions of game shows (e.g., Joker! Joker! Joker!, Jep! and Wheel 2000) and kids-only programs (Juvenile Jury, The Quiz Kids Challenge) was aired on Saturday mornings, with young Kimberly Aaberg doing pre-show and commercial bumpers.
- The Remake: Done often to obscurities. Of the post-2004 lineup, the Woolery-hosted revival of Lingo was the best received, while Catch 21 is considered by fans to be a worthy Gambit revamp. The latter show was popular enough in reruns to warrant a revival in 2019.
