Trivia / Name That Tune

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• Edited for Syndication:
  • The Family Channel's repeats of the 1984 version were pared down considerably, removing most of the prize plugs and trimming segments that weren't important to the gameplay. This was mostly to make room for Fam's InterActive home player segments.
  • In August 2023, several Fox-owned stations aired syndicated reruns of the 2021 version in a test run; these airings edited individual matches from the hour-long primetime episodes into standalone, half-hour episodes, and also added a Home Participation Sweepstakes.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The main thing keeping Tune out of modern-day cable repeats is music clearances, as the show used many famous compositions that are not in the public domain.
  • The 1950s version is pretty much gone for good, aside from two Cullen episodes and a DeWitt highlight special.
  • Both 1970s NBC versions are believed to have been destroyed, although a James clip was used in this 1974 promo (which also has rare clips of High Rollers, Jeopardy!, Jackpot!, Celebrity Sweepstakes, and the surviving episode of Winning Streak) and another was used in a 1988 game show special of FOX's The Late Show. One '77 episode is known to exist, and a full James episode, from December 26, 1974, was discovered in February 2010.
  • The 1974-81 syndicated version is intact, but only about 10 episodes circulate. Luckily, at least one of these (February 23, 1978) has a $100,000 win.
  • The 1984-85 Jim Lange version is intact, and was rerun on USA Network from 1989 to 1991 and the Family Channel from 1993 to 1996. In June 2021, 20 episodes of it were placed on the Fox-owned streaming service Tubi.
• Licensed Game:
  • Milton Bradley came out with two editions in the late 1950s (during the original version's run on CBS). The game was actually a reformatted Bingo game, with the names of songs replacing the familiar numbers on players' Bingo cards. The designated emcee played a record (that was included with the game), and the players had to mark their cards with tokens when they recognized the song being played. The first player to get five-in-a-row won. The song selection was a mix of then-recent hits, old standards, folk songs and classical "pops" that would be reasonably familiar to the average late 1950s teen or adult (no rock-and-roll hits were included) but are now mostly obscure for those not knowledgeable about that era of music.
  • Imagination Games released a DVD game in 2005 with 1980s tunes, which were familiar to most at the time of release (and still are as of 2021) thanks to frequent nostalgia airplay.
• No Budget: In later tapings of the Jim Lange run, the top amount in Melody Roulette was now worth $1,000, but to compensate for this, the wheel was now spun just one time.
• Recycled Set: The newly-added home viewer contest segments for the August 2023 reruns were filmed on Jay Leno's You Bet Your Life set, slightly modified with Name That Tune graphics and logos.
• What Could Have Been: For starters, the Lange era was supposed to get another season, as it started off very good in the ratings; but then Jeopardy! came along, and the ratings plunged after stations started moving it to bad timeslots. And after that, aside from Name that Video, any attempts to revive the format have gotten stuck in Development Hell. Musician Peter Allen hosted a pilot from Marty Pasetta and Orion Television in 1990; while that version failed to make it to air, it did spawn a game for the Philips CD-i hosted by Bob Goen, and a slightly modified version of it sold in New Zealand as Face The Music. Quincy Jones-David Salzman Entertainment tried in 1996-97 to re-do the show; after their normal producing partner, Warner Bros., passed up the project, they went to Columbia TriStar Television and attemtped to pair it up with a reboot of the CTT-owned Treasure Hunt US; nope. Phil Gurin, who produced the US version of The Weakest Link, attempted a pilot in 2001; no go. CBS (who the 1990 pilot had allegedly been pitched to) shot a primetime-intended pilot in 2006 with Donny Osmond as host and a million-dollar bonus round; didn't work. They sold the rights to MTV Networks (who had previously done Name that Video, and had pitched doing pop, classic hits, and country music editions of the show for MTV, VH1, and CMT respectively), and they sold the rights to Fremantle Media in 2012; they didn't do anything with it either. In October 2020, the day it began filming, word emerged of a revival being produced for the American market in Australia—later revealed to be for Fox's winter lineup.

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