Tattletales
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Tattletales was a game show which first aired on the CBS daytime schedule on February 18, 1974. It was hosted by Bert Convy, with several announcers (Jack Clark, Gene Wood, Johnny Olson, and John Harlan) providing the voiceover at various times.
The show's premise was based on questions asked about celebrity couples' personal and/or love lives.
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[edit] Gameplay
The show went through two formats during its two stints on CBS, with the first featured only during the first month of the original run.
[edit] Format 1
In round one, while the husbands (sometimes the wives) are isolated in an enclosed room behind the main set, Convy asked their spouses two questions (usually they started with "It happened at..." and then Convy would complete the question). After each question was read, a wife/husband would buzz in to answer the question. Then after answering the question, the spouse who had buzzed in would then give a one- or two-word clue that her husband/his wife would recognize. Then the isolated spouses appeared on monitors in front of their wives/husbands. Host Convy would then ask the question to the husbands/wives, followed by the clue, after which the husband/wife who buzzed in first (with buzzers of their own in the isolation room) got the right to answer. Then if the husband's/wife's answer matched his wife's/her husband's, the couple won money for their rooting section, based on the length of the clue ($100 for a one-word clue and $50 for a two-word). After the questions, host Convy would then ask another question to the couples called a Tattletale Quickie (it was usually multiple-choice) in which all couples participated. On his/her turn, each wife/husband would answer the question, and then his/her spouse appeared and answered the same question. Each match on the quickie was worth $100. The roles were reversed in round two.
[edit] Format 2
By spring, Tattletales dropped the first part of the round in favor of all Tattletale Quickies for the entire half hour, thus no longer referring to them by that name. In addition, the scoring format changed; each question had a pot of $150. If two or all three couples matched, they split the pot ($75 for two couples & $50 for all three); but if only one couple matched, they got the whole pot. If nobody matched, the money was carried over to the next question, making the next question worth $300 (or $450). Again, the roles were reversed in round two. The final question was worth double, meaning $300 went to any one couple who matched, $150 to two and $100 to all three.
[edit] Money for Rooting Sections
In all versions, all three "rooting sections" (one-third of the studio audience, divided into the colors of red, "banana" (yellow), and blue) divided the money their respective couples won for them. The couple with the most money at the end of the show won the game, earning their rooting section a bonus of $1000. If the game ended in a tie between two or among all three couples, the bonus was split ($500 for two rooting sections, $334 for all three).
[edit] Scheduling History
When CBS placed Tattletales at 4 p.m. Eastern/3 p.m. Central on February 18, 1974; the network put the show in the unenviable position of being the recipient of anger from devoted fans of the soap opera The Secret Storm, which had been canceled ten days earlier. Nevertheless, packager Goodson-Todman continued its winning streak with Tattletales, and it formed the last third of an afternoon block including The Price is Right and the ratings-leading Match Game. Convy's fresh face and the lighthearted gameplay made it a good fit for the timeslot in the beginning.
Its main challenges came in the form of shows that CBS, ironically enough, had cast off to other networks. May would witness ABC plugging in The $10,000 Pyramid against Tattletales; until Christmas, the two shows deadlocked into a struggle for first place, leaving NBC's Somerset well behind. After that, though, ABC gave Pyramid an earlier timeslot, and the succeeding show, Money Maze, did not keep Pyramid's momentum, so Tattletales won the ratings and, at that time of day, clearances battles.
All three networks' daytime lineups spent the mid-1970s in a state of rapid flux, though, as they used shows as parts of strategies to gain an upper hand on the competitors; it was not unheard of for even short-lived games to run in two or more timeslots. Tattletales did not escape this, as CBS shoved it ahead a half-hour in June 1975 (along with MG) to fill a gap left by Price's return to mornings. At 3:30/2:30, it faced the last half of NBC's recently-expanded Another World, still a strong soap favorite. However, by Thanksgiving, the two shows got pushed back to their original times when CBS began airing daytime reruns of All In The Family. Tattletales remained undisturbed for the next two years, even against NBC's Gong Show phenomeon.
On the day it returned to 4/3, however, ABC placed yet another CBS cast-off there, The Edge of Night. Even though Edge's ratings experienced a free-fall in its last three years on CBS which ABC could not reverse, CBS apparently felt that Tattletales was not strong enough to handle Edge over the long haul. So, it decided to put MG, fresh from an ill-advised move to 11/10 a.m., at 4/3 in December 1977, with Tattletales taking over the mid-morning vacancy. This proved fatal; NBC's Wheel of Fortune sounded the death knell for the four-year-old G-T game, which ran its 1,075th and last episode on March 31, 1978, giving way to a 13-week Bill Cullen entry, Pass the Buck.
Apparently in anticipation of the imminent cancellation, Goodson-Todman contracted with Viacom to distribute a weekly syndicated version beginning in September 1977. Few stations were interested in a nighttime Tattletales, however, and it only lasted one season.
By 1982, CBS had been through, after MG's cancellation, a soap opera, a sitcom rerun, and an experimental news magazine at 4/3, none of which enticed stations to stop defecting in favor of cartoons and syndicated sitcom reruns. So, programmers decided to ask Mark Goodson to bring Tattletales back, and it returned, with host Convy and the original set, on January 18. This time, the network left the game alone, allowing it to hold the slot until June 1, 1984, when Goodson tried another format, the Tom Kennedy-hosted Body Language. Neither Goodson nor his successor companies have revived the show since that time.
[edit] Trivia
- The show was based on a syndicated Goodson-Todman show aired during the 1969-1970 season, He Said, She Said. Joe Garagiola hosted that program.
- In 1972, a TV pilot was produced for what eventually become Tattletales. The pilot was named Celebrity Matchmates and was emceed by Gene Rayburn, who at the time was hosting CBS's Amateur's Guide to Love. By the time the pilot was successfully sold to the network in early 1974, Rayburn was already hosting Match Game, which in the mid-1970s usually preceded Tattletales on the CBS afternoon lineup; Bert Convy got the job instead.
- Cash prizes on game shows are typically awarded to contestants in the form of a check, mailed weeks after a show has been taped. Because of the impracticality (e.g., postal costs) of doing this for an entire studio audience, Tattletales kept a check-cutting machine in the studio, and distributed the money to the audience members on their way out immediately after the show.
- Convy was awarded a Daytime Emmy for hosting in 1977.
- Occasionally during the 1970s run, Bert Convy and his wife, Anne, would play the game, most often during weeks in which the panel was comprised entirely of other game show hosts and their spouses; among the hosts who filled in for Convy during these episodes were Gene Rayburn, Bob Barker, Bobby Van, Jack Narz and Richard Dawson.
- The 1980s version did not always use married couples, occasionally featuring special weeks with teams consisting of best friends, parent-child, and other combinations.
