Time blanks

“If you were happy every day of your life, you wouldn’t be a human being, you’d be a game show host. — American journalist Gabriel Heatter (1890-1972)

If you answered “flies” to today’s column header, chances are good that you’re a retro devotee of the classic Gene Rayburn-hosted 1973-1982 game show Match Game

At my age, there’s not a day that goes by that doesn’t remind me in one newsfeed, blog or Facebook post that — in the words of the Pickalittle (Talk-a-little) Ladies in the Tony Award-winning 1957 Meredith Willson musical “The Music Man, — “tempus fugit.”

Time flies.

Indeed, July 2nd marked the 52nd — 52nd!!!! — anniversary of the premiere episode of the CBS game show Match Game, the GOAT of all game shows, then billed as Match Game ‘73 to set it apart from Rayburn’s inaugural 1962-69 run of The Match Game on rival NBC.

While the Rayburn-hosted shows shared the same name, they couldn’t have been more different, comparing the straight-laced 1960s version of my toddlerhood to the risqué, double-entendre laden 1973-1982 version that shaped my formative childhood years in Grades 3-12 through elementary, junior high and high school.

As regular star panelist Charles Nelson Reilly once noted of the classic 1970s Match Game, it wasn’t so much of a game show as it was a well-lubricated televised cocktail party “social engagement.” Watching the show loyally daily, you could always tell which shows were taped after the boozy lunch and dinner breaks in taping, and those were always the best episodes.

Airing after school at 2:30 p.m., I’d rush home, turn on the TV, and vicariously join the bawdy Match Game cocktail party with a box of Mr. Salty pretzels and a cold bottle of RC Cola. EVERYBODY watched it back then. Be there or be square.

I thrilled to the funky synthesized disco-esque electric bass guitar riff opening, as announcer Johnny Olson (1910-85) — who launched his storied career in Wisconsin in the 1930s at Milwaukee’s WTMJ-AM emceeing The Grenadiers and Johnny Olson’s Rhythm Rascals —cheerfully invited viewers to “get ready to match the stars … on the star-studded, big money Match Game” with “the star of our show, GEEEEEENE Rayburn.”

Joined by anchor star panelists Brett Somers, Reilly and Richard Dawson, as well as semi-regulars like Betty White, Fannie Flagg, Marcia Wallace, Nipsey Russell, Robert Walden, Avery Schreiber and other Hollywood nuts, crazy Christopher, Ill. native “Uncle Gene” Rayburn (1917-99) was my daily after-school caretaker in that two-working-parent latch-key era.

Shaping my formative years, Match Game explains a lot about my sense of humor in retrospect, given that “boobs” or “tinkle” was seemingly the definitive answer to about half of staff writer Dick DeBartolo’s risqué blank-infused questions, which often incorporated a cast of recurring fictional characters including Dumb Dora, Dumb Donald, Weird Willy, Fat Frieda, Old Man Periwinkle, Old Mrs. Pervis, and Gunga Dingy, the snake charmer.

Suffice to say, Match Game quickly gained a reputation as TV’s naughtiest game show, even with the network censors of the day. Small wonder the CBS game show led the big three networks of the day in the age 12-34 viewership demographic, particularly among the high school and college crowd.

“Did you catch a glimpse of that girl on the corner? She has the world’s biggest [blank].”

“Contrary to popular belief, Eve was not made out of Adam’s rib. She was made out of Adam’s {blank}.”

“Everyone at the North Pole was shocked to see Santa Claus being [blanked] by his elves!”

After matching the stars in Rounds A and B, the winning contestant was off to the audience Super Match and then the big money head-to-head round, “big money” being relative over the course of 52 years. Then again, even in 2025, the potential max Match Game ‘73 winnings — $100 for the game, $500 for the top Super Match answer, and $5,000 for connecting on the head-to-head match — is nothing to sneeze at.

What I remember most is that the laughs were seemingly endless, and you never knew what to expect from the freewheeling game-show-turned-happy-hour.

I still remember in sixth grade how we all shared a dream goal. Mine — to some studio audience laughter from my peers — was to travel west to California and make a pilgrimage to Studio 33 at CBS Television City at 7800 Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles, with the hopes of being a contestant on Match Game, so much so that I actually took Johnny Olson up on his commercial break sales pitch to write for tickets.

Mind you, I had not a clue how I was going to get to sunny southern California, nor had the thought actually crossed my pre-pubescent mind that I had yet to see a sixth-grader twirl around on the ginormous deep pile blaze orange shag carpet set turntable to greet Gene — flashing his trademark yardstick-sized Sony ECM-51 mic — and the “six famous Hollywood stars” that my Oct. 29, 1977 ticket for the 3:15-4:20 p.m. show taping promised.

Needless to say, I neither made it to California or onto the show, but I lived — and still live — Match Game vicariously.

Whether on CBS from 1973-79, in syndication as the weekly Match Game PM from 1975-81 or the daily Match Game from 1979-1982, in recent decades on endless Game Show Network reruns, a bevy of Match Game YouTube clips, or my “Best Of” DVD boxed Match Game sets, despite the march of time Match Game remains my guilty pleasure must-see TV.

In today’s highly-splintered world of broadcast, cable, satellite and streaming offering audiences hundreds of viewing choices at any given moment, it’s hard to fathom today just what a pop culture phenomenon the show was back in the day, when Match Game was the most-watched program on daytime television with a then-record 11 million viewers, drawing a peak 12.5 rating and 35 share that even surpassed the viewership of some prime-time series.

Not surprisingly, TV Guide ranked the 1,455-episode seminal 1973–79 CBS version of Match Game, twice nominated for the Daytime Emmy Award of Outstanding Game Show, as No. 4 on its list of the 60 greatest game shows of all time after Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune and Family Feud. TIME, meanwhile, ranked Rayburn fourth in its list of fifteen best game show hosts after Bob Barker, Groucho Marx and Gary Moore.

Yes, time flies. But thanks to the miracles of reruns and modern communications technology, despite the span of 52 years, the classic Match Game endures, entertaining successive new generations of viewers. In the words of the hit Carpenters song, it’s “yesterday once more.”

“Get ready to match the stars…”

News-Review freelance columnist Eric Johnson can be reached at eric@fyinorthwoods.com.