Flunked out of pilot school

Once upon a time GSN ran a Thanksgiving Day marathon of failed game show pilots. Turkeys, you might say. A poster on the GSN board dug up this failed pilot from 1975 called 20 Questions.

This was an attempted revival of an original from the earliest days of commercial TV. Experienced game show producer Ron Greenberg got together a panel of four celebs, including a frighteningly hirsute Gene Shalit and a winsome Anne Meara. They tried to help a couple civvies guess mystery clues by playing the usual parlor game of, well, twenty questions.

Jack Clark hosted the pilot with skill and some surprisingly pleasant humor. The main problem with the game was that it was just so flipping hard. The panel tended to stumble around forever before guessing the elusive clues.

But the show was hardly a disaster and might have made it to air except for a glut of other game shows during the 1970s. Another producer made a pilot of the format in 1989 but that didn't sell, either.