Friday funnies

When it's not tracking mergers and acquisitions, the Wall Street Journal dissects game shows. Or at least it reviews the upcoming Game of Life on Hub. The review sighs for the good old days before computer graphics imagery, when the entire set would have to be built with old-fashioned non-virtual stuff. Nowadays Game of Life will rely heavily on cybernetic whizbangery to save money.

Tim Gunn will guest host on Millionaire next week. Meredith often takes a break from the quizzer, but maybe her possible exit from Today will change things. Have to admit I'm not too familiar with Mr. Gunn, mostly because I don't hang out much with Lifetime Television. From what I read, though, I'm sure the fashion guru will be well dressed.

BuzzerBlog's Alex Davis is tweeting that GSN's Improv-a-Ganza has fallen short of ratings expectations, while Love Triangle is beating its expectations. Not sure know what this means, if anything. I assume expectations were sky-high for Drew and rock-bottom for Wendy. So maybe both shows are just doing so-so. We'll get the first read on GSN's averages for the new schedule next Tuesday from TVNewser.

And Paul Reiser is getting panned for his new sitcom, which includes a game-show-within-the-show. Mark Burnett even shows up, though without any comments on the Our Little Genius rigging hoohah. Many eons ago, Jackie Gleason's Honeymooners included Beat the Clock in an episode. You can still watch the entertaining results on YouTube.

UPDATE: Old friend Douglas has posted the Monday through Wednesday ratings for GSN's new shows, and they don't look that great. After respectable starts, Improv-a-Ganza and Love Triangle tumbled to 364K and 316K viewers, respectively, by Wednesday.

Given the endless promotion and hype, these are disappointing numbers. GSN's well-worn Richard Karn and John O'Hurley versions of Family Feud could probably do the same without breaking much of a sweat. Maybe GSN might get back to game shows for a change.