Coming attractions

Carrie Grosvenor notes that a lot of new game shows are about to hit the screen. She lists four: Pumped, You Deserve It, Fear Factor, and Who's Still Standing.

Carrie doesn't mention Real Deal, discussed below, though you could argue that it's more of an antiques show. Still, the gameplay is what sets Real Deal apart from, say, a straight knockoff of Antiques Roadshow. And some might say Fear Factor oozes into the slimier realms of reality TV. (Aren't all those realms pretty slimy? Or is that my prudish, traditionalist self talking?)

But the other three projects look like very traditional game shows. They should help quiet the oft-expressed fears that the entire genre is well past its sell-by date. The older-is-better bunch makes so much noise on the Internet that it's easy to forget how game shows have staged a pretty decent comeback over the past decade, even invading broadcast prime time.

And, of course, the rise of cable/satellite TV has opened many new channels for our little genre, including one network devoted to it. Game shows' biggest drawback has always been the advertiser-unfriendly demos. But game shows' biggest strength has always been low production costs. As the TV audience fragments among a zillion competing channels, cheap never looked so good to network execs.