Defending poor little Shandi

Not everybody is a fan of Shandi Finnessey, Chuck Woolery's sidekick on Lingo for three seasons, and one of Playmania's co-hosts. In fact, a poster on the GSN boards called her, well, read on...

Other poster: now as you know i will never be a fan of this degenerate [Shandi Finnessey].

Shandi's "degenerate"? Yeah, right. Jeez, she's squeaky clean by usual TV standards. Last I checked, she wasn't on Jersey Shore.

A different poster: But if the question is asking "Was Shandi good for Lingo's ratings?" then yes I'm guessing she was.

For what it's worth, Alex Davis reported here and here that Lingo's fourth season, the first with Shandi, manage to raise its timeslot's ratings by 56%. That's why the network did two more seasons with her and Chuck.

The original source for Alex's comments was this James Hibbard column from 2005 in TVWeek, which mentioned the big ratings increase that Shandi's first season on Lingo produced. Interesting note: Hibbard also reported that NBC was developing a little game show called Deal or No Deal, and Discovery was working on a new project called Cash Cab. Meanwhile, CBS was planning Game Show Marathon, and GSN was piloting an I've Got a Secret revival. Ah, a blast from the 2005 past.

But the Hibbard column also talked about a GSN pilot called Poll This, which never seems to have made it to air. Maybe it was something like Power of 10?