Other poster: This should be bold-printed, italicized, underlined, and whatever else denotes importance to remember. What GSN decides to do with this [reality] slate will affect everything on the schedule, and probably not for the better for classics or modern fare.
No doubt about it. If GSN goes big on reality, these discussions about pre-1990 game shows on weekday mornings will seem quaint. The real question will be whether traditional game shows of any date can get much space on the schedule. (See History for an example of how successful reality experiments pushed a network's traditional shows to much fringier timeslots on the schedule.)
But as I said, I'm not so sure about the non-traditional stuff. The Dancing With the Stars disaster may have opened some eyes at the network - it sure surprised me, as many have reminded me - even if current GSN personnel are too new to remember the 2004 experiment.
Admittedly, GSN's non-trad stuff hasn't always crashed. In fact, one of the network's best and most successful originals, High Stakes Poker, eventually grew out of the 2004 flirtation with non-traditional programming. And there have been other, more short-lived successes, like the blackjack and dodgeball shows and (for a while) the Amazing Race acquisition. But GSN's record on non-traditional is generally discouraging.
Nothing in the upfront reality slate looks particularly appetizing, either. Even the cooking show (wink).
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