Back to the winners circle

GSN has announced a pickup of its version of Pyramid. The debut date is September 3, and the half-hour show will be stripped Monday through Friday at 6:00PM.

In the press release GSN talks about the show's "storied 40-year run." Except not many stories have been written over the last twenty years of that supposed run. The only version of Pyramid that made it to air since the early 1990s was Donny Osmond's two seasons in 2002-04.

Meanwhile, we've been teased with endless rumors of abortive development projects on CBS, TBS, GSN and the Pyramid god knows where else. The history is not encouraging and suggests the gloomy notion that the difficult format no longer appeals in the iPad era. Donny's version garnered good enough ratings to get a third season, but Sony preferred some talk show hosted by somebody you never heard of.

So good luck to GSN and host Mike Richards as they bring a classic format back to at least some life. By the way, GSN's press releases are getting sillier by the week with their references to "Iconic Game Reinvented" shows and "Shiny Floor Game" shows and "Dumb and Dumber" shows. (I made up that last category.) Just shelve the nonsensical categories and concentrate on making "Good" shows.