page_title: Match Game
section_title: 1979–82, daily syndication
hierarchical_section_title: Match Game / Later revivals / 1979–82, daily syndication
caption_attribution_description: Photo of McLean Stevenson as Henry Blake from the premiere of the television program M.A.S.H..
context_page_description: Match Game is an American television panel game show that premiered on NBC in 1962 and has been revived several times over the course of the next six decades. The game features contestants trying to come up with answers to fill-in-the-blank questions that are often formed as humorous double entendres, the object being to match answers given by celebrity panelists.
  The Match Game in its original version ran on NBC's daytime lineup from 1962 until 1969. The show returned with a significantly changed format in 1973 on CBS and became a major success, with an expanded panel, larger cash payouts, and emphasis on humor. The CBS series, referred to on-air as Match Game 73 to start and updated every new year, ran until 1979 on CBS, at which point it moved to first-run syndication and ran for three more seasons, ending in 1982. Concurrently with the weekday run, from 1975 to 1981, a once-a-week fringe time version, Match Game PM, was also offered in syndication for airing just before prime time hours.
context_section_description: After the cancellation of Match Game 79, there was still enough interest in the series for Goodson–Todman and Jim Victory Television to consider a continuation of the daily series in syndication as the weekly Match Game PM was still airing and had not stopped production. The consideration eventually came to fruition as a daily syndicated Match Game, without a year attached and often referred to on-air as The Match Game, debuted on September 10, 1979.
  The rules and gameplay were the same as before, including the star wheel bonus, but the format was altered slightly. Each contestant on this version of Match Game played a two-game match against another contestant, and the Super Match was played after each game. As is the case with Match Game PM, a contestant did not win any money for winning the game. There were also no returning champions on the daily syndicated series, as two new contestants began each match. The star wheel reduced the golden star sections to three, making it more difficult to double the winnings in the head-to-head match.
  The maximum payout for a contestant was $21,000 (two $500 audience matches and two $10,000 head-to-head match wins), the same its syndicated sister series Match Game PM was offering during this time.
  For the first two seasons Bill Daily, Dick Martin, Richard Paul, and Bob Barker were among the male semi-regulars who filled Dawson's old spot on the panel. McLean Stevenson, who had done so once in September 1978 and twice near the end of the second year of this version, appeared in nearly all of the third season (1981–82) and became a regular from the eleventh taped week through the end of the season.
  The fee plugs which had aired in the middle of the show on the CBS version were featured during the closing credits. The ticket plugs were now shown on every episode. Each ticket plug had two people's faces merged into one image by putting a man's face on a woman's head, putting a mustache on a woman's face, or putting a pair of red lips on a man's face or simply putting two halves of the faces together. The 1990 ABC version used a similar sequence to introduce the stars.
  The syndicated Match Game helped exacerbate the perception of the 4:00 p.m. time slot being a "death slot" for network programming. After CBS canceled Match Game 79, the network moved the long-running soap opera Love of Life into the vacant time slot. Although the syndicated Match Game was not a direct cause of the ratings problems Love of Life faced—the 4:00 pm  time slot, the last network daytime slot, had been a problem for all three networks for years and Love of Life had seen a precipitous drop in ratings since the April 1979 move to the late afternoon—many stations ran the syndicated Match Game against the veteran soap opera, and several more stations, including many CBS owned stations and affiliates, dropped Love of Life in favor of the new Match Game. (Love of Life aired its final episode on February 1, 1980, 5 months after the debut of the new Match Game.) The daytime syndicated show produced 525 episodes, running until September 10, 1982 – exactly three years after its debut.
  Match Game's 1973–82 run was taped in Studio 33 at CBS Television City in Los Angeles, except for one week of shows in 1974 in which it was shot in Studio 41.
caption: McLean Stevenson became a regular panelist during its final season in syndication.
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