I've Got A Secret (U.S. Syndicated Game Show)

I've Got a Secret is an American panel game show. Created by comedy writers Allan Sherman and Howard Merrill, it was a derivative of Goodson-Todman's own panel show What's My Line? Instead of celebrity panelists trying to determine a contestant's occupation, the panel tries to determine a contestant's "secret": something that is unusual, amazing, embarrassing, or humorous about that person. The original version was produced by Goodson-Todman Productions, and aired from 1952-67 on CBS. The show was revived for the 1972–73 season in once-a-week syndication and again from June 15 to July 6, 1976 as a summer replacement series on CBS.Oxygen launched a daily revival series in 2000, which ran until 2001. A second revival by GSN with an all-gay panel premiered on April 17, 2006 and aired new episodes daily until June 9, 2006. The current version, which was launched on June 6, 2016, is produced by the revival of All American Television. And the current version is hosted by Mark Curry (of Hanging with Mr. Cooper).
== Gameplay ==
Each typical episode featured two regular contestant rounds, followed by a celebrity guest round, occasionally followed by an additional regular round.
=== Standard rounds ===
Each round was a guessing game where the panel tried to determine a contestant's "secret". The concept of a "secret" was fairly wide reaching. Secrets were always intended to be unusual, amazing, embarrassing or humorous. They commonly included such types as something which happened to a person, owning something, or an occupation, hobby, achievement or skill.
One or more contestants would enter. The host would introduce the contestant or ask their name and hometown. He would then ask them to "whisper your secret to me, and we'll show it to the folks at home." The contestant would then ostensibly whisper their secret to the host, while the audience and viewers were shown the secret via text overlay on the screen. Then the host would give the panel a clue, for example, "the secret concerns something that happened to [Contestant's Name]." The host would then select a panelist to begin questioning.
When the show debuted, each panelist had 15 seconds of questioning at a time, running through the panel twice, in order. Each segment of questioning which passed without the panelist guessing the secret won the contestant $10, for a top prize of $80. In mid-1954, the format changed to only once around the panel, with a $20 prize for each panelist stumped. The time limit was no longer fixed, and the buzzer which ended questioning was instead at the discretion of the production staff. This was due, in part, to the program airing live, and sometimes requiring to lengthen or shorten the time allowed for questioning in order to keep the show running on time. Increasingly later in the run, the panelists were sometimes buzzed out when they were getting too close to the secret, were suspected to be about to get it, or simply at a point that would get a laugh; this was precipitated in part by the fact that, like What's My Line, the top payoff never increased with inflation, and the money eventually became somewhat secondary to the gameplay, with the cash awards not even mentioned at all by the end of the series. Similarly, the panelist chosen to question first eventually became a strategy by the producers. When a secret fell within an area that a panelist was knowledgeable on (most commonly Cullen with mechanical, scientific or sports secrets), they would often be chosen first, to give them no preceding clues during their questioning. On occasion when a secret referenced a panelist, the order was usually chosen to put them last.
Following the revelation of a guest's secret, either by guessing or by the host's revelation once the game was over, the host typically either interviewed the contestant about their secret, or, if applicable, the contestant did some kind of demonstration of their secret. These demonstrations sometimes included the host, and occasionally one or more of the panelists.
=== Guest Rounds ===
On each typical episode, a celebrity guest came on the show with a secret. The celebrity usually opened the episode by coming out from the behind the curtain and saying "my name is [Name] and I've Got a Secret!", though sometimes they would say "and this is I've Got a Secret!".
Category:Syndicated programmes
Category:Game shows
Category:All American Television