Game shows, just like with any genre of television, are cyclic at heart. After dominating in the 1950s, the Quiz Show Scandals did some major damage to their popularity for a little while (with the exception of Goodson-Todman's panel shows, which prided themselves on being unscripted, and endeared themselves to audiences for that along with many other reasons), and then in the 60s daytime game shows with low stakes prizes were chugging along. Not in a runaway popular way, but they still stood out with some notable big names like Password, Jeopardy!, To Tell the Truth, The Dating Game. Then the big CBS Daytime game show renaissance of 1972 happened and daytime television was absolutely smothered (in a good way to me, hell yeah) by the genre, and then things gradually slowed down in the 1980s before daytime game shows hit their collective collapse in 1993 when NBC's last gasp at a daytime game show lineup fizzled out. It took a little show called Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in 1999 to make the genre mainstream relevant again in ways not seen since the 1950s, and then of course shows like Deal or No Deal, 1 vs. 100, Wipeout, etc. all kind of piggybacked off of WWTBAM and became their own giants. And now after the 2010s kinda slowed down a little bit, we're seeing another uptick.

I think for a lot of people game shows tend to be a good comfort food. Something to watch in the background or leave on the TV in the waiting room at the doctor's office (I'm convinced this is why Game Show Network still has an audience anymore). Also their lower budgets tend to make for easier commitments and renewals. Are we overdue for another downswing? Maybe. With the way the television landscape is now-a-days I actually think it's harder to guess at than if you would've asked me like ten years ago. It feels like they're now the "break glass in case of emergency" for when other primetime shows don't do very well, and we are seeing some of the stalwarts finally sunset. But some of them are still chugging along. And that doesn't even count the syndicated fare like Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune.

As for my opinion on the current state... I'll be honest, I haven't been a fan of this concept that I saw someone else so accurately describe as "20 minutes of content stretched out for 40 minutes of television", and modern game shows fit this descriptor to a T for me. The few times I watched the Joel McHale run of Card Sharks, as a long time favorite show of mine, it was excruciating how snail's paced the show was dragged out to. Very much the complete opposite of the Jim Perry/Bob Eubanks/Bill Rafferty runs that I grew up watching reruns of on Game Show Network as a teenager in the mid-00s. I get that they gotta fit in commercial breaks, that's not a big deal to me, but if you're gonna take a half hour concept and try to drag it out to an hour, just get over yourself and put in two more contestants doing a match against each other or something. Or relax with the contestant interviews. Shit, even modern Press Your Luck struggles with this. It's PRESS YOUR LUCK, the hardest possible game show concept you could fuck up, just turn the camera on and play the game. Deal or No Deal absolutely snakebit modern game shows because executives and producers learned the wrong messages from it, because so much of the "the commercial break is coming up, here's a teaser of what's gonna happen when you return" crap that makes game shows feel so fake and artificial now-a-days came from that show.

Also I really hate how contestant coordinators make contestants talk in modern shows. Every single CONTESTANT does this THING where they RANDOMLY ACCENTUATE random parts of SENTENCES like they're shouting FROM A CLIFF and it DRIVES me NUTS. "My name is TONYA and I'm from CLEVELAND and I'm a NAIL SALON TECH and I'm here to win TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS, WOOOOOO!!!!!!" as the crowd claps and whoops and hoots and hollers because game show producers have been unable to get over the year 2010 for 16 years now man. It's ridiculous.

I really hate so so much being "old person yells at cloud" about modern stuff and I assure you I love lots of modern pop culture aspects like movies, music, anime, etc., but I just cannot stand how modern game shows are produced. It's probably my biggest party pooper opinion and I've had people try to recommend modern stuff to me and I've just never been able to do it. I think the only modern stuff I can still sit through are Wheel and Jeopardy! and that's because at their cores they still just Stick To What They Know. The only other modern game show remake I didn't fully dislike was To Tell the Truth (my favorite game show of all time), and even that had some stuff that felt like extraneous junk that wasn't necessary, but at least they kept the core part of the game down.