Like I Said, Poor Chuck Woolery...

A couple pieces of news this week. First, the one that gives this post its title: Lingo will return to Game Show Network on June 6 with new host Bill Engvall.

I'm taking this with a grain of salt until I see the show, but the supposed leaked rules have been posted on BuzzerBlog. According to that report, the show now keeps score in money, not points, with words worth $100 in round one, $200 in round two, and $500 in round three. In something that makes me scream "Are contestants now that stupid?", Bill gives a clue to each word before it is played. The winning team plays a bonus round for $100,000 - quite a large amount for Game Show Network, and certainly for what's supposed to be a light word game. Like I said, though, I'm taking this with a grain of salt until June 6.

Moving from Lingo to quite a different sort of show, on June 16 ABC will premiere a Wipeout clone with a...um...attention-grabbing title: 101 Ways To Leave A Game Show. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much more to it - contestants play a quiz game, and the losers are ejected from the set in some bizarre and messy manner. The host is Jeff Sutphen off Brain Surge. I have to say, I like Wipeout just fine, but these clones are stretching the premise a bit...

Finally, on the other side of the Atlantic, BBC Radio 7 has been rebranded BBC Radio 4 Extra, and coming with the rebranding is The News Quiz Extra, a 45-minute extended version of the long-running topical comedy panel game show hosted by Sandi Toksvig (which is a half-hour show in its unextended form). It's not premiering for another few weeks, but April 8 brings the premiere of The Now Show Extra, a similarly extended version of BBC Radio 4's topical comedy show hosted by Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis. It's not a game show, but I'll probably review it anyway, both as a way of predicting what The News Quiz Extra will be like and just because I like The Now Show a lot.

Between that and Improv-A-Ganza, the hardcore game show purists aren't going to like me much next week...

Aaron