ABC Carnival '74
Across the Board
Baloney
Bamboozle
Be What You Want
Beat The Genius
Beat The Odds (1962)
Beat The Odds (1975)
Bedtime Stories
The Better Sex
The Big Money
The Big Payoff
Big Spenders
Blank Check
Body Language
Body Talk
The Buck Stops Here
Bullseye
Call My Bluff
Card Sharks (1996)
Casino
Caught in the Act
Celebrity Billiards
Celebrity Doubletalk
Celebrity Secrets
Celebrity Sweepstakes
Chain Letter (1964)
The Challengers (1974)
Change Partners
Child's Play
The Choice Is Yours
Combination Lock (1996)
Comedy Club
Concentration (1985)
The Confidence Game
Cop Out
Countdown (1974)
Countdown (1990)
The Couples Race
Crossword
Decisions, Decisions
Dollar a Second
Duel in the Daytime
The Fashion Show
Fast Friends
$50,000 a Minute
Finish Line (1975)
Finish Line (1990)
Get Rich Quick
Going, Going, Gone!
Head of the Class
High Rollers
Hollywood Squares (1965)
Hollywood Squares (1985)
The Honeymoon Game
Hot Numbers
Hot Potato
House to House
How Do You Like Your Eggs?
Jackpot (1984)
Jeopardy (1977)
Jokers Wild
Jumble
Key Witness
Keynotes (1986)
King of the Hill
Let's Make a Deal (1963)
Let's Make a Deal (1990)
The Love Experts
M'ama Non M'ama
Match Game (1962)
Match Game (1973)
Match Game (1990)
Match Game (1996)
MatchGame (2008)
Mindreaders
Missing Links
Monday Night QB
Money Words
Money in the Blank
Moneymaze
Monopoly (1987)
Nothing But the Truth
Now You See It (1986)
Oddball
100%
PDQ
Party Line
People On TV
Play For Keeps
Play Your Hunch
The Plot Thickens
Pot O' Gold
Pressure Point
The Price Is Right (1972)
Pyramid (1996)
Pyramid (1997)
A Question of Scruples
Quick as a Flash
Razzle Dazzle
Riddlers
Run For The Money
Says Who?
Scrabble (1990)
Second Guessers
Second Honeymoon
Sharaize
Shoot for the Stars
Shoot the Works
Shopping Spree
Show Me
Showoffs
Simon Says
$64,000 Question (2000)
Smart Alecks
Smart Money
Spellbinders
Spin-Off
Split Decision
Star Cluster
Star Play
Strictly Confidential
TKO
Talking Pictures (1968)
Talking Pictures (1976)
Tell It to Groucho
Temptation (1981)
$10,000 Sweep
Three of a Kind
Tic Tac Dough
Tie-Up
Top Secret
Twenty One (1982)
Twenty Questions
Twisters
Up and Over
The Waiting Game
We've Got Your Number
What Do You Want?
What's On Your Mind
Wheel of Fortune
Whew!
Whodunit
Whose Baby
Wipeout
Word Grabbers
Write Your Own Ticket
You Bet Your Life (1988)
You Bet Your Life (1991)
You're Putting Me On
Show a Random Pilot
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Bob Stewart Flow Chart
Write Your Own Ticket
Producer: Ron Greenberg for NBC
Hosts: Jim Hackett and Renny Temple
Polka Dancers: Diane and Henry
Announcer: Bill Wendell
Taping Info: 1973 at NBC Brooklyn
Made it to Air: No
Video Village was a show from the early 60s where adults went around a game board answering questions and performing stunts. Write Your Own Ticket was a pilot from 1973 where adults went down a game board with audience members answering questions and performing stunts. Yep, the players of the game do nothing while the audience does everything. The show featured two hosts, sometimes folk singer and sitcom director Renny Temple who mans the stage, while future Wipeout announcer Jim Hackett works the audience.
The audience is somewhat divided into thirds with one third having a "ticket" to Tokyo, one third have a ticket to "Acapulco" and the final third have a ticket to "Rome", although who has what ticket does not correspond to a physical location within the audience. One couple from each of the destinations is plucked from the audience and placed on the game staircase. The staircase is numbered from 1 through 10 plus a starting spot. Their participation, other than going down the stairs, has ended for the main game.
Jim Hackett then roams the 200+ person audience, first going to a random person who as a Tokyo ticket. The audience member picks a "travel token" out of the satchel that Hackett has on his person, and the token contains both a move space value and the question. If the audience member answers the question properly, the couple whose ticket matches the audience member's ticket moves the designated spaces indicated. Some of our brain-busters included:
- Complete a song lyric
- Say goodbye in Spanish
- Steps equal to number of rings on player
- Identify the country of a dance
- Difference between port and starboard
- Given a location, name a food associated with that location (one of the answers accepted was Boston Cream Cheese, which gets you less than 40 Google hits)
- Identify Rome on a map
The game continues with the Acapulco couple getting a turn, the Rome couple, and back to the Tokyo couple. Occasionally an audience member won a prize as well (determined at random), but this was usually at the level of 50 bucks or 20 pesos. If the couple landed on the spaces marked '4' or '8', they hit a "chance step" which could either be a prize (such as a boat) or a penalty (move back one space). Play continued until one couple got to space 10, at that point they win a trip to the destination they were assigned at the beginning of the game. Also, one of the audience members who was assigned that destination also won a trip to that location. The other two couples got $100.
The bonus game involved three more audience members plucked from the stage. The winning couple then had to guess the assigned ticket for two of the three audience members. If they were successful, they added a 1974 Triumph and a 24-day round-the-world trip to their booty. The three audience members got a watch for their trouble.
My words cannot give justice to how bad this pilot was. The two hosts, at that point in their early 30s, are overly peppy. The show in general is quite loud, and the whole concept of having contestants do nothing while the audience do all the work while having little to play for took away what little play-at-home factor there was. At least on Let's Make a Deal, there was some neat byplay between Monty and the contestant. Oh, and the theme had lyrics, which pretty much involved a Shirley Bassey-type singing "Write Your Own Ticket" and then scatting.
This pilot has been viewed 7848 times since October 6, 2008 and was last modified on Dec 12, 2009 14:46 ET
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