When was the gong show

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He was The Gong Show , created and produced by Barris, aired on NBC in daytime from through , and in first-run syndication from to and to Barris hosted the show on NBC and from to in syndication.

It was known for its free-wheeling style, absurdist humor, and the titular gong used by the judges to cut short bad auditions. ABC ordered 10 episodes last fall from Sony TV, which owns rights to the originals, with the new version expected to join the summer lineup. This was NBC's least important time slot, as whatever program that ran in the slot at the time had to share the half-hour with a five-minute newscast anchored by Edwin Newman.

As a result, the first six-plus months of Gong featured approximately twenty minutes of program content in a twenty-five-minute episode.

Many NBC affiliates in larger Eastern Time Zone markets opted not to run network programming during the Noon hour at all, preferring to broadcast local news and talk shows instead. Gong's timeslot was given to a new soap opera, Lovers and Friends , on January 3, , and the show was relocated to replace the cancelled Another World spinoff Somerset at PM.

The timeslot change allowed Gong to expand to a half-hour. However, Gong moved from one problem timeslot to another as the PM network slot was also prone to preemptions in fact, NBC was not far away from handing the slot back to its affiliates. This left Gong unable to gain a ratings advantage over CBS' hit game show Tattletales and ABC's struggling but still popular soap opera The Edge of Night , as well as the popular syndicated programming on other stations.

The winning act on this primetime special was The Bait Brothers. The panelists for the special were Jaye P. Morgan, Jamie Farr and Arte Johnson. Barris was well known for his run-ins with the censors, bringing in risque acts as bait to allow some of the less risque acts to slip by. In , one of these bait acts, two teenage girls referring to themselves as "Have You Got a Nickel", made it onto the show. Their act consisted of the girls sitting cross-legged on the stage floor and they began silently eating popsicles in a manner that suggested they were performing fellatio on the frozen treats.

The nature of the act led to the two girls being known as the "Popsicle twins". While they were able to complete their act without being gonged, two of the judges gave them low marks Phyllis Diller gave them a zero, while Jamie Farr awarded them a marginally better 2.

The third judge, Jaye P. Morgan , would award them a 10, quipping, "Do you know? That's how I started. The girls' act was let through by the censors, who did not see anything wrong with it in rehearsals. However, once the episode aired in Eastern time zone markets NBC pulled the act from the Central, Mountain, and Pacific airings of the day's episode immediately after it ended.

Barris said in a interview with Salon. Despite fairly respectable ratings for a non-soap-opera midday show, NBC cancelled Gong , with its final episode to air on July 21, Much speculation occurred as to the network's true motivations for dumping the show.

Barris himself has commented that the official reason he heard was that NBC acted in response to both "lower than expected ratings" and a desire by the network to "re-tailor the morning shows to fit the standard morning demographics" the move coincided with the arrival of new NBC president Fred Silverman , who was well known for such programming overhauls.

America Alive , a magazine-style variety program hosted by Art Linkletter 's son Jack , replaced Gong. Following the cancellation, many critics and industry analysts — including Gene Shalit and Rona Barrett — reported having heard comments from within NBC's programming department from "sources preferring anonymity" that the true reason behind the cancellation was Barris's refusal to tone down the racy nature of the show.

According to the sources, after the "Popsicle Twins" incident see above [5] and an incident where Morgan did a striptease and bared her breasts on-air during a Gene Gene the Dancing Machine performance, Barris had been given an ultimatum by NBC's Standards and Practices department to deliver cleaner shows, with a particular eye to the potential children and youth watching the show.

Barris, however, continued to deliver shows with the same amount of supposedly questionable content, apparently in an effort to call the network's bluff.

NBC allowed Barris to continue the show for the rest of the contract, and Barris made no perceptible change in preparation for the finale. On the finale, staff member Larry Gotterer appeared as "Fenwick Gotterer" to host the show, after Barris started the show doing a "Chuckie's Fables" sketch. The rest of the show was done in sort of a way to explain the life of the show, and its cancellation.

Barris managed to have the last word on the show's demise, appearing as a contestant. Playing in a country music band called "The Hollywood Cowboys" with the house band's rhythm section, Barris sang a slightly modified version of Johnny Paycheck 's " Take This Job and Shove It ", giving NBC the finger during the song to accentuate his point.

Barris was gonged by Jamie Farr, who quipped, "Because that little fella's been saying that I've been a long a nose, I'm also long a gong, fella. Gene Gene the Dancing Machine then came out after a few more skits, and said that the moral to the episode-long "Chuckie's Fable" was "Never bet against the Minnesota Vikings , at home, in the wintertime!

In the early '70s, Barris was already something of a legend in the game-show world for creating The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game , both of which thrived on awkwardness and spontaneous human moments. The Gong Show took this idea to new heights. Instead of asking contestants sly questions to elicit responses that revealed the quirky details of their dating preferences or personal lives, this show would turn the spotlight on contestants being goofy or bawdy just for the hell of it.

The formula was simple: There were three judges and a gong. Performers tried out their acts, and when one of the judges couldn't stand it anymore, they smashed the gong, ending the proceedings. There were also recurring bits sprinkled into the show. Barris himself — who was notoriously camera-shy despite his over-the-top comedic sensibilities — acted as emcee, often wearing ridiculous hats and accompanying his patter with intermittent strings of weird dance moves.

The "Unknown Comic" Murray Langston performed bits with a paper bag on his head.