Bob Stewart (television)
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Bob Stewart (1920 - ) is a former American television game show producer. He was active in the TV industry from 1956 to 1992.
Stewart is known for creating some of the most popular game shows for Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions. These shows include To Tell The Truth, Password, and The Price Is Right. His biggest success as an independent producer was the Pyramid series, starting with The $10,000 Pyramid in 1973.
Stewart with Goodson-Todman
Stewart's early broadcasting career included stints at NBC's flagship TV and radio stations in New York, WNBC-TV and AM. In the book The Box, the native New Yorker said he got the first spark for The Price Is Right during his tenure as a staff producer at WRCA-TV (now WNBC-TV) when he happened to observe an auction taking place on 50th Street on his lunch hour. He developed the idea into the working title of The Auctioneer.
Stewart joined Goodson-Todman Productions in 1956, after he bumped into broadcaster (and future game show producer-host) Monty Hall on the street and Hall told him he knew Goodson-Todman's attorney. "You got any ideas?" Stewart quoted Hall as asking.
The Price Is Right, using some of the Auctioneer concept, premiered on NBC November 26, 1956, with Bill Cullen as host. CBS's To Tell the Truth, emceed by Bud Collyer, hit the air less than one month later, on December 18. Stewart said he auditioned the concept to Goodson and his producers by trying to have them guess which one of three men had been in the infantry in World War II and was now managing a grocery store.
Five years later, in 1961, Stewart scored again with Password, a word-association guessing game emceed by Allen Ludden. The show, the first game to pair together celebrities and civilian contestants, became the top-rated program on daytime TV and popularized the concept of an end-game bonus round for additional money.
Stewart was one of a coterie of talented Goodson staff producers who came up with ideas for game shows and segments. Producers such as Stewart, Frank Wayne, and Gil Fates earned Goodson's respect not only for their concepts but for their skill in executing them.
Bob Stewart Productions
After Price's cancellation (the current CBS version did not premiere until 1972), Stewart set out on his own in 1965. His first network game show as an independent producer, the memory game Eye Guess, aired on NBC daytime from January 3, 1966 to September 26, 1969, and featured close friend Bill Cullen, who emceed Price, as host. His next entry, the CBS primetime celebrity game show The Face Is Familiar with host Jack Whitaker, ran from May 7 to September 3, 1966. Another Stewart celebrity game, Personality (hosted by Larry Blyden), aired on NBC from 1967 to 1969. Completing the decade for the packager was the short-lived "You're Putting Me On," hosted first by Bill Leyden and later by Blyden, which ran from September to December 1969.
Other than Eye Guess, Stewart's other moderate early success was Three on a Match, hosted by Cullen, which aired on NBC from August 2, 1971 to June 28, 1974.
Stewart's biggest success with his own production company, and one of TV's most honored and popular game shows, was Pyramid, hosted by Dick Clark, which, like Password, was a word-association game. Its March 26, 1973 premiere on CBS marked the first time a quiz show mounted a five-figure or higher possible cash payoff since the demise of 100 Grand in the mid-1960s.
Pyramid's network run would span 15 years, off and on, with escalating dollar amounts in the title reflecting raises in the payoff amount over the years. It has proven to be one of the most enduring game shows, airing almost continuously between first-run network/syndicated airings and cable reruns since 1982, when the second CBS version began. Its nine Emmy awards for best game show rank it second to the current Alex Trebek version of Jeopardy!, which has ten.
The network version of Pyramid (hosted by Clark) ran from 1973 to 1980 (moving to ABC for its final six years, after CBS cancelled it during a ratings panic in Spring 1974) and from 1982 to 1988 on CBS (with a three month break in the second run). It was also popular in syndication, running once a week on weeknights in many markets from 1974 to 1979 (with Bill Cullen as emcee), daily from January to September 1981 (the tournament-format $50,000 version, Clark emceed this version), daily from 1985 to 1988 (hosted by Clark and running concurrently with the CBS version), and again from January 1991 to March 1992 (with John Davidson). The latter two sported potential cash payoffs of $100,000, which champion contesants could qualify to play for monthly.
Another version of Pyramid, not packaged by Stewart but by Sony, which possesses the rights to most of the shows he created, aired in syndication from 2002 to 2004, hosted by Donny Osmond.
Pyramid nearly led to Stewart's one significant foray outside the world of TV games. Occasional panelist David Letterman, who appeared on the ABC version from 1978 onward (alternately amusing or annoying Clark) and emceed a game-show pilot, "The Riddlers", for Stewart, actually hired him to produce the daytime NBC show Letterman would host in 1980. However, due to creative disagreements, Stewart left the staff four days before the show's premiere.
Bob Stewart Productions was the last major game show production company to relocate from New York to Los Angeles. This occurred in the early 1980s, with all of Bob Stewart games originating exclusively from Hollywood by 1982. Stewart, a native New Yorker, had resisted the move because he appreciated the intelligence and energy contestants from the Big Apple brought to Pyramid and his other shows. Luckily for Stewart, the show's energetic format was familiar enough to potential contestants nationwide that it endured through the 1980s and beyond.
Other game shows from Bob Stewart Productions -- mostly employing a word or puzzle format -- included Jackpot, Blankety Blanks, Shoot For The Stars, Winning Streak, Pass The Buck, Chain Reaction, Go, and Double Talk. Jackpot and Chain Reaction were moderate successes for Stewart in their 1980s runs on cable TV, after having relatively brief runs on NBC.
Retirement
Bob Stewart retired in 1992 after the second run of The $100,000 Pyramid was cancelled, and his son, Sande Stewart, took over operations of Bob Stewart Productions. The junior Stewart later produced some game shows on his own, including Your Number's Up, Inquizition, Hollywood Showdown, and Powerball Instant Millionaire.
Bob Stewart Productions was sold to Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2002, and many of Bob Stewart's creations air frequently on GSN. Stewart himself has participated in panels and special events related to quiz shows, including the annual Game Show Congress gatherings in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
External links
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