Blackout (TV series)

"Blackout — it's not your average game show!" —Tagline spoken in several promos for the series.

Describe Blackout here.

CBS Game Show hosted by Bob Goen and produced by Jay Wolpert, whose other major contribution to the game show world was Whew Thankfully, the game this time around isn't as unnecessarily complicated.

Nice job blacking out, there.

In each round, two celebrity/civilian teams had to fill in the four blanks of a sentence with clue words. One team had its celebrity record 20 seconds of themselves describing one of the words in the puzzle, while the other player wore headphones so they couldn't hear it. (They would switch seats the following round.) However, once the description was played back to the contestant, the other team could hold down a plunger in front of them known as the "Blackout Button." The Button allowed its user to mute out up to seven seconds of the description, hopefully removing enough key information to prevent the contestant from guessing correctly, since doing so would earn their team $100 and a chance to solve the puzzle. (One second would go on the timer for each duplicated key word.) Teams alternated giving, censoring, and solving until a team solved two puzzles, which gave them the chance to play for $10,000 in the bonus round.

In the event of a tie, there would be a sudden death round where the leading player would have the option of describing the single word (for ten seconds) or censoring three seconds (or more in the event of a duplication; also see Show the Folks At Home) of the description. Since neither teammate could hear the description, the wrong word would automatically lose.

Blackout is a cult classic whose brevity can be chalked up to bad timing and stiff competition — it replaced The $25,000 Pyramid on January 4, 1988 and faced not only the still-popular Sale of the Century on NBC but also a massive outcry from viewers toward the network for killing off the Dick Clark-hosted game. The resulting low ratings caused Blackout to be canned on April 1. The show was then replaced with a final 13 weeks of Pyramid, which would be canned (for good this time) on July 1st in favor of Ray Combs' Family Feud.

The following Game Show tropes appear in Blackout (TV series):

• Bonus Round: The Clue Screen — While one member of the winning team viewed the incoming clues (one every two seconds, for up to six), the other would have his / her back to this screen and await a cue (“solve it!”) before turning around to see all of the accumulated clues at once. (The remaining clues were blocked out, while the answer would be shown only to the player watching the incoming clues.) The cycle would repeat until they either ran out of time (70 seconds) or gave five correct answers, which would win $10,000.
• Personnel:
  • The Announcer: Johnny Gilbert for most of the run, with Jay Stewart filling-in for the last two weeks (presumably so Gilbert could come back in for the final run of Pyramid that replaced it).
  • Game Show Host: Bob Goen.
  • Studio Audience
• Losing Horns: A virtual staple of Wolpert's games. Here, bizarre "electronic" ones were used for bonus losses.
• Show the Folks At Home: Only used for the sudden-death word. In this case, the description would last ten seconds, with the other contestant getting a base Blackout Time of three seconds and the rule of the one-second increase per duplicated word still in effect.
• Sound Proof Booth: The contestants wore headphones when needed. But, instead of going into a booth, the seat and table half the contestant sat at literally slid out instead.

Other tropes include:

• Animated Credits Opening: Wolpert seemed to like animated intros; this one has a demonstration of the game mechanic at a restaurant table with a fast-talking lady (actually a sped-up recording of Wolpert's wife).
• Incredibly Lame Pun: The concept of the puzzle. Unless it was solved earlier, the fourth word that needed to be described would bring this trope into play.
• Porn Stache: Goen. He got rid of it by the time he took over Wheel of Fortune in July 1989.
• This Trope Is Bleep: The Game.