The Newlywed Game and Country Music Business
In 1966, he received a phone call from Chuck Barris to host a new game show, The Newlywed Game, which premiered on ABC that same year. During its debut, it was an immediate hit, and the show's popularity led the network to expand the prime-time lineup, where it had run on the air for five years. Only 28 years old when he started hosting, Eubanks became widely popular for bringing a youthful energy to daytime television, pressing contestants into giving embarrassing and hilarious answers. The Newlywed Game was also ranked as one of the top three daytime game shows, for five consecutive years, between 1968 and 1973, and was ranked in the top three prime-time game shows, also for five years, between 1966 and 1971.
While hosting The Newlywed Game, Eubanks was known for using the catchphrase "Makin' Whoopee". It was Eubanks who coined the term from the song of the same name, in an attempt to keep parents with young children from the need to explain the facts of life because of a television show. While his network was comfortable with the term "making love", they did not allow the use of the word "panties".
While not taping, he also pursued a career in the country music business, where he served as manager of such artists as Dolly Parton, Barbara Mandrell and Marty Robbins. The same year, he also signed Merle Haggard to an exclusive live-performance contract, producing more than 100 dates per year with the performer for almost a decade. His first ending of his first-run network TV show, The Newlywed Game, ended in 1974, after 2,195 episodes, making Eubanks one of the most beloved and bankable game show hosts to date. He also hosted various editions in syndication, from 1977–80, 1985–88 and 1997-99. For Series Two of the 2009 GSN revival, Bob hosted a celebrity charity episode with first host Carnie Wilson and her husband Rob Bonfiglio playing against Carnie's sister Wendy and her husband Daniel Knutson, and their mother Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford and her current husband Daniel Rutherford. In spring 2010, Eubanks hosted another episode of The Newlywed Game, subtitled the "Game Show Kings" episode. This episode featured Monty Hall and his wife Marilyn Hall, Peter Marshall and his wife Laurie Stewart, and Wink Martindale with his wife Sandy Martindale. This makes him the only person to host the same game show in six different consecutive decades (1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s).
In 1988, Eubanks left The Newlywed Game to pursue other interests (even though he was still hosting Card Sharks on CBS for another 7 months) and was replaced by Paul Rodriguez.
Read more about this topic: Bob Eubanks
Famous quotes containing the words country, music and/or business:
“O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew—
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being so slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“Noble and wise men once believed in the music of the spheres: noble and wise men still continue to believe in the “moral significance of existence.” But one day even this sphere-music will no longer be audible to them! They will wake up and take note that their ears were dreaming.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Actually, if my business was legitimate, I would deduct a substantial percentage for depreciation of my body.
Contemplative and bookish men must of necessitie be more quarrelsome than others, because they contend not about matter of fact, nor can determine their controversies by any certain witnesses, nor judges. But as long as they goe towards peace, that is Truth, it is no matter which way.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)