Broadcast History
In the late 1960s, Jack Barry pitched the concept of Joker to Goodson-Todman Productions. The company was not impressed, and Barry continued tinkering with the format over the next few years.
The Joker's Wild debuted on CBS September 4, 1972, incidentally on the same Labor Day as the modern incarnation of The Price Is Right as well as Gambit. It ran until June 13, 1975 on that network, airing at 10:00 AM Eastern (9:00 Central). A total of 686 episodes were produced.
For the first two years, it faced NBC's Dinah's Place, the talk vehicle for singer/actress Dinah Shore, which gave way to the Dennis James revival of Name That Tune, which Joker easily defeated in the ratings. However, when NBC moved its panel game Celebrity Sweepstakes to 10:00/9:00 in early 1975, Joker went into steep decline, ending a nearly three-year run in the summer.
However, some big-market independent stations gave the game another chance the next year. After a syndicated rerun cycle of the last CBS season proved successful in 1976, the show returned to first-run syndication from September 1977 to May 23, 1986 (airing back-to-back with sister show Tic-Tac-Dough in some markets). A revival ran from September 10, 1990 to March 8, 1991 (with reruns airing until September 13), also in syndication.
Read more about this topic: The Joker's Wild
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