Bonus Round - Origin

Origin

Until the 1960s, most game shows did not offer a bonus round. In traditional two-player formats, the winner — if a game show's rules provided for this — became the champion and simply played a new challenger either on the next show or after the commercial break.

One of the earliest forms of bonus rounds was the Jackpot Round of the original series Beat the Clock. After two rounds of performing stunts, the wife of the contestant couple would perform at a jackpot board for a jackpot prize. Here, the contestant was shown a famous quotation or common phrase, and the words were scrambled. To win the announced bonus, the contestant had to unscramble the words within a time limit (20 seconds). The contestant received a consolation gift worth over $200 if she was unsuccessful.

Another early bonus round ended each episode of You Bet Your Life with the team who won the most money answering one final question for a jackpot which started at $1,000 and increased $500 a week.

Another early example was the Lightning Round on the word game Password, starting in 1961. Here, the contestant who had met the objective of the front game played a quick-fire series of passwords within 60 seconds, netting $50 per correctly guessed word (for a maximum bonus prize of $250).

The bonus round came about after game show producer Mark Goodson was first presented Password, contending that it was not enough to merely guess passwords during the show. "We needed something more, and that's how the Lightning Round was invited," said Howard Felsher, who produced Password and Family Feud. "From that point on every game show had to have an end round. You'd bring a show to a network and they'd say, 'What's the endgame?' as if they had thought of it themselves."

At least one bonus round — the end game of Match Game — has served as the impetus for a completely new game show. The first part of Match Game's bonus round, called Audience Match, asked contestants to guess how a studio audience responded to a question. In 1975, Goodson decided that this line of questioning would make a good game show of its own. The concept eventually became Family Feud.