Blockbusters

I remember Blockbusters, one of the few quiz shows from Mark Goodson that debuted in 1980. It was a show that pitted a solo player against a family pair to prove that "two heads are better than one." It was a simple game that the home audience could play along and even better, Bill Cullen as host. He added a lot to the show and added plenty of humor to the game.

But NBC put Blockbusters into a time slot that was held by one of the disastrous attempts for something different in daytime, a talk show starring David Letterman. After four months of lousy ratings, it was canceled and replaced in the first half hour by a revival of Gambit that was taped in Las Vegas. The Wink Martindale-hosted show, leading into Blockbusters had to rebuild the time slot which suffered from not only low ratings but diminishing clearances by affiliates who opted syndicated talk shows such as the popular Phil Donahue Show.

Other than clearance problems and rebuilding a fallen time slot, Blockbusters was a show that people could learn something and the question structure in the main game was a lot like another Bill Cullen game show that aired on NBC, Winning Streak.