Will network daytime game shows ever return to the way they were back in 1970s and '80s, game shows on network daytime television other than The Price Is Right and Let's Make A Deal on CBS? Or is it more than unlikely due to the affiliates making more money from local news/feature shows and syndicated programming?

Will network daytime game shows ever return to the way they were back in 1970s and '80s, game shows on network daytime television other than The Price Is Right and Let's Make A Deal on CBS? Or is it more than unlikely due to the affiliates making more money from local news/feature shows and syndicated programming?
Sadly I doubt it. Cheaper to just pay a bunch of ladies to sit around and talk, I guess.

I wish it would but I doubt it. Ratings seem to dictate that people like The View and The Chew.

I'm going to say "no," for a couple reasons...

1. Back in the 1950s - 1980s, there were a lot more stay-at-home moms and wives who would be watching TV during the daytime hours that companies could advertise their products to.

Now, 30 years later, many of these same women are out working themselves to support the household.

So with fewer people to advertise to, companies no longer think it's worth it to market their products on daytime television. Thus, what happens is on a game show like The Price is Right for example, much of the show's budget must go towards buying products to use in pricing games at their own expense which makes the show less profitable for the network.

2. Shows like The View and The Talk are cheap to produce, unlike game shows with a ton of expensive prizes. Honestly, how much does it cost to pay a bunch of people to sit at a table and talk about nothing?

Well, in that case, I hope you're satisfied now, Fred Silverman. While your atrocious David Letterman daytime experiment didn't make even a whimper immediately, it has had devastating long term effects for game show fans everywhere.

When David Letterman's show turned out to be a failure, it probably had an impact on the number of affiliates who carried the game shows it would replace Las Vegas Gambit and Blockbusters. Instead, they would carry talk shows such as Phil Donahue or Hour Magazine and syndicated game show hits Joker's Wild and Tic Tac Dough.

NBC would have later success in the post Letterman time period in 1983 when Sale of the Century came back. It would be one of their last hit daytime game shows along with another Reg Grundy produced show Scrabble.

As for daytime game show making a comeback, I would love to see more games on the network but there too few time slots open and since the explosive growth of cable, too much competition.