How Are the Spring and Summer Game Shows Doing?
Take a look at how the spring and summer games are doing!
We’re more than half way through the 2022 Summer Fun and Games season and this may be a good time to check out how shows are doing. We’re taking a look at the season averages of the final overnight numbers, courtesy TVSeriesFinale.com. The good news is game shows are having a very strong summer and look good, for the most part. For a comparison I’m also including some recently cancelled games to show how things are doing this summer compared to those that ended.
I’m also noting that we’re comparing season to season, not time slot to time slot. Some shows may have changed days or times, some have different lead-ins than before…there’s a lot of caveats. This is just to show how things are doing.
| SHOW | 18-49 DEMO | SEASON DIFFERENCE | TOTAL VIEWERS (MILLIONS) | SEASON DIFFERENCE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Press Your Luck | 0.47 | -4.66% | 3.529 | +9.48% |
| Generation Gap | 0.41 | N/A | 3.180 | N/A |
| Celebrity Family Feud | 0.55 | -12.02% | 4.524 | -2.92% |
| The $100,000 Pyramid | 0.41 | -13.69% | 3.626 | +3.99% |
| The Chase | 0.32 | -33.13% | 2.229 | -38.35% |
| The Final Straw | 0.33 | N/A | 2.304 | N/A |
| Password | 0.45 | N/A | 4.218 | N/A |
| Weakest Link | 0.27 | -58.62% | 1.833 | -50.72% |
| Holey Moley | 0.39 | -6.67% | 2.474 | -6.36% |
| Don’t Forget The Lyrics! | 0.31 | N/A | 1.896 | N/A |
| Name That Tune | 0.30 | N/A | 1.601 | -40.21% |
| Beat Shazam | 0.34 | -23.18% | 1.837 | -1.71% |
| The Hustler (ended) | 0.29 | -44.41% | 1.744 | -39.58% |
| Supermarket Sweep (ended) | 0.39 | -44.84% | 2.317 | -27.31% |
| Card Sharks (ended) | 0.33 | -45.64% | 2.245 | -32.87% |
| Who Wants to be a Millionaire (ended) | 0.46 | -43.75% | 3.147 | -44.63% |
A few take aways from this:
*Overall, game shows are having a good year. Specifically ABC is having a great year. Fox’s games seem to always average pretty low and Weakest Link was renewed despite some awfully low numbers, but ABC’s games are looking very solid. The only outliers are The Final Straw and The Chase. Press Your Luck and Pyramid are the only games which have gained viewers between seasons which is excellent for shows that are getting up there in age.
*The most shocking is the pretty large drop between seasons for The Chase and I’m not quite sure what may have caused that. They are airing the show a lot so potentially burnout? I don’t think that swapping out some Chasers would have caused a drop this steep alone. It would be nice to see ABC give the show some room to breathe and not run it into the ground. It’s tough to do this show in primetime to begin with and the burnout is even starting to affect us and we’re big fans. Hopefully the second half of season three can get some momentum. The new Chasers are fantastic and deserve more attention than they’re getting.
*I was very wrong about Password. I thought putting it at 10:00PM ET was a mistake for a very family friendly word game. It’s doing phenomenally well. I’d be interested to see if it can anchor a night the same way Press Your Luck and Celebrity Family Feud have done successfully so far.
*Your guess is as good as mine for Fox’s singing shows but I’d imagine nearly all the other games looks positive to come back. The Final Straw and The Chase seem to be the biggest question marks. If you compare how they’re doing to the cancelled shows The Chase is doing worse than everything except The Hustler and The Final Straw isn’t doing much better.
My biggest takeaway: the best made and most fun shows are doing the best and that’s great news! It doesn’t always happen that the best get rewarded so to see the hard work of some really great production teams justified by the best results is a net positive for everyone.