Concentration (game show)

Did You Know?

• Classic Concentration's prize model Diana Taylor was replaced on July 22, 1987 by Mark Goodson's daughter, Marjorie Goodson-Cutt.
• Some kinescope recordings of the 1958–1973 version are held at the Library of Congress.
• The first five minutes of the July 23rd, 1971 episode are available to watch on YouTube.

NBC (1958–1973)

Concentration was supposed to premiere on NBC on July 28, 1958, but its first broadcast was pushed back to August 25, 1958. Hugh Downs, who also announced for Tonight Starring Jack Paar and worked on NBC Radio’s Monitor, served as the first host. The show took over the time slot previously occupied by Truth or Consequences, which NBC moved to the afternoon.

It remains NBC’s longest-running game show and once held the record for the longest continuous daytime run on network television. That record was broken in March 1987 by the CBS daytime version of The Price Is Right, which started on September 4, 1972. Today, Concentration ranks sixth among the longest-running daytime or syndicated game shows, behind The Price Is Right and the syndicated versions of Wheel of Fortune (1983–present), Jeopardy! (1984–present), Family Feud (1999–present), and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (2002–2019).

Except for its earliest episodes, Concentration was produced in-house by NBC. Following the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, the network bought the rights to Concentration and three other games—Twenty-One, Dough Re Mi, and Tic-Tac-Dough—from producers Barry and Enright. NBCUniversal still holds exclusive rights to the format and existing episodes, but due to Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, this version is owned by CBS Media Ventures.

The show aired live in black-and-white at 11:30 a.m. Eastern on weekdays and quickly became NBC’s most-watched daytime series. Art James was the announcer; he occasionally substituted as host and later became a game show host himself. Production took place in NBC’s Studio 3A, which now houses NBC News and MSNBC. Concentration also had two brief prime-time runs, one in 1958 hosted by Jack Barry and another in 1961 hosted by Downs.

Syndication (1973–1978)

Five months after NBC dropped Concentration, the network tapped Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions to revive the show for syndication. It was the first time Goodson-Todman handled a format they didn't create themselves; all their earlier shows had been developed in-house. The new syndicated version debuted on September 10, 1973, and lasted five years. Jack Narz hosted, with Johnny Olson announcing. Taped at Metromedia Square in Hollywood, it mostly aired on the same NBC stations that had carried the original run. Though produced as a daily show, many syndicated game shows at the time only aired weekly, and some stations chose to broadcast Concentration that way. On March 6, 2020, Buzzr announced it would begin airing reruns of the Narz version, starting with episodes from 1976, on March 30.

Home games

The first home version of the game show Concentration was released by the Milton Bradley Company in 1958. Over the next 24 years, the company put out 24 editions of the game, ending in 1982. Because of a common superstition about the number 13, these editions were numbered 1 through 12 and then 14 through 25. This board game tied with the home version of Password as the most numerous of Milton Bradley's adaptations of popular game shows. Production of the game continued well after the Jack Narz-hosted television version ended in 1978, though it never included features from that particular era.

In 1988, Pressman Games published two editions of a home game based on the later Classic Concentration format. More recently, starting in 1998, Endless Games has released two versions of Concentration. These Endless editions were modeled after the Classic Concentration home game, with rebuses designed by Steve Ryan, who had created puzzles for the television show.

Several computer versions of Classic Concentration were released by Softie for MS-DOS, Apple II, and Commodore 64 systems. GameTek also produced a version for the Nintendo Entertainment System. In 1999, Tiger Electronics marketed a handheld version that used the theme music from the Narz era and the logo from the 1960s through 1978. These computer games generally played like the Alex Trebek-hosted version of the show, but did not include "TAKE!" cards.

A book titled Classic Concentration: The Game, The Show, The Puzzles was released in 1991. Written by puzzle designer Steve Ryan, who promoted it on the air, the book contains 152 puzzles from the show. The first 48 puzzles are shown completely, while the remaining 104 are first shown partially revealed on one page and then fully revealed on the next. Solutions for all puzzles appear at the back of the book. The book also includes a detailed history of Concentration and an introduction by executive producer Mark Goodson.