Double Dare (1976 game show)
Two contestants dared to identify subjects from one-sentence clues.
Alex Trebek hosted this CBS game show, which aired from 1976 to 1977. Two players sat in separate booths, trying to guess a person, place, or thing from a single-sentence clue. The winner then faced three Ph.Ds, called the Spoilers, in a bonus round. Mark Goodson & Bill Todman produced it, with Jay Wolpert as creator.
Quick Facts
- Genre
- Game show
- Creator
- Jay Wolpert
- Director
- Marc Breslow; Paul Alter
- Presenter
- Alex Trebek
- Narrator
- Johnny Olson; Gene Wood
- Composer
- Edd Kalehoff (Score Productions)
- Country
- United States
- Language
- English
Facts from the source article.
Broadcast history
Double Dare made its CBS daytime debut on December 13, 1976, taking over the 11:00 AM Pacific slot from Gambit, right after The Price Is Right. It went up against NBC's Wheel of Fortune, which had already been on the air for two years, and failed to match Gambit's ratings. On March 7, 1977, the show was moved an hour earlier to make room for an hour-long version of The Price Is Right at 10:30 AM. CBS didn't see improvement at the new time and pulled the plug after 20 weeks and 96 episodes, with the last one airing on April 29, 1977. Jay Wolpert got credit as the show's creator in the closing credits and later started his own production company. This was also the first producing job for Jonathan Goodson. Markie Post, then working at Goodson-Todman, served as an associate producer. Nearly all the music and sound effects were reused on other Goodson-Todman programs. Edd Kalehoff composed the theme for Score Productions, and it turned up a year later on Card Sharks. The sound used for the clue board and isolation booths later appeared in The Price Is Right's Penny Ante and Vend-O-Price games, plus the bonus round wind-up on The Joker's Wild. A shortened version of Price's losing horns was also used for bonus round losses. Taping rotated among Studios 31, 33, and 41 at CBS Television City in Hollywood.
Episode status
Every known episode of the show still exists. Game Show Network carried reruns from 1996 to 1997, with sporadic airings between 1998 and 2000, and later brought it back for a regular run from 2007 to 2009. In September 2015, Buzzr featured several episodes—including one of the original 1976 pilots—as part of its “Buzzr Lost and Found” special. Viewers later voted the series onto Buzzr’s Sunday night schedule through the Pick & Play Sweepstakes, leading to two episodes airing Sundays at 10 PM (PST) until 2017. The first 20 episodes, called the “76 & 77” collection, became available on Amazon Prime Video in North America.
More in Television Series by Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions
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