Alex Trebek has cancer

Yep, I think College Bowl still gets a mention in the credits of the UK version. I'm not sure if the original UK version outlived it.

The yanks were going to do Countdown too, in their own special way:
http://wiki.apterous.org/Countdown_(American_game_show)

Yes - plus it still has the cash prize element of a game show - which UK 'intelligent' quiz shows don't really do.

I'd still call it a game show - as it's based on a cash prize element. That's always been the separating factor to me between a game show and a quiz show (though that might just be me!).

For me Millionaire and Jeopardy are game shows, Only Connect and University Challenge are quiz shows.

The distinction to me, and seems to be the common one is that a quiz is based on purely answering questions, whereas a gameshow has an element of, or is exclusively luck or skill

Interesting how the address at the end appears to be for Gabriel's Wharf. Did TVS have an office there, perhaps part of the same space as what became Studio 8? Or perhaps LWT handled their contestant applications.

There's an address at the end? It cuts off before the end of the credits.


It wasn't a TVS or Meridian production, it was a Reg Grundy one so presumably it's an address for them. Though I don't think I've ever seen any office space at Gabriel's Wharf, let alone any used by TV production teams

It's towards the end, at 21:30: 59/65 Upper Ground. Perhaps bluecortina could shed some light on this address?

Wasn't 59/65 the South Bank tower half way down Upper Ground - home of IPC (TV Times/Look in) Magazines?

I'd agree with this sentiment - Jeopardy's only peers are NPR's news quizzes "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me!" and "Ask Me Another". Jeopardy usually airs back to back with Wheel of Fortune, and the contrast couldn't be more apparent.

I forget where I heard it, but someone had remarked that Trebek is in many ways one of the last consistent voices of the 20th Century in American television - a Cronkite of sorts. I wish Alex the best in his recovery, I can't even fathom who would be a suitable replacement.

According to an old newsgroup post here: https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/rec.arts.tv.uk/pLlUXpd3VCU/tlpSPjpbcq8

Reg Grundy Productions (GB) Ltd
Enterprise House, 59-65 Upper Ground, London, SE1 9PQ

It's this building:
https://goo.gl/maps/ii9dWbnkZF92

And Catchphrase, and Chain Letters (which never even got beyond pilot stage in the US), which were much less successful than Strike it Rich or BB (the latter of which did get a fairly respectable two-year run in the US, and was revived later).

Thing is, pretty much everything game-show wise bombed in the mid-late 1980s in the US. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy just blew the syndicated competition away and nothing else got a look in from that point onwards. Mark Goodson and Bob Stewart each managed to eke out a decent living with revivals of old shows but otherwise the genre has been pretty much dead from then on.

Probably the last genuinely successful US-originated format (successful in the US that is) was probably Win, Lose or Draw, and that's 30 years old now.