How has the set design on game shows changed through the years?

How has the set design on game shows changed through the years?

Bob Boden (Vice President of Production, Fox Reality Channel) gives expert video advice on: How important is the set design on game shows?; How has the set design on game shows changed through the years?; Who comes up with the rules on game shows? and more...

When game shows first transferred from radio to television, their look was not all that spectacular, because television was a new medium, and there wasn't a lot of effort put into the actual design of the show. As television got more mature and more advanced in the fifties and sixties, the design became more important. With the crazy psychedelic sixties, the game show took on a look of sort of a circus, and there were flashing lights everywhere, and major effects. This was before video effects really were as sophisticated as they are today, but there were all kinds of angles and wipes and effects that they used in a very primitive form to make the shows look snazzy and dazzling. As time went on, the look became more contemporary and more dramatic, and that's the turn of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" in 1999, which really put the game show set into a different class. Now it wasn't about the flashing lights and the turntables and the largess of it. It was about the drama. It was about the dramatic lighting, the dramatic music, the graphics, the look and feel, the tension that was created by all of these elements together, that made that show so ground-breaking, even though its format was very derivative.