Oh Lord, won't you buy me a color TV ? Dialing For Dollars is trying to find me. I wait for delivery each day until three, So oh Lord, won't you buy me a color TV ?

@3991justin

4 жыл бұрын

Exactly, now I finally understand what she meant!!

Even this would be better than the trash talk, courtroom shows and infomercials that make most of daytime TV now!!!

@bongodoug

4 жыл бұрын

Daytime television is a hell pit of catastrophic proportions

@aiberlane3390

4 жыл бұрын

Don't forget the women's panel shows where they're either shouting over each other about politics or talking about their sex lives.

@anotherguy2741

4 жыл бұрын

@@aiberlane3390 I consider that trash talk as well.

Yikes! That rendition of "Scarborough Fair" was so grating, the tape tried to commit suicide!

Ok this is pure liquid Oddity Archive. Inject it into my veins, double dose please.

8:32 Scanimate "cameo"

A Baltimore shout-out! Edit: My mom was actually on the Baltimore version of Bowling for Dollars in the early 70s. I don't remember what she said she won, but it wasn't a jackpot win.

@smittykins

4 жыл бұрын

My neighbor(and friend’s mom)was on Syracuse’s version, and I was invited to sit in the audience along with her daughter. The next day at school, my fifth grade teacher called me “Our TV star.” And BTW, I had a Fairchild Channel F.

@Musicradio77Network

4 жыл бұрын

There was a NYC version of “Bowling For Dollars” which was on WOR-TV (channel 9) back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

As a european, I now finally understand what that Michael Moore documentary Bowling for Columbine was referring to with its name.

We're having a good time tonight! Expectations were lower in the 70's.

6:55 I have never been so excited to see Hat Fashions in all my life. That studio audience has my sincere sympathies for having to sit through the entire folk-opera...thing.

We have returned to local Television! Yay.

When I saw that clip of the adult TV POWWW!, I was worried I was going to see Custer's Revenge on the screen. Thank goodness it was just a slot machine.

Naturally, Maryland is virtually the only place where duckpin bowling still exists. The patent owner for the setting machine refused to allow Brunswick to make it as well, so parts became rare. While these shows are dead, the last vestige of franchised game shows that still exists is the high school quiz show, most notably It's Academic, based out of Washington since 1961. The producers of the old "GE College Bowl" syndicated a high school version from the 60s at least into the 90s.

@RickinBaltimore

4 жыл бұрын

The Baltimore version has been on the air for a long time too, I think a few years after the WRC version started

@daveporter0217

4 жыл бұрын

@@RickinBaltimore Since the early 70s. Started on WBAL. Now on WJZ.

@theannoyedmrfloyd3998

4 жыл бұрын

WEWS 5 out of Cleveland Ohio used to have Academic Challenge on Saturday nights a few times a month.

I grew up in South Africa. TV2 Pow had a short run during the early 80 on the newly created 2nd (and 3rd) TV channels. I remember this show clearly, because it came on just before Spider-Man (the 70s animated version) and can remember hearing the TV going “pow pow pow pow!”

We had TVPowww in New York as TVPixxx on WPIX! Used to love watching that.

@luisreyes1963

4 жыл бұрын

The Ray Rayner Show on Chicago's WGN-TV had a variation of TV POW.

Used to flip past this on WKBW Buffalo. Of course in later years we used the format to make prank calls. "This is Nolan Johannes at WKBW, if you can tell me the count and the amount in today's cash jackpot you can win . . . Oh, you don't know either? Then you HAVE won . . .a years supply of toilet paper! " Slam phone down, laugh, dial again repeatedly

I was hoping you'd mention the TV POWWW (or in my case PIXXX) phenomenon, and you didn't disappoint. Also, I don't believe this was mentioned, but the guy at 9:45 is Larry Kenney; aka Lion-o from Thundercats AND the voice of Skittles commercials

@erocktv

4 жыл бұрын

I was actually a contestant on PIX once.. and lost badly. Something like 11-2. Benny mentions "lag" -- uh, yeah. Probably didn't help that I was dialed into NYC from the Boston suburbs in the mid-80s, either.

@RobPryme

4 жыл бұрын

I remember PIXXX! I was only three, but I still remember.

@MrLoretano77

2 жыл бұрын

I was a member of the Ranger Bob Buckaroo club as a kid. Funny thing.. I saw him in disney world 10 years ago working as a performer in Hollywood studios. He played a director filming a scene that went completely wrong. Lol

There were shows similar to TV Powww in the late 90s and 2000s, mostly in South America and Europe. A lot of them used crappy games based on a lame-ish character called Hugo. Instead of yelling "pow", the caller would use the pad on the phone to control the character. Sometimes it was very noticeable that someone else was pressing the right buttons and not even paying attention to the actual tones from the players' phone.

@ABCEasyas--

4 жыл бұрын

Seems like a show that used to be on Game Show Network called Throut and Neck

The "Next Up: Hat Fashions" part cracked me up more than it had any reason to. First smile I've cracked all week. Edit: Oh. They had the Candlepin Bowling show on Boston for some time. I want to say sometime into the 90's. They had dropped the "for dollars" bit way before I ever saw any episodes. All I remember is that our local ABC affiliate would cut out after the 10 AM Saturday Morning feed to fit in local programming no one in the age demographic of Saturday Mornings would be interested in. And they did that as long as they had that SatAM block.

Despite Ben featuring Moe Green (Harold Ramis) on his box, nobody mentioned the SCTV Dialing for Dollars spoofs, especially the hilarious one where Walter Cronkite (masterfully played by Dave Thomas) is constantly being threatened by a guy on the other end of the phone. So creepy, it was hilarious! "Put your head in a vice until that moustache of yours pops off." LOL! Hats off to you Ben for that (now) obscure reference!

We had bowling for dollars in the late 70s in Pittsburgh PA

Now, I get it. You Posted Janis Joplin singing "Mercedes Benz" because of the line where she says "Dailing for Dollars".

@fixman88

4 жыл бұрын

And now I FINALLY get Pumbaa’s ‘Bowling for Buzzards’ line from the 1994 Lion King!

I used to watch the version of Dialing for Dollars on KCPQ hosted by Art Peterson (shown in this video). I saw one of the final episodes in the 90s where he was talking about how the studio was going to be repurposed after the show was cancelled into their news studio. (The station didn't have news before this.)

13:27 Oh my God I can't believe someone had footage of that TV Pow thing! Essentially it was an Intellivision game hooked up to the phone line and triggered by sound. WYTV 33 in Youngstown had that during commercial breaks in the afternoon while airing the original Filmation He-Man (and later She-Ra) animated series. They even gave prizes out to lucky players daily, weekly, and monthly. You got picked to play by sending in a postcard. I never managed to actually sending one in.

@erocktv

4 жыл бұрын

I don't remember which of our independent stations in Boston ran it - but I sent a postcard in for it. Never managed to get on as a contestant, but..

@eascec8374

3 жыл бұрын

I'll Say That Since Youngstown Has No Independent Station To Rely On, I Guess WYTV Is (Like It Was) Primary An ABC Station And Possible A Secondary Independent Affiliate For A Few Short Years Depending On Children's Programming Such As Heathcliff (DiC) And He-Man Channel 33 Aired At The Time.

Ah yes that duckfart... scary psychadelic 70's soundeffects.

6:31 YIKES!!!!! My ears may never recover!

My mother informed me last night that KETV in Omaha, NE had an afternoon Dialing for Dollars Movie sometime in the '70s, presumably early '70s, as surviving late '70s video footage makes no mention of such a program.

DUCKPINS! They're still very much active in Maryland and parts of New England There was also a candlepin competition show (with the end-of-show bowling-for-bonus) that aired on WNDS (Derry, NH) called Stars and Strikes that lasted until 2005.

TV Poww aired in Brazil, afaik, in TVS(now SBT). SBT, which is quite known for gameshows. They did a similar, but more physical version in the late 90s and 2000s called Gol Show: you would tell GOAL and a piston propelled cannon or something would shoot a ball into a soccer goal.

@syxepop

4 жыл бұрын

Everton Favretto, I'm happy that at least one of the Brazilian fans of the Archive would get a shoutout for SBT's broadcast, which Ben mentioned without naming the network. As a "Jem es as Hologramas" (I do love Sarah Regina's singing, BTW) fan I know the network did the Portuguese full dub (

Correction at 3:59 mark...the show ran an hour and five minutes. It started right after Rocketship 7, a kids show, and was the forerunner to AM Buffalo, still on WKBW in Buffalo.

I used to watch Bowling For Dollars on USA network

oh man the opening "music" is fantastic. I'm hyped to win!

11:30 Ahhh yes, Ron DeFrance at WOKR-TV 13 in Rochester. That man became an institution on local bowling shows well into the 90s, co-hosting Brighton-Panorama TV Roll-Offs which was more or less a localized version of the PBA Tour that was on ABC and Funtime Youth Bowling where kiddies in different age groups would face off against each other by rolling the first seven frames off camera and then the last three on the air. My dream as a kid was to at some point in my life be on one of these shows. Sadly, both had left the airwaves by the time I finished high school.

Great episode as usual! As a 1990s kid living on the Ontario/Michigan border between two smaller TV markets (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario and Cadillac/Traverse City, Michigan), I can't say I recall any of these three franchises in my local markets. The closest we had in the 1990s were Super Big Money TV Bingo on MCTV (which is still on) and the old Michigan Lottery game shows like Megabucks Giveaway and Road to Riches. Not franchised, but the same idea popped up in other states and provinces

I remember here in Los Angeles Bowling For Dollars was hosted by Chick Hearn who later became the voice of the Lakers Basketball Team.

A KARK shoutout! I remember those Dialing for Dollars segments.

I'm a big nerd when it comes to videogame history. I've read several books and watched countless documentaries on the subject. Yet, somehow I'd never heard of TV Powww before. Thanks a lot, Ben! That was great! I'll definitely be sharing this with my fellow retrogame nerds!

Here in the UK local TV never really existed but regional TV was home to some big successes which were networked. In 1971 Anglia Television (broadcasting to East Anglia) launched a show called Sale Of The Century which you might know - and it offered cars, caravans (like trailers) and furniture. And it was a great success, like it was in Australia and America. There was also Yorkshire Television’s Winner Takes All which was like a standard question-answer quiz show but each potential answer had odds on it and contestants had to bet money on what they thought it was. However they were only allowed to give away £1000 per episode, even when some people went beyond that mark.

13:54 Wow, they got Jack Clark to host a version! That seems to indicate that they thought of it as a game show more than anything else.

Chicago's WLS-TV back in the early '70s once ran a "Dialing For Dollars" type of show, but it was a segment of the Afternoon Movie. It was hosted by a strange lady named Ione.

@OddityArchive

4 жыл бұрын

Wouldn't be this lady, would it? scontent.ffsd1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/69251487_2661376407227877_5009255846639566848_n.jpg?_nc_cat=110&_nc_oc=AQk_d5vfivazpbC1MPPhqmSGW79aehKEJDfBSq8B_AjFqDmfwuIF8ThCBivXFiPFSN8hAELAjfDPUJCS2cNDo7MU&_nc_ht=scontent.ffsd1-1.fna&oh=bb49d633434986d12bb7c2ecae4872ee&oe=5DF66520

There was a similar TV-programme in Denmark in the late 80s, just with a pinball machine (cant remember whether it was an actual pinball machine or a computer game, though). That is people rang into the programme and had to say "flip" when they wanted the pinball machine to hit the ball. It lacked so much that people rarely hit the ball. People called the program "flipper", but I cant remember the real name or TV-station. Great episode as always. Love all the episodes with video.

In the early 1970s Green Bay's WLUK TV-11 had something called Clubhouse Poww during select commercial breaks in afternoon programming aimed at kids. The prizes weren't much -- coupons for a few food items at McDonalds which of course was the sponsor.

who remembers Fernwood Tonight? one show Barth opened up with "a new car!" "$10,000". he said it worked for game shows

When I think of classic local low-budget TV, I think of the "Dialing for Dollars" or "Bowling for Dollars" or any show where contestants have to guess the price of an item. It was either that or the station with the local morning chat show or the one with the Sunday-night roundtable show - that is peak low budget TV before Reagan set us onto the road to Infomercialville.

Ohhh Benny boy you shure hit the nostalgia nerve buddy. I totally remember that tv pow show back in the late 70s to early 80s on Kttv channel 11. I lived in the Southern California, LA area and that show would come out in the mornings and in the afternoon during after school cartoons, infact if memory serves me correctly the host would show cartoons during that show. Great episode bud.

In the 1970s and early 1980s Green Bay station WRFV-TV 5 had Dialing for Dollars twice a day. They did it several times during the Mid Day noon news program. They also did Dialing for Dollars a few times each day during the 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Early Show afternoon movie. You needed to know the jackpot amount and the "key phrase" which was a Channel 5 program. If a contestant didn't know they were allowed to guess.

They still have these all over Europe

We are building a fighting force of extraordinary magnitude. We forge our spirits in the tradition of our ancestors. You have our gratitude.

I don't remember a local gameshow in my city but via cable I'd watch The Prize Movie on Ch.43 in Cleveland. There is a gameshow put on by the Ohio Lottery now.

@theannoyedmrfloyd3998

4 жыл бұрын

meowza3k WGAR radio host John Lanigan hosted that thing on 43. He'd pick a postcard from a drum at random, the contestant would pick an envelope from WUABTV letters on the wall and then to win the big prize jackpot, they'd play a short film clip and the caller would win if they could identify the movie upon which they'd show the whole clip. I saw people win only twice live on air, but people did win.

In 70s and 80s Milwaukee something similar to Bowling for Dollars, called The Bowling Game. It was team vs team based, bowling 3 frames for hidden prizes .

Wow, a Local TV episode, a history lesson episode AND two of the three have origins in Baltimore?! Ben, it's not even my birthday, man! This is a great treat! By the way, duckpin bowling is still super fun and going strong here in Charm City. Someone else mentioned it, but I'm surprised you didn't bring up the high school quiz bowl game shows like It's Academic that also have the origins in the Baltimore/Washington DC area. I was even on the Baltimore edition of that twice!

@5roundsrapid263

4 жыл бұрын

I remember the academic shows. I think even SCTV did skits on them.

Ben needs to get that folk singer lady on his next album not matter how old or dead she is.

heh. I remember watching Dialing for Dollars in between re-runs of Three's Company

Thank you thank you thank you for showing Ranger Bob (Tim Kincade) doing TV Poww in Rochester New York

I think I would've raged quit if I played that POWWWW show

@eascec8374

3 жыл бұрын

I Wonder How Many Adult Versions Survive At The Time... I Think Versions Are Mainly For Kids And Teens At The Time. But I Give The Trust.

There was a 90s version of video pow played with telephone touch tones at least in the dc area. I distinctly remember watching it and some kid was trying really hard to play street fighter 2 and failing

Another great episode and something I barely knew about, but have more fascination about than ever. I remember a Garfield strip, where they had "Bowling for dollars and cheese"

This programme makes me wonder if America ever flirted with their own version of the British game show Bullseye. A game show based around darts. They could have had viewers at home answering quiz questions with on set darts players hoting arrows for prizes. All my love to the station that got Jim Bowen himself as host. "Keep out of the blacvk and in the red, you get nothing in this game for two in a bed" "Have a look at what you could have won..."

Great episode...nice to get the backstory of how DfD started, and had no idea that TV Powww was an international hit, or the reason behind the switch from the Fairchild Channel F to the Intellivision!

We had the Dialing For Dollars movie for many years on WNEP-16 in northeastern Pennsylvania. They eventually switched to a gerbil race (not kidding!) The movies were usually heavily edited. Theme weeks included Elvis movies, The Time Tunnel, Planet of The Apes, and the old Spider-Man series (with Nicholas Hammond and cool jazz music that couldn’t cover for the low-tech special effects and lack of super villains) WPIX-11 in NYC had kiddies yell “PIX!” to shoot lasers and baskets (courtesy of Intellivision’s basketball game) for prizes.

0:41 - Your box is not straight! Were you using a stack of VHS tapes again?

I grew up in the ‘80s in a small town. I never knew this was so widespread. It was more of a comedy trope by then, like “Bowling for Burgers” from “UHF”.

We had a Powwww locally, in fact that one clip mentioning Chilhowie might have been from around here. Also I must issue a disclaimer that I did appear on WCYB's edition of Romper Room, forever twisting my perception of the reality of TV viewing, having lifted the veil. Also appeared in ads for my dad's car dealership, and one last thing, my brother did an ad for WXBQ water-skiing in a rabbit costume. All of this being too true to make up. Also I killed the actor-singer-dancer intern in a segment of David Letterman's NBC show after sending in a chain letter that the intern was instructed to dispose of. There is more but this comment is getting a bit wordy.

POW!! (is it weird to watch oddity archive at school?))

@singinglawnchair

4 жыл бұрын

I watched a lot of Archive when I was still in college. Just make sure you keep up with your classwork and your teacher doesn't spot you :)

@OfficialDJUnikittyYT

4 жыл бұрын

I watch it at lunch. Oddity Archive is better than school and that's the TEA :D

For the United Kingdom version of this type of regional programming search for "Yorkshire Television Indoor League", which featured darts, arm-wrestling, and bar games like Bar Billiards. Racial stereotypes and 1970s sexism ahoy!

1) If America had waited just a bit longer, you could have had these kinds of shows (at least Dialing for Dollars), but where *viewers* would phone-in the shows via a 1-900-style number (read: the sucker audience pays over and over again for the prizes). 2) There was also a TV Powww-style TV show popular in many parts of the world, known as Hugo, although the gameplay was different. You had to drive Hugo through a railroad/on a ski field/on foot/flying on an airplane/etc. to its finish line. You controlled Hugo with the keypad on your phone. Here is an example: kzread.info/dash/bejne/n3hqvKSTltCfZKQ.html

Nice to hear about the reboot of Bowling for Dollars in Detroit, but not cool to hear that no one got paid from it. I'm old enough to remember the original B4D when I was a kid. Bob Allison also did voiceovers for commercials for Bobson Construction Company in the Detroit area.

The Intellivision version of TVPowww was part of the Captain 20 show on WDCA in Washington. I remember correctly deducing that it was just a stagehand with an Intellivision controller, and that obnoxious kids just repeating "powpowpow" as fast as possible became the dominant strategy (though not a particularly effective one).

Does anyone remember Basil Bassett Bingo? It would come on old C-band satellite back in the 90s. It was just a channel where a really bad CGI Bassett hound would host bingo games.

@5roundsrapid263

4 жыл бұрын

I remember seeing listings for it in satellite magazines and wondering “What the heck?”

@shawn.the.alien423

4 жыл бұрын

@@5roundsrapid263 It was weird...you would order these special bingo cards and a special marker pen. Each card had 3 games, with a new game broadcast every 4 minutes. The CGI dog would creep me out. Look it up...there are videos of it on KZread.

@5roundsrapid263

4 жыл бұрын

Shawn Patrick Come to think of it, I might have seen it. The parents of my brother’s girlfriend at the time had a C-band dish, and loved playing bingo.

7:50 LOL yep Little Rock still dose that...... It's the only way to get people to watch their crappy news program.

Speaking Of Bowling For Dollars, There Is Not 1, But 2 Reboots Though. The Other Was Being WCGV Channel 24 In Milwaukee. But Like WADL, It Lasted For A Short Period Of Time. However, Only The Commercial Was Discovered From 2017. However, Milwaukee Previously Also Has 2 Bowling For Dollars In It’s History Throughout The 1970s-Early 1980s.

I’d rather play Bowling for Burgers on U62

@5roundsrapid263

4 жыл бұрын

U62, Be There!

Dialing For Dollars sound like a very interesting concept. Perhaps it could be brought back someday. Maybe not as a TV show, but maybe something like an internet live stream show or online game.

20:38 - ...all that and a bag of chips!

TV Powww in Brazil was funny because of the "penis innuendo" and its recordings were recently revived as a meme 😄. Nowadays some overseas have to use different names because of unintentional sex innuendos such as Star Wars' Count Dooku is named Dookan here.

I feel like I've seen something similar in concept with the video game segment, I just forget what it was! >

6:19 Don't tell me they didn't lift that sound effect from Spike Jones' rendition of "Laura"!

TvPowww is most bizarre game show idea i`ve ever seen.

@SNARC15

4 жыл бұрын

Try TV Pass, another version but with a football theme. They did that in DC via WDCA channel 20. Recently I had a talk with Dick Dyszel (aka the most well known version of Captain 20) about it and he even mentioned about how he even dressed up in full football gear during the broadcasts. He was supposed to show me pictures from back then but hasn't for back to me yet.

Now I know the inspiration for RusskiePow.

17:08 - Well, now that I've seen footage of Brazilian TV star Mara Maravilha on the Oddity Archive, I believe I've *officially* seen everything. What's especially funny (at least if you're as immature as me) about Brazil having its own TV Powww is that "pow" sounds *exactly* like one of the words used in Brazilian Portuguese used to refer to the male sexual organ. I mean, I'm sure they could've switched the word to a more idiomatic onomatopoeia, but I suspect some very naughty executive just wanted to hear children yelling profanity at their TV set .

The alley I work for does color pins and depending where they are its cash for that or spares on Tues and Thursday

That’s funny, in Britain a game called 3,2,1 had a round where the contestants would have to go head to head and play Breakout on a Fairchild Channel F to go into the main star prize round. It wasn’t too much of a success though, only lasting in the 1981 series Edit: and I forgot that in 1978 there was ‘Bruce Forsyth’s Big Night’ which had a game called ‘Telly Tennis’ which was essentially voice controlled Pong. It didn’t work, that is the game and the viewers response

We had 33 Pow in Youngstown, Ohio

7:49 Oh Christ. That's one of the station's in my state. What the hell, Arkansas?

17:18 HEY WTVK KNOXVILLE, WHOOP!

@5roundsrapid263

4 жыл бұрын

17:33 looks like a Nashville phone number. The hostess makes me want to say “POW”!

No million dollar treasure but You ve won my heart 💍❤❤❤

From about 5:04 onward to about 7:24 is sort-of like what the Midday Show out of Station TCN-Sydney Australia descended to when Kerri-anne Kennerley hosted it. The show's original host and namesake as "The Mike Walsh Show", Mike Walsh himself would never have stood for such cheap gimmickry! But this kind of nonsense would be normal for American TV!

17:32 is definitely not KSL. It’s WTVF Nashville.

Chick Hearn hosted it in L.A in the 70s.

What about Boston’s own “candlepin stars and strikes”?

We had candlepins for cash.

3:16 WNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNBC

Dailing for Dollars made Oprah Winfrey famous

Moe Green!

Do you have any footage of the WPIX channel 11 (New York) - live late night games that they were playing in the early to mid 2000's? Can't find that anywhere.

@richardspeziale

4 жыл бұрын

i remember they were pretty awful as well - were they imported from Australia or somewhere? usually hosted by a young lady

@MikeM22

4 жыл бұрын

@@richardspeziale They weren't imported at all I'm sure, local New York girls - but they were odd for sure!

I remember TV powww.

You should try to incorporate a “powww” concept into your show. Hook up your KZread so that every time a commenter types “Pow,” the blaster in the prerecorded video fires a shot.

@plushifoxed

4 жыл бұрын

Matt POW!

Could you point me to the original video of the TV Powww slots game please?

Wpix 11 nyc did it too

@Musicradio77Network

4 жыл бұрын

It was “TV-Pixxx”, and NYC version of “TV-Powww”. They ran it during the afternoon blocks back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

@Delirious365

4 жыл бұрын

@@Musicradio77Network a video about it kzread.info/dash/bejne/rJaOkpKuZJrLdsY.html

Marty is wired

19:01 Seriously? What happened?