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Chain ReactionFirst Aired in 1980 "This is…Chain Reaction, where one word leads to another." These were the words with which Johnny Gilbert introduced the game show Bob Stewart first launched on NBC in January 1980. It was all about word play (hence, "one word leads to another"). Bill Cullen hosted the original Chain Reaction, which featured teams of one contestant and two celebrities each. To start a game, Bill Cullen would reveal an eight-word "chain." He revealed the word at the start of the chain and the word at the end of the chain. Play went down the line between teams. Each would ask for a letter in the word next to one of the givens. The next succeeding letter of that word was then revealed. It was the contestant's mission to guess the word and earn a point total equal to the number of letters in that word. The major exception were those blanks marked with a plus sign (+), which were worth double points. Play continued until one team won the game by amassing 50 points over several chains. The winning team would then go to a back-and-forth bonus game. In it, the two celebrities were given a subject and then had to alternate words that constructed a question. For instance, on the subject "Benjamin Franklin," one celebrity said "Who," the other sputtered "invented," and the first celebrity finished with "bifocals?" The celebrity then rang a bell, hoping the contestant would give the correct response. A total of nine correct answers in less than 60 seconds (or 90,…depending on how the producers judged the difficulty of the end game) to win the top bonus round prize of $10,000. The first end game had a ridiculous format. The Champion started with a dollar, and each correct answer earned him or her a half-zero. He or she needed a pair of correct answers to boost the prize total tenfold. Half a zero was worthless. That only lasted one week, because no contestant in the end games that week got more than $100. The second edition of the end game had correct answers raise the pot value to $1, $10, $100, $1000, $2000, $3000, $4000, $5000 before the grand prize. The later version of the end game started with a $100 pot and the first eight correct responses added $100. The ninth answer, of course, brought the total to $10,000. Say what you want about the scoring in that end game. The basis of it impressed Bob Stewart so much that he turned it into a full-blown NBC game show in 1983, called Go! It only lasted sixteen weeks. Chain Reaction was the last game show Bill Cullen hosted for Bob Stewart Productions. When Cullen was pressed into substitute-hosting Password Plus for an ailing Allen Ludden, Stewart called upon Geoff Edwards to sub-host Chain Reaction. Given the many changes to the bonus round, it was tough for Chain Reaction to get a following. Worse, it was scheduled at 12:00 P.M. ET, when some NBC affiliates chose to ran newscasts. (Ironically, four years later, another Bill Cullen-hosted game show for NBC, Hot Potato, would suffer the same fate.) GSN recognizes 114 episodes of Chain Reaction, but did not specify what date had gone without the program. Thus, the Episode List includes 115 entries in the NBC season. Should information turn up specifying when Chain Reaction's premeditated gap occurred, one of our senior editors will make the adjustments in the Episode List. (We do know that said gap had to occur after Geoff Edwards began his two weeks' sub-hosting.) NBC canceled Chain Reaction June 20, 1980 to make way for The David Letterman Show. Reruns appeared sporadically on cable for the next six years, leading to a Chain Reaction revival on USA Network. Bob Stewart (famed for Pyramid) revived Chain Reaction September 29, 1986. He had considerable success with a Toronto-based revival of Jackpot for Global Television and USA Network the year before. It made sense to build from there. Thus The New Chain Reaction was staged in Montréal, Québec. Hosting The New Chain Reaction was the veteran game-show host Geoff Edwards, who worked the old Jackpot and had substituted for Bill Cullen on the NBC Chain Reaction in April 7-18, 1980. Again, the guiding principle was word association. Contestants were given a seven-line "chain." Geoff told what words started and ended the chain, and then the contestants had to guess what was the word next to one of the givens. Whenever a contestant chose an unknown word, he or she had the option of answering the blank or passing it to the opponent. The next succeeding letter in the response was then revealed. Each game had four of five rounds of "chains," with each round yielding higher points for correct response. Those not familiar with The New Chain Reaction may think that all the responses consisted of a single word. That was never the case; indeed, as the show progressed, the chains grew more sophisticated. Below is a chain taken from the last show to reveal such sophistication: BOSTON POPS THE QUESTION WHO GOES 1ST FLIP A COIN CALL IT A DAY In the 1986-87 and 1987-88 seasons, The New Chain Reaction pitted teams of two contestants. One contestant would select a letter for his/her partner or for the opponent's partner. The team concept was struck after two seasons on USA. For the 1988-89 and 1989-90 seasons, single contestants were matched in games. The first side to collect 300 points won the game. From 1986 to 1990, The New Chain Reaction end game consisted of a separate chain. The champion was given the first word and the initial letters of the next six words. Champions also had a bank of seven letters. The champion had to guess the succeeding word in the chain to earn $100; if he/she guessed incorrectly, one letter was taken from the bank and added to the mystery word. (In the team format, the two champions took turns trying to guess words.) Should the champion guess all six words correctly, he/she won the progressive jackpot, which started at $3,000 (or, in the 1989-90 season, $2,000) and increased by $1,000 each day the end game was not won. During the 1987-88 season, a "Missing Link" game within the game was created. Following Round Two, Geoff provided a three-link chain, and the contestant had a limited number of chances to guess the middle line for a few extra dollars. A new format was devised for the final season (1990-1991). Renamed The $40,000 Chain Reaction, a total of 128 contestants met head-to-head in a mostly single-elimination tournament. No end game was used this season, as head-to-head battles were extended until someone reached 500 points. The tournament was broken up into 16 mini-tournaments to ease the production and coordinate contestants' schedules. Those mini-tournaments brought eight contestants through single-elimination games. The winners of these 16 rounds met at seasons end in a major $40,000 tournament. But the show tacked on an element from the College World Series. Te semifinal round worked as a double-elimination tourney. This helped to prolong the tournament to the 130-game length that was standard for a season of The New Chain Reaction. The end of shows almost always featured Geoff Edwards and announcer Rod Charlebois doing a three-chain home game for viewers (it inspired the "Missing Link" feature). This allowed Geoff the opportunity to be the old smart-aleck we had grown accustomed to back in his days hosting a Los Angeles talk show and The New Treasure Hunt. The New Chain Reaction home game annually ran into trouble, however. USA Network always would pre-empt two consecutive shows to re-air their prime-time coverage of the Westminster Dog Show (no Animal Planet back then) and, as a result, the flow of The New Chain Reaction would not get their uninterrupted run until July to December. Another break-up in The New Chain Reaction came during its first season on USA. Geoff Edwards only worked about the first ten weeks because of a prior commitment elsewhere. The remaining four months of the season had a different host, Blake Emmons. Also absent with Geoff was the show's end home game, not reinstated until late in Emmons's run. If you see any mistakes on this page or if you have more infomation about this show, please submit a comment |