Game show

On most game shows, contestants answer questions or solve puzzles, and win prizes such as cash, trips and goods and services.

Panel games had success in primetime until the late 1960s, when they were collectively dropped from television because of their perceived low budget nature.

Panel shows there were kept in primetime and have continued to thrive; they have transformed into showcases for the nation's top stand-up comedians on shows such as Have I Got News for You, Would I Lie to You?, Mock the Week, QI, and 8 Out of 10 Cats, all of which put a heavy emphasis on comedy, leaving the points as mere formalities.

The focus on quick-witted comedians has resulted in strong ratings, which, combined with low costs of production, have only spurred growth in the UK panel show phenomenon.

Lower-stakes games made a slight comeback in daytime in the early 1960s; examples include Jeopardy!

Game shows were the lowest priority of television networks and were rotated out every thirteen weeks if unsuccessful.

Over the course of the 1980s and early 1990s, as fewer new hits (e.g. Press Your Luck, Sale of the Century, and Card Sharks) were produced, game shows lost their permanent place in the daytime lineup.

to syndication in 1983 and 1984, respectively, was and remains highly successful; the two are, to this day, fixtures in the prime time "access period".

Several game shows returned to daytime in syndication during this time as well, such as Family Feud, Hollywood Squares, and Millionaire.

doubled its question values in 2001 and lifted its winnings limit in 2003, which one year later allowed Ken Jennings to become the show's first multi-million dollar winner; it has also increased the stakes of its tournaments and put a larger focus on contestants with strong personalities.

The show has since produced four more millionaires: tournament winner Brad Rutter and recent champions James Holzhauer, Matt Amodio, and Amy Schneider.

Family Feud revived in popularity with a change in tone under host Steve Harvey to include more ribaldry.

In 2009, actress and comedienne Kim Coles became the first black woman to host a prime time game show, Pay It Off.

The rise of digital television in the United States opened up a large market for rerun programs.

Buzzr was established by Fremantle, owners of numerous classic U.S. game shows, as a broadcast outlet for its archived holdings in June 2015.

Since the early 2000s, several game shows were conducted in a tournament format; examples included History IQ, Grand Slam, PokerFace (which never aired in North America), Duel, The Million Second Quiz, 500 Questions, The American Bible Challenge, and Mental Samurai.

A boom in prime time revivals of classic daytime game shows began to emerge in the mid-2010s.

TBS launched a cannabis-themed revival of The Joker's Wild, hosted by Snoop Dogg, in October 2017.

American game shows have a tendency to hire stronger contestants than their British or Australian counterparts.

Although in this show the smaller items (sometimes even in the single digits of dollars) are awarded as well when the price is correctly guessed, even when a contestant loses the major prize they were playing for.

In April 2008, three of the contestants on The Price Is Right $1,000,000 Spectacular won the top prize in a five-episode span after fifteen episodes without a winner, due in large part to a change in the rules.

From about 1960 through the rest of the 20th century, American networks placed restrictions on the amount of money that could be given away on a game show, in an effort to avoid a repeat of the scandals of the 1950s.

The introduction of syndicated games, particularly in the 1980s, eventually allowed for more valuable prizes and extended runs on a particular show.

The lifting of these restrictions in the 1990s was a major factor in the explosion of high-stakes game shows in the later part of that decade in both the U.S. and Britain and, subsequently, around the world.

The contestant who won the front game played a quick-fire series of passwords within 60 seconds, netting $50 per correctly guessed word, for a maximum bonus prize of $250.

"We needed something more, and that's how the Lightning Round was invited," said Howard Felsher, who produced Password and Family Feud.