Tom Kennedy was the host for the original ABC version, with Jack Clark serving as announcer.

[2] The second version was produced for syndication in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, at CHCH-TV's studios; this series premiered December 15, 1986, and was a co-production of Hatos-Hall and distributors Concept Equity Funding Limited and Viacom Enterprises.

[3] Canadian television stations CHCH-TV, CFAC-TV, and CITV-TV assisted in the production of the syndicated series as well, but were not credited on American airings.

For the ABC version, approximately once each episode there was also a "Memory Buster", in which the host gave a list of items and asked which three of them were common to each other.

During the latter half of the ABC version, the first person to be the only contestant to respond correctly to a question during the first two rounds also won a bonus prize, his or hers to keep regardless of the game's outcome.

In the original series, the leader needed three answers to win (which could be accomplished in one question), the second-place player four, and the third place-player five.

The bonus round on the 1980s Split Second gave champions the opportunity to win a car by choosing from five video screens.

The bonus round on the 2023 Split Second is a timed variation of the main game, in which the champion must answer seven questions within 60 seconds/a minute.

Split Second occupied only one timeslot during its three-year run, 12:30 p.m. (11:30 a.m., Central), against the traditional CBS favorite Search for Tomorrow and NBC's The Who, What, or Where Game.

Although never able to surmount Search, Split Second kept a large number of affiliates on the network at that hour (preemptions, mostly for local newscasts, had plagued ABC for years).

However, the decline of its lead-in, Password, began to adversely affect the Nielsens of Split Second, and it was one of four game shows ABC cancelled between June 27 and July 4, 1975.

All My Children did return to a full hour from late April 1977, continuing for the rest of its ABC run.

In early 1986, Monty Hall had expressed his intentions to retire from hosting game shows altogether.

He had been hosting a revival of Let’s Make a Deal in syndication since 1984, and he planned on stepping down from the series and launching a daily human interest program distributed by Worldvision Enterprises called For the People, where Hall would use connections he had made over various philanthropic ventures over the course of his life to offer assistance to viewers.

Although the show aired simultaneously in the United States and Canada upon its premiere, many more Canadian markets carried Split Second than their American counterparts.

[9] The syndicated version is completely intact, and is currently distributed by Fremantle under license from Marcus/Glass Productions, and reran on The Family Channel from August 30, 1993,[10] to March 4, 1994,[11] and January 2[12] to September 29, 1995,[13] as part of its afternoon game show block.

[15] The show ran in Australia from 1972 to 1973 on Nine Network, hosted by Ken James and later by Jimmy Hannan, and produced by Reg Grundy.