Today's Video Link

This was one of my favorite shows when I was aged eight to ten…a daytime (and for a brief time, also nighttime) game show called Video Village. Kinescopes of the program are very rare but a decent one survived of this episode, perhaps because it was Show #500. There's a celebratory mood at the opening as host Monty Hall announces that milestone. At the end though, the mood changes as he announces that tomorrow's installment — #501 — will be the last one.

Video Village went on the air July 11, 1960 and off on June 15, 1962, so this episode is from 6/14/62. The show originated in New York and almost didn't survive. At the time, game shows were done live and they all shared studios. They'd do one show in a studio at 9 AM, then strike its set, bring in another and do a different program in there at 11 AM and maybe another later in the day. Video Village though required such a large, complex set that they couldn't have anything else in that studio all week — and on weekends, it cost a bundle to take down the Video Village set, do something else on that stage, then put the Video Village set back up for Monday morning. That made it more expensive than other shows and when there was a shortage of studio space, a lot of folks at CBS advocated canceling that one silly game show that was tying up one studio all the time.

The series squeaked by, largely by relocating to Los Angeles were there was more space and they had the technology to tape five episodes in one day. They'd do that several days in a row, then strike the set so other shows could be taped in that studio. A few weeks later, they'd put the Video Village set up again and tape another month's worth.

The hosts changed from time to time but Monty Hall, who's seen in this episode, was the last one. Mr. Hall did not suffer its loss. He and a partner had sold a game show called Your First Impression to NBC which went on the air earlier that year with Bill Leyden as its host. By the time that one was canceled in June of '64. Hall was hosting another show his company had developed for NBC. That one was called Let's Make a Deal.

Watching Video Village now, it seems very quaint…with contestants getting excited about winning five or twenty dollars. Today on game shows like The Wall, someone can win $513,000…and then say "We won half a million dollars" because that extra $13 grand is barely worth mentioning. Here — watch contestants being thrilled to win what today would not even pass as a consolation prize…