Family Game Night (found Hub Network game show; 2010-2014)
Family Game Night was a game show that had games based on existing board game franchises of Hasbro's. The show would supersize them to real life and turn them into interactive games for the contestant. Examples include such games as Connect Four Basketball, where the Connect 4 board game was turned into a basketball competition, or Sorry! Sliders, where the game Sorry! was turned into a curling competition. The families that won minigames would collect Monopoly Crazy Cash Cards, based on the Monopoly Crazy Cash game, and would collect cash prizes at the end of the episode.
History
The Hub Network, a joint venture between toy company Hasbro, and TV channel, Discovery Kids, debuted the Family Game Night game show in 2010,[1] based on the EA game franchise. The show was hosted by Todd Newton and ran for five seasons. The show was shot in Los Angeles and ran for four years, with reruns on TV until 2016, when Discovery ended airing most content they had picked up from the Hub Network.
Availability
On January 6th, 2019, Lost Media Wiki Forum user "ethanparmet" created a thread where he attempted to locate the whereabouts of two game shows from The Hub Network, The Game of Life, and Family Game Night. Replies came back with links to Tubi TV, an online streaming service. Eventually, the shows were taken down from those platforms, and a search continued for the show. On December 2nd, 2020, user "spongebob123" stated that they had contacted Tubi TV about adding the show back and said they would in the future. This has yet to happen, although another game show from the Hub, Pictureka, is still available to stream as of January 2021.
On December 3rd, 2020, Connor Beith, username on the forum "lostboombang2019," gave information that Discovery, the owner of former Hub assets, stated that they were starting their streaming service and that it could be possible to get the show onto there. He tweeted at them but did not receive a response from the company. User "ethanparmet" emailed Discovery+ but received a response that was unclear on the company's intentions and vaguely hinted at a possible addition of the show to their streaming catalog.
He also tweeted at the host of the show, Todd Newton, asking if he knew of any place to stream the site. Newton replied, saying that he was unaware of any such platform but did stumble upon a few YouTube videos of the show. On January 6th, 2021, user "GrigioGuy" sent links to six YouTube videos that contain full episodes of the shows. These were the only known episodes online at the time of the search. The episodes were then uploaded to archive.org by user Ethan M Parmet.
On January 21st, 2021, user "racelympics" entered the thread, having contacted several of the staff who worked on the show. None of them had any episodes, but he did get in touch with a gameshow trader who said he had copies but wouldn't give any away. A day prior, he also uploaded a YouTube video to his second channel, "Morelympics," summarizing the search effort. He also left a form in the description for anyone with episodes to fill out to discover other episodes that survive but are not currently public online.
On January 26th, 2021, a post was made on the r/lostmedia subreddit by user u/ItsDaBunnyYT. Several people commented, saying they had fond memories of the show, but none of them had any episodes that they had recorded. That same day, he had contacted associate producer Ali Dubrow about having any episodes but turned up empty-handed. Racelympics sent an email on the 26th to Hasbro about acquiring the show, and they sent a response telling him to ask Discovery, which was already a dead lead.
Users ethanparmet and racelympics exchanged words for a few weeks on Instagram about possible leads. Ethan had found a youtube user by the name of bloodandgorekid who had uploaded an episode or two of the show and discovered that he indeed had DVDs of the show. Racelympics then purchased the first season. Ethanparmet then bought the second season. Racelympics then bought the rest of the series.
On January 29th, 2021, Racelympics began converting the episodes that arrived for him. The episodes were then uploaded to the Internet Archive and replaced by Google Drive uploads. On February 3rd, 2021, the season 3 episodes were released on the spreadsheet. Four days later, 28 of the 30 Season 2 episodes were added to the spreadsheet.
On March 1st, Racelympics discovered that Todd Newton had admitted to a fan that he had an episode or two of the episode on DVD somewhere in his house, Ethan Parmet quickly replied to the thread, asking Newton if he knew what episodes were on DVD. When contacted on Twitter by Racelympics, he said that he did not know what the episodes were on DVD.
Later, on May 30th, Racelympics contacted LMW user Halofan and asked him if he could find the remaining missing episodes. He soon found one Season 2 episode from March 25th, 2012, leaving one Season 2 episode to be unearthed. On July 28th, after finishing a trade, Racelympics later recovered three episodes from the final two seasons, and on the next day, he found three more from Season 5.
Months after the recovery, on October 15th, Jared Oswald uploaded the recordings of his episodes onto the Internet Archive, including five previously lost Season 4 episodes. Not too long after, Racelympics uploaded another Season 4 episode from August 25th, 2013, after obtaining it in a trade. A year later, he also uploaded two more lost Season 4 episodes, after obtaining them in another trade. Not long after, in January 2023, he uploaded a lost Season 5 episode and the original version of the Season 5 premiere.
On February 11th, 2023, LMW user Fishman2020 discovered that in New Zealand, Three has aired the show since September 2nd, 2022, starting with Season 4, with each episode they aired being available on their streaming service, Three Now.[2] However, these episodes are exclusive in New Zealand. Racelympics has recorded the unavailable episodes he found through a VPN and sent them to Phanpy Ken to be uploaded to YouTube. Furthermore, on February 20th, 2023, Fishman2020 found the remaining Season 2 episode, Episode 223, from his drive who sent it to Phanpy Ken, who then sent it to Racelympics, who then uploaded it to the Internet Archive.
Later, on April 17th, 2023, Internet Archive user Maxim169 uploaded Seasons 4 and Seasons 5 from ThreeNow in their entirety, rendering the show 100% found.
Gallery
Images
Videos
See Also
Discovery Channel
- Fifth Gear Europe (partially found Discovery Channel Europe motoring series; 2009)
- Mythbusters (lost unaired segments of Discovery Channel science entertainment series; 2006-2015)
- PitchMen (found Discovery Channel docudrama series; 2009-2011)
- Top Gear (partially found Discovery Channel adaptation of BBC Two motoring series; 2005)
Discovery Kids
- Darcy's Wild Life (found Family Channel/Discovery Kids teen sitcom; 2004-2006)
- Kenny the Shark (partially found live-action Discovery Kids special; 2000)
- Kenny the Shark (partially lost unaired pilots of Discovery Kids animated series; 2001)
- The Paz Show (partially lost TLC/Discovery Kids animated short series; 2003-2006)
Hub Network
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic "Spike at your Service" (found early drafts of Hub Network animated fantasy series episode; 2012)
- The Game of Life (found Hub Network game show; 2011-2012)
Science Channel
External Links
References
- ↑ New York Times article on Discovery Kids rebranding to The Hub that mentions Family Game Night. Retrieved 27 Jan '21
- ↑ Three Now's page showing the show on the service. Retrieved 20 Feb '23