Snap Judgement (partially found NBC game show; 1967-1969)

The show's logo.

Status: Partially Found

Snap Judgement is a game show that aired from April 11th 1967 to March 28th 1969 on NBC. It was hosted by Ed McManon and Gene Rayburn, who occasionally substituted. It was narrated by Johnny Olsen, and aired at EST 10 AM.

Gameplay

The format featured a word-association game played by two teams consisting of a contestant and a celebrity. Before the start of the show, contestants completed their associations and their celebrity teammates had three tries to guess the association based on the clue word provided by the host.

A correct guess won $10, while an incorrect guess allowed the other team to get the $10 by guessing correctly with one try. If both teams failed to guess correctly, the contestant would reveal the first letter of the association and each celebrity had one shot at guessing the association. The first team to score $100 won the game and played a bonus round, called "The Big 5".

With the contestant offstage in a soundproof room, the celebrity teammate was asked to come up with five associations to a clue word provided by the host, then designate one of those five as a bonus word, the one his or her teammate was most likely to say. The contestant would then return and have 20 seconds to come up with all five associations for $50 each. Initially, the contestant merely had to say the bonus word in order to double the team's winnings. To provide a greater degree of difficulty, a new rule was later added requiring the contestant to guess the bonus word to double the team's winnings. For the second game on the same show, the celebrities switched teams.

A second format was later used in the December 23rd, 1968 to March 28th, 1969 run. It was changed to a near identical copy of Password, which had been cancelled by CBS over a year earlier. In the new format, the objective was to guess a word from one-word clues with a point structure identical to that of Password (10 points were awarded for guessing the password on the first clue, nine points on the second clue, eight points on the third clue, etc.) After the fifth word, point values doubled. The first team to reach 25 points won $100 and played a reformatted "Big 5", played similarly to Password's "Lightning Round", only with 30 seconds to guess five words at $100 each. There were no returning champions in either format. Each show featured two new contestants.

Availability

Despite the oddly large knowledge known about the show, no episodes of it exist in archived form. The only 2 remaining clips that exist are audio only. They are of the intro and a small clip from a 1967 episode, from a bonus round. The August 19, 1968 show is known to exist on audio tape, but hasn't been leaked. The episode's holder (Archival Television Audio, Inc.) doesn't have any way to listen to its recordings online. It is unlikely any video footage exists, due to it being aired in the late 1960s when it was a common practice to wipe television programs to save money. This the only game show known that Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions doesn't hold any episodes of.

Snap Judgement (partially found NBC game show; 1967-1969)

Contents

Gameplay

Availability

Gallery

Videos

Pictures

See Also

Pilots

Television

Miscellaneous