New ‘Scrabble’ Game Show Headed to The CW With ‘Trivial Pursuit’
The CW is committing itself to game show programming as the network has picked up adaptations of two classic board games, Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit.
According to Deadline, an official announcement is expected soon to confirm the news. Both game shows come from Hasbro Entertainment, Lionsgate Alternative Entertainment (which acquired the eOne assets from Hasbro in 2023), and The CW. Scrabble will also be produced by Mattel Television Studios.
As previously reported, the Trivial Pursuit game show has been in development for a while, with LeVar Burton rumored to be in line to host. Last August, TMZ reported Burton and his team were “close to locking in terms” for the job, which would see the Star Trek alum serve as host and executive producer.
The rumors of Burton’s hosting was met with positive feedback. Many fans wanted to see him as Jeopardy! host back when the show was still looking for a permanent replacement for the late Alex Trebek. Now, it seems like The CW is searching for its own Jeopardy!
As of writing, there is no host attached to Scrabble.
This isn’t the first time Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit have been adapted for television. The Family Channel aired a Trivial Pursuit TV show from 1993 to 1994, hosted by Wink Martindale. The show was divided into an interactive element and then a Main Game, where contestants had to fill in all colored wedges on a large pie-shaped game board.
Meanwhile, Scrabble aired on NBC between July 2, 1984, to March 23, 1990, and again from January 18 to June 11, 1993. Chuck Woolery hosted the show, with Jay Stewart serving as the announcer for the first year. Charlie Tuna replaced Stewart in 1985 and remained through the original run and the entirety of the 1993 revival.
There was also Scrabble Showdown, which launched on The Hub in 2011. This version was hosted by Justin “Kredible” Willman and more closely followed the rules of the board game.
The CW was taken over by Nexstar in 2022 and has seen a number of changes over the past year. The network has made a stronger push into unscripted programming, which includes the likes of FBoy Island and spin-off FGirl Island, The Great American Bakeover, The Force, and Patti Stanger: Millionaire Matchmaking.
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Gotta be better than the scripted junk that's on offer all over the tube.
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At least these will offer the viewers a chance to play along and score their answers. I have no use for game shows that are non inclusive like Deal or No deal and press Your Luck, they're basically gambling.
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A lot will depend on the host. Who the Bleep is That has an unlikable host as does Person Pace or Thing,. Blank Slate is so boring that even the very likable Mario Lopez can't save it. I realize that game shows are cheap to produce but they need better structure. Generation Gap is boring AND has an unlikable host.
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I was a big fan of some of the prior versions of both of these "board game game shows," and I'm excited to see them return on my local CW station. Woolery's "Scrabble" is one I barely remember from my childhood, but I've rediscovered it on YouTube in recent years and consider it a true hidden classic of the genre. The "Scrabble Sprint" remains one of my favorite bonus rounds.
Willman's "Scrabble Showdown" didn't actually follow the board game rules too closely; for the most part, it was a collection of minigames that used the word-unscrambling format as a basis. The last segment on every episode, "Scrabble Lightning," did see teams unscrambling words on a giant board, and the scoring system for that round followed that of the original game, so your description is a bit accurate on that front. (Always exciting to see it come down to who could identify a "Triple Word Score" word that was essentially a "Golden Snitch" answer, which meant either team still had a chance to win. Funny how I'm okay with that, but not when it happens on most of today's GSN originals.) Awesome set design, from the same team as "Family Game Night," I wish it had a longer run.
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"Trivial Pursuit: America Plays," a 2010 Christopher Knight-hosted syndicated show that I'm surprised isn't mentioned here, was afternoon appointment viewing for me every day when it originally ran, one of the rare times I tuned away from "Jeopardy," something I seldom ever do otherwise. Mostly general knowledge that rarely challenged me, but I did like the gimmick of most of the questions being submitted by viewers from across the country, keeping the original board game's community spirit alive. It barely followed the board game's rules beyond contestants collecting wedges in themed categories (for the first round at least, and also in the "You vs. America" bonus round with hyper-specific topics; second round was "wild card" with random questions for the rest of your "pie," but sometimes with callbacks to first round answers and running gags), but considering I find those old rules a bit tedious at times, just straight trivia was perfectly fine.
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