#gameshows #hollywoodsquares
On September 14, 1998, the revival debuted with Tom Bergeron, who was also starring on Good Morning America as an anchor at the time, as its host; former Nickelodeon host Marc Summers was also considered. In addition to her production duties, Whoopi Goldberg served as the permanent center square, with series head writer Bruce Vilanch, Gilbert Gottfried, Martin Mull and Caroline Rhea as regular panelists and Brad Garrett, Bobcat Goldthwait, Jeffrey Tambor, George Wallace, Kathy Griffin and various others as semi-regular panelists. Shadoe Stevens returned as an announcer but unlike the previous series, he was not a panelist on this version.
After the 2001-2002 season, Goldberg left the series and Moffitt and Lee were fired. Vilanch also left his writing position and Rhea moved to New York to host The Caroline Rhea Show, a daytime variety series launched to replace The Rosie O'Donnell Show; O'Donnell had decided to leave her namesake show before the end of the 2001-02 season and Rhea, who was chosen by O'Donnell to be her replacement, served as guest host for most of the last season. Stevens also left his role as announcer.
The 2002-2003 season launched with Henry Winkler and his production partner Michael Levitt as the new executive producers and Jeffrey Tambor as the announcer (in addition to retaining his semi-regular appearance). Winkler guest announced for several weeks during the season. Some changes were made to the overall production with the show adopting a new logo that referred to the show as "H2".[17] The set was given a new makeover where the contestant desks were replaced with podiums with LED screens inside and a rewritten version of the Teena Marie song "Square Biz" became the theme song.
After Goldberg's departure, at first, the show did not feature a traditional permanent center square. Instead, a new celebrity was in the center square each week. Ellen DeGeneres, Alec Baldwin and Simon Cowell were among those who played center square, as well as Peter Marshall, who appeared during a special theme week in 2002. Martin Mull was eventually chosen as the permanent center square for the 2003-2004 season (though some guests continued to appear as center square during a few theme weeks of that season).
For most of the first five seasons of this Hollywood Squares series, the first and second games were worth $1,000 to the winner. The third game was worth $2,000, and every subsequent game until time ran out was worth $4,000. If a contestant did not win anything in the main game, $500 was given to them as a consolation prize. In the early episodes of the first season, contestants only played for half the money; $500 was won for each of the first two games, with $1,000 for the third and $2,000 for all subsequent games, and $250 was given as a consolation prize for failing to win a game. The consolation prize amount also was used for each contestant's square if time ran out during a game and was counted towards their cash total to determine the day's champion.
The tiebreaker was the same as the previous versions except that the contestant who had won the most games, most squares overall, or won the last game played (whichever came first) had the option to play the question or pass it to his/her opponent, with a miss by either contestant giving their opponent the win by default.
For the first season of this Hollywood Squares series, two new contestants competed on each episode. A coin toss determined who would begin the first game during this time. Beginning in the second season, the returning champion rule was reinstated; a contestant could stay on for a maximum of five days. With this change, the incoming challenger began the first game of a match.
more changes were made to the series. First, John Moschitta Jr. replaced Jeffrey Tambor as the announcer and Bruce Vilanch returned to the series as an occasional panelist. Second, the game format was scrapped in favor of returning to the best-two-of-three match format last seen on the NBC series in 1980. Each game was worth $1,000 and the first player to win the necessary two games won the match. The Secret Square was still played during the second game but the accumulating jackpot of prizes was discarded in favor of playing for one prize per match, regardless of whether or not the previous match's prize was won. Third, the format change resulted in the show no longer being self-contained, as matches could and often did straddle episodes.
The bonus round format from the previous season remained but with several changes. All nine keys were in play every time a contestant played the bonus round regardless of whether he/she had won the prize in the previous round or not. Each correct answer in the first half of the round was now worth $500 if the prize is not won.
The prize structure was also changed, with the objectives the same as noted above. The new structure was as follows: