Splitsider

Forget Pet Rocks and bell bottoms. If you want evidence the seventies were the strangest decade in American history, feast your eyes on The Gong Show, the brief-but-oh-so-memorable game show that aired from 1976 through 1980, in a daytime version on NBC and nighttime version in syndication. Even taking account Community, Conan, and all the other “off-beat” shows currently on TV, it still stands as among the strangest television programs of all time. And I would argue, among the funniest.

The Gong Show was initially dreamed up by mega-successful game show producer Chuck Barris (The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game) as a straightforward talent competition. But, the story goes, the first auditions didn’t unearth many good performers. It was then that Barris was struck by the epiphany that, three decades later, fueled the success of American Idol: Watching a person flop can be almost as entertaining as watching them soar. Watching someone act bizarre, even better. So the Gong Show not only featured a parade of bizarre and mediocre talent, it actively cultivated it (its promos called for “good or unusual acts”) — with the eponymous gong used to cut short acts so bad no one could take it anymore.

Like that other great 70s game show, Match Game, The Gong Show really wasn’t about the game, more the madness that surrounded it. By the end of the show, one or two acts stood heads and shoulders above the others, if only for sheer competence. They took home the unimpressive sum of $516.32, which according to one source, was the then-Guild minimum. READ MORE