Up until 1975, producer Bob Stewart's production company had dealt only with CBS & NBC. The Pyramid franchise, remember, moved from CBS to ABC, so Stewart's 1st actual sale to ABC was the short-lived Blankety Blanks, a fill-in-the-blank game with Stewart's go-to MC, Bill Cullen, at the helm.
As memory serves, Blanks aired around lunch time, and at the time, then-ABC affilate WAST (now WNYT) hadn't yet launched its 12 noon news. May be wrong about that point.
Anyway, game play was similar to Pyramid, as celebrities and contestants were partnered on two teams of two. In this case, in the opener, William Shatner and Anne Meara are the guest stars, with Shatner five months away from Barbary Coast:
You know, of course, that there was also a Blankety Blanks over in the UK, albeit a copycat of Match Game, and it lasted way longer than the US Blanks.
Rating: B.
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