Earlier this month, digital specialty broadcast network Buzzr announced it will begin airing forgotten game show Whew! on Sunday, September 5th. Whew! ran for almost 250 episodes on CBS from April 1979 to May 1980. Tom Kennedy served as host with Rod Roddy announcing. The show featured a confusing format and a bizarre bonus round called the Gauntlet of Villains.
In November 1979, the series began featuring celebrities alongside regular contestants and the title changed to Celebrity Whew!
Here are the opening credits:
And here’s an example of the bonus round:
Do you remember watching Whew! on CBS? Are you excited to watch it again? Hit the comments with your thoughts.
(via Vulture)
I remember this show, just nothing about the actual game; I was just a kid at the time. But I distinctly remember one episode in which an excited contestant began jumping up and down, then there was a sudden edit…then Tom Kennedy informed the viewing audience that the contestant had injured himself!
I guess I was out having the time of my life because I have zero memory of this.
I would have been the right age to see this when it was on the air and was watching a lot of tv then on the summer break from school. I don’t remember it at all. Since CBS programmed it in the last late daytime slot at 4pm, then moved it to 10:30 am, I’m wondering if the CBS stations in my area just went with local programming instead.
CBS didn’t actually air it in the 4:00 p.m. ET slot. When the show premiered, it was part of a larger overhaul that also saw a slight timeslot change for TPIR–plus a major timeslot change for Love of Life, which is the show that moved to 4:00 (which had been the final home of Match Game on the network). Whew! stayed in the same slot (10:30 a.m. ET) throughout its entire run–quite possibly in part because it was actually a 25-minute show, with the balance of the half-hour dedicated to a brief network newscast (which had previously been paired with Love of Life).
That said, there’s still a good chance that it was indeed preempted (or at least delayed) locally. It’s also possible that CBS originally intended to air it at 4:00, but changed its mind before it premiered.
I was only 7-8 years old when this show was on, but as a game show fan as long as I can remember, I remember it well. In fact, I remember my mother-knowing how much of a game show fan I was, seeing in TV Guide that a new game show called Whew! was premiering and making sure I knew to watch it. Without even watching a single episode, I can remember a lot of the sound effects from it. Glad to see Buzzr resurrecting some of these mostly forgotten shows.
Let’s see a draft of CBS’ 1990-91 TV schedule. In its initial draft, The Flash was supposed to start at 8-9pm, to be followed by Sons and Daughters. To alleviate competition from The Cosby Show and The Simpsons, The Flash moved to 8:30-9:30pm, and placing Top Cops before that and Doctor, Doctor after that, putting Sons and Daughters on the shelf until January.
I remember the show, mostly because of the villains. It’s funny that old game shows actually expected contestants to know things. Most of the modern ones require no thinking at all.
I remember the show and I remember liking it as a 9 to kid. But, now watching it as an adult, I can’t believe how horribly dumb it is.