There once was a time when you could stay home from school and the three major television networks would bless your “sick day” or “hooky day” with a plethora of game shows and quiz shows. NBC gave your Hollywood Squares and Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, while CBS offered The Joker’s Wild and The Price is Right. Over on ABC, you might see Password All-Stars or a program of that nature.
In late 1979, CBS aired what had to be the wildest game show of its time – a program called Whew!. Yep, it was pronounced just like an exhausted gasp. And that was the first odd thing about the program.
The second odd thing about the program as that its rules probably needed to be explained on the fly.
One contestant had to navigate a board full of trivia questions, where the last line of the trivia question was a mistake – and the contestant had to correct the mistake. And if the contestant got the answer right, they could advance up the board. But the board also contained “blocks” placed by the contestant’s opponent – hit a block, and the contestant couldn’t advance up the board for a few seconds. Get to the top of the board and answer questions correctly, you won the round.
Then there was the prize round, where the contestant had to navigate through “The Gauntlet of Villains,” where completing a ten-question trivia round won the big prize.
Yeah, it’s easier to see it than to explain it.
So here’s an episode of Whew! from 1979.
Holy crap.
I should let you know that I really did like watching Whew! when it aired, but it didn’t air for very long. The show was later replaced by a celebrity version, whose ratings were about as poor as the original version.
Look … all I’m saying is that by the late 1970’s, the big three networks were throwing all sorts of game shows at their audience. Some actually stuck around for ages; others had very short runs in them. Whew! had a short run, but it was fun to watch. And host Tom Kennedy kept the energy high with the broadcast, so there’s that.
Okay, now I feel like playing hooky again and watching some vintage game shows. This would be fun. For sure.
Chuck The Writer 
As a game show junkie who watched Concentration, Wheel, J (of course), Password, Match Game, Pyramid, What’s My Line, I’ve Got A Secret, Beat the Clock, You Don’t Say, and a WHOLE lot more, I have NO recollection of this show.
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Long time Goodson-Todman producer Jay Wolpert struck out on his own, paired with an indy producer named Bud Austin, for Whew! and its all-star variant. The writers came up with some funny, inventive captions for the villains in the gauntlet. I just don’t know who did the opening animation.
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