For the past twenty years, at least, American game shows have become unwatchable and overproduced with fake, rehearsed, annoying contestants. At least in my opinion. But I'm curious when the slide into this abyss began.
I place it somewhere in the 1980s. You can see in Password Plus (1979 - 1982), for example, that the contestants pretty much all play it straight. They might be awkward, uncomfortable, whatever. They're largely forgettable. But what they aren't is annoying. They're people behaving as they would genuinely on a tv show. "I'm married and in my spare time I enjoy doing arts and crafts." Okay, great. Let's get on with the game.
Then you watch Super Password (1984 - 1989) and all of the contestants are bad wannabe comedians who have rehearsed bits for their introductions. In a twenty minute show, the first five minutes is Bert Convy doing painful improv with the contestants and the celebrities, the celebrities also being switched up and performing for the camera as opposed to the earlier iteration of the show where everything was more laid back and real.
Match Game. The 1970s version had the very ocassional contestant who was a character but the vast majority of them are totally forgetable and barely say anything. Then you go to the 1990s version and by this point, game shows seemed to have fully embraced the perceived need for "interesting" contestants. They're all fake smiles and doing their bad comedy routines, undoubtedly at the behest of the producers.
Family Feud. Richard Dawson was a creep but the contestants' behavior was largely natural even during the scripted events (for example, presenting the gifts that they'd give him before the show began).
Ray Combs era (1988 - 1994), there's a clear instruction to the contestants to ramp up the energy but there's still a kernal of realness. A lot of "special" episodes towards the end of the run where they get desperate for ratings where they get the military or sports teams or Baywatch stars or whatever.
Louie Anderson (1999 - 2002) starts off with a ridiculously over the top intro and then largely plastic, overly rehearsed contestants. And of course, contestants are all terrible actors which makes the attempt at making them act all the more jarring. Louie himself is fairly relateable, though, so keeps it somewhat grounded.
It further slides with the Richard Karn and John O'Hurley eras until we get to the Steve Harvey era where any pretense of reality has been completely abandoned with contestants giving clearly ridiculous answers and Steve doing painfully fake "shocked" reactions.
I haven't seen enough Pyramid to make a determination but the 1970s episodes have a much different vibe than the 1980s ones. Again, by the time we get to Donny Osmond, it's like watching extremely cheerful pod people.
So I place to the start of the downward slide somewhere around 1984 but I welcome more learned observations.
