No Final Answers to Game Shows’ Allure?

Imagine you own the corner hardware store and wake up to discover major supermarkets are all suddenly making a big deal about carrying hardware.

“New and improved hardware!” “Biggest selection ever!” “Hardware like you’ve never seen it before!”

Such would seem to be the fate of the Game Show Network, an unobtrusive cable channel available in a little more than a quarter of the 100 million U.S. homes that have television.

Owned by Sony, which produces the syndicated powerhouses “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!,” the Game Show Network came along five years ago, before the expression “final answer” was being imitated--badly at that--by half the commercials on radio.

Suddenly, game shows are becoming the Scarlet Pimpernel of prime time: You see them here, you see them there, well heck, you see them everywhere. They begin, of course, with “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”--which, as only success can do, almost overnight transformed ABC from the gang that couldn’t shoot straight into a collection of programming Einsteins.

In the last few weeks, “Millionaire” has been joined by NBC’s revival of “Twenty One,” CBS’ “Winning Lines” and, on a regular basis, Fox’s “Greed: The Series.”

Additional quiz concepts are in the works, including the inevitable deluge in syndication and new versions of “What’s My Line?” and “The $64,000 Question”--which, on “Millionaire,” would be something like “Which of these colors is part of the American flag: A) Infrared B) Ultra-Violet C) Flesh Tone D) Blue.”

At a time when networks are endeavoring to be more racially diverse, the quiz shows have been a boon to older white guys--hosted, in sequence, by Regis Philbin, Maury Povich, Dick Clark and Chuck Woolery.

Of course, if Daisy Fuentes hosted “Millionaire” instead of Philbin--based on TV’s “I don’t know why it’s working so I better copy every aspect of it” mentality--one suspects a talent search for “Buxom Young Blond Latina Models With Experience Hosting Quiz or Stupid Video Show” would still be in progress.

Rival network executives have been honest about their “Millionaire” clones: They either want to hop on the gravy train or help hasten the ABC program’s demise by making it more commonplace, bringing the show (and ABC with it) back down to Earth.

“It is a trend that, frankly, we hope goes away quickly, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to,” CBS Television President Leslie Moonves said last week, as viewing of “Millionaire” continued to soar, even spilling over to adjacent ABC fare.

What no one has captured, as yet, is why this quiz-show phenomenon happened, inspiring us to take a stroll, as it were, to the corner hardware store.

Michael K. Fleming, president and founder of the Game Show Network, concedes he’s as mystified and bemused as everyone else by the “Millionaire” phenomenon; still, Fleming at least spends all day thinking about game shows, which gives him a leg up on the sociologists and TV columnists scrambling to ascertain how one can suddenly be beating “ER” and the 100-odd other prime-time series broadcast each week.

For starters, Fleming points out, it’s not like the game show has been out of the picture. Indeed, “Wheel” and “Jeopardy!” have topped the ratings for syndicated programs since shortly after Alex Trebek began to shave.

The rap on game shows, in recent years, has been that they play primarily to an older and predominantly female audience, which doesn’t inspire much enthusiasm among beer advertisers or those trying to target Gap ads to the “Felicity” crowd.

Yet even before “Millionaire,” the game-quiz format has been evolving on cable, with youth-oriented programs such as MTV’s “Singled Out” and “Remote Control,” Comedy Central’s “Win Ben Stein’s Money” and even Nickelodeon’s “Double Dare.”

Fleming attributes the demographic stereotype primarily to a vagary of scheduling, as programmers pushed game shows into weekday morning time slots when older women were the most available audience.

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So ABC, to its credit, took a chance. The No. 3 network decided to throw on “Millionaire”--which had demonstrated its appeal in the United Kingdom--for two consecutive weeks in August, an arid patch in the prime-time broadcast year.

“People haven’t seen a game show in that particular space in some time. They decided, ‘I’ll try it.’ And they liked it,” Fleming said.

Game shows connect with audiences for various reasons. One is the ability to put yourself in the shoes of the person on the screen. “It’s not like you see yourself as talent on ‘ER,’ ” Fleming said, unaware that, given the chance (and a little reconstructive surgery), I could be Dr. Carter.

The promise of big money also possesses some allure in an era when people are becoming overnight millionaires on Internet stocks. Unlike brainy contestants on “Jeopardy!,” who need to be five-time winners to approach the historic $64,000 plateau, “Millionaire” upped the ante in a way that will shape the genre going forward.

“It creates a bit of a dilemma for us,” Fleming acknowledged. “Now we hear in focus groups that all of a sudden, $10,000 sounds pretty meager.”

Finally, game shows represent, in essence, the perfect low-tech bridge to interactivity and the much ballyhooed convergence of computers and TV about which we keep hearing. The format inspires viewers to play along, without needing to learn how to operate a hard drive or memorize all the prevailing buzzwords.

“It requires no explanation to the consumer,” Fleming noted. “They get it right away.”

Though most people within TV circles are still hoping game shows are a Hula-Hoop--a fad doomed to grow tiresome through repeated exposure--”Millionaire’s” astounding results in its latest flight suggest even if clones shrivel, the patriarch of this quiz resurgence won’t disappear any time soon.

Fleming insists that’s good news for his network. “It puts some credibility back in the category, and we benefit from that,” he said.

“Goodness knows, we are such an industry of followers. We give it all kinds of funny names, but if there’s a hit movie next week about redheaded hitchhikers, you’re going to see six more.”

Small wonder, then, there would be a dozen or so new “Millionaires.” No one has seen this many thumbs pointing upward since Siskel met Ebert.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears on Tuesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.