Trivia / High Rollers

• Keep Circulating the Tapes: A bit complicated.
  • The 1974-76 NBC run reportedly still exists, although two episodes on video (a master copy of July 3, 1975 [taped June 11, 1975] and an Andy Warhol-taped copy of July 4, 1975, both held by the Paley Center for Media) and three more on audio (the July 1, 1974 premiere; October 15, 1974; and July 15, 1975 are held by Archival Television Audio, Inc.) are all that has been made public. The 1983 Daytime Emmy Awards showed a 1976 clip, known to be from the last seven weeks.
  • The 1975-76 syndicated run is unknown.
  • Twelve episodes exist of the 1978-80 revival:
    • 1978: February 14 (Pilot #2, held by UCLA) and May 19.
    • 1979: March 2, March 27, December 4, and December 31.
    • 1980: February 28, March 20, March 25, May 7, June 9 (on audio), and the June 20 finale.
  • The Martindale era was rerun on USA Network from 1988-91. The 1986 pilot also circulates.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Those used to Alex Trebek's strait-laced personality on Jeopardy! assumed he was drunk during the 1980 finale. This rumor was disproven when more episodes began to circulate. Trebek's odd behavior during the finale was just his style of humor at the time.
• Prop Recycling: The 1978-80 version's dice, insurance markers and table were reused when Las Vegas Gambit (also an H-Q show) decided to ditch the Gambit Board in favor of the Big Numbers from this show; with High Rollers having only been cancelled about a year prior, the props were dug out of storage (you can tell because the buzzers and question card holder are still there, but unused).
  • To a lesser extent, the concept of the 1976 "Face Lifters" format was reused for Merrill Heatter's first solo series, Battlestars, as the Battlestars Two endgame (and it fit just as well there as it did here, i.e., not at all); when the show came back for a period in 1983, Battlestars Two was ditched.
• Screwed by the Network:
  • NBC moved the show on January 19, 1976 from Noon to 10:30, putting it up against the second half of CBS' The Price Is Right. Right before it was canned six months later, desperate times called for desperate measures (see the YMMV tab for that).
  • The second run was cancelled by president and CEO Fred Silverman in favor of The David Letterman Show. A year later, Silverman was given the pink slip due to repeated programming failures (including Letterman, although that was the tip of the iceberg) and was replaced by MTM Enterprises co-founder and president Grant Tinker.
• Un-Cancelled: NBC cancelled the show in 1976, brought it back in 1978 and canned it for good in 1980.