Game Over
QUEENAN, JOE
Game Over The rise and fall of televised cribbage. BY JOE QUEENAN Nothing in entertainment history is more shocking than the overnight collapse of the televised cribbage craze. Prime-time...
...If you’re going to kill the golden goose, at least wait until it’s stopped being a gosling...
...Given these particulars, no one could have foreseen the cribbage tsunami that swept the nation this past year...
...Easy to learn, with an offi cial lingo limited to a few catch phrases like “Morgan’s Orchard” (two pairs) and “Two for his nibs” (two points are awarded when the jack turns up after the cards are cut), cribbage has long been a staple of British pub life, where teams compete on a weekly basis for local supremacy...
...But even in Britain, its popularity has been dwindling for years as it is now mostly associated with an aging, genteel, generally rustic demographic group, not with the young, edgy, hard-drinking urbanites advertisers crave...
...BY JOE QUEENAN Nothing in entertainment history is more shocking than the overnight collapse of the televised cribbage craze...
...That was certainly an accurate description of the reality show Castaway Cribbage, which debuted in January...
...But thanks to the desperation wrought by the writers’ strike, networks were prepared to try just about any programming as long as it was inexpensive and novel...
...There is a lesson to be learned here...
...and for the same reason: greed, overexposure, copycat programming, the television industry’s constitutional inability to nurture a newborn...
...That was certainly an accurate description of the reality show Castaway Cribbage, which debuted in January...
...Played with a board that contains two sets of 120 holes, cribbage players score by combining cards to total 15 or 31 points, or by pairing several identical cards, or by arranging runs of consecutive cards...
...Castaway Cribbage featured 13 Gilligan’s Island impersonators trapped in Shamokin, Nothing in entertainment history is more shocking than the overnight collapse of the televised cribbage craze...
...Given these particulars, no one could have foreseen the cribbage tsunami that swept the nation this past year...
...Prime-time cribbage came and went faster than Who Wants To Be a Millionaire...
...But thanks to the desperation wrought by the writers’ strike, networks were prepared to try just about any programming as long as it was inexpensive and novel...
...and for the same reason: greed, overexposure, copycat programming, the television industry’s constitutional inability to nurture a newborn...
...If you’re going to kill the golden goose, at least wait until it’s stopped being a gosling...
...Until Al Gore mentioned it on a late-night public television program several months ago, cribbage was almost unknown in this country, its enthusiasts limited to a few aging sailors and a handful of wan, pasty-faced anglophiles...
...Prime-time cribbage came and went faster than Who Wants To Be a Millionaire...
...There is a lesson to be learned here...
...But even in Britain, its popularity has been dwindling for years as it is now mostly associated with an aging, genteel, generally rustic demographic group, not with the young, edgy, hard-drinking urbanites advertisers crave...
...Until Al Gore mentioned it on a late-night public television program several months ago, cribbage was almost unknown in this country, its enthusiasts limited to a few aging sailors and a handful of wan, pasty-faced anglophiles...
...Played with a board that contains two sets of 120 holes, cribbage players score by combining cards to total 15 or 31 points, or by pairing several identical cards, or by arranging runs of consecutive cards...
...Easy to learn, with an offi cial lingo limited to a few catch phrases like “Morgan’s Orchard” (two pairs) and “Two for his nibs” (two points are awarded when the jack turns up after the cards are cut), cribbage has long been a staple of British pub life, where teams compete on a weekly basis for local supremacy...
...Castaway Cribbage featured 13 Gilligan’s Island impersonators trapped in Shamokin, Joe Queenan is the author, most recently, of Queenan Country: A Reluctant Anglophile’s Pilgrimage to the Mother Country...
Vol. 14 • October 2008 • No. 6
