British Panel Shows. There seem to be so many across the pond with loose, looosely-related shows here and there in the US. What haven’t these panel shows become more poprular over here?

Question

\^Why instead of what 🙂

In: Other

Answer 1

Panel shows were actually largely invented in the US, and the format was fairly popular for many years during the early days of television. Shows like *What’s My Line?*, *I’ve Got A Secret*, and *To Tell The Truth* were big in the 50s and 60s.

They just petered out over the decades as talk shows and sitcoms became more popular in the US. There’s lots of theories, but no real smoking gun, as to why. Maybe it’s cultural, maybe it’s financial, but we just don’t know.

And that said, we do still have some. *Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me!* airs weekly on NPR, we’ve had two versions of *Whose Line Is It Anyway?*, and *To Tell The Truth* has been rebooted every couple decades. There were 600 episodes of *@midnight* on Comedy Central, and it has evolved into *After Midnight*, which airs on CBS.