Airing: 10-10:30 a.m., Monday-Friday September 8-October 31; 4:00-4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday November 3-November 26, CBS.

Personnel: Jim Lange, host; Jane Nelson, hostess, Johnny Jacobs, announcer. A Carruthers Company/Warner Brothers Production. Taped in Los Angeles.

Description: Um, CBS needed to air something until the hour-long Price Is Right was ready?

Game Play: Four players competed, seemingly always women, seated around a large spinner. Each one was awarded a prize at the beginning of the program. Another one was revealed and Lange would read a question. The first to ring in correctly was awarded the four blankspaces on the eight-space spinning board up for grabs, giving that player control of five spaces (counting her own) The other three spaces belonged to the other three players. The spinner was then set in motion, and the player with the correct answer pressed her signaling button to slow the spinner to a stop. She could then keep the prize or pass it to an opponent. The objective was to keep as close to $5,000 in prizes as possible without going over. If a player was over $5,000, she was "frozen," and couldn't receive any additional prizes. Players were unaware of the actual retail price of their prizes until the final prize had been awarded -- I believe four or five in all were spun for, in addition to the original four prizes awarded. The one closest to $5,000 at game's end was the winner and kept all the prizes she had accumulated. (The other three contestants did not keep their prizes.)

End Game:The champion was given one final bonus spin, and if the arrow landed in their space (a one-in-eight chance), they received all the prizes described during game play, which amounted to about $15,000. I assume if they won all the prizes, they also departed the show.

Background: Bill Carruthers had produced The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game for Chuck Barris; Give-n-Take was his first game with his own production company. The pilot had been taped several months before with Jim Lange hosting; when Spin-Off tanked so badly, Give-n-Take was rushed into its place, the very same week CBS tested a weeks’ worth of hour-long episodes of The Price Is Right. Once G-T understood that a 60-minute version of TPIR could work, however, and CBS realized that the ratings in the morning would increase as a result, Give-n-Take was put in the position of having to succeed almost instantly or be canceled. Since it wasn’t the strongest game concept in the world, it was only a matter of time.

Givin’ In: And that time came three months later, on November 28 (actually November 26, I suspect; CBS would have pre-empted it for Thanksgiving parades and cartoons the next two days).

Take This: How many other game shows played in a theater-in-the-round setting? (Probably very few.) And how many used black as their primary set color? (Smartly, none until 1994’s The New Price Is Right.)

Take Off: Carruthers went on to a moderately successful production career, with his big hit coming in the 1980s with Press Your Luck. Lange never again hosted a network game show (unless a week-long trial run of The Newlywed Game in 1984 counts). He enjoyed a successful career in first-run syndication, however, with Hollywood Connection (1977-78), The Dating Game (1978-80), Bullseye (1980-82), Take My Word for It (1982-83), The $100,000 Name That Tune (1984-85), The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime (1986-87), and Triple Threat (1988-89). He’s now an radio personality on the West Coast, as he has been for most of the last four decades, and his most recent appearances were on a commercial for Frasier and as a game show host on the UPN sitcom Head Over Heels.

The Home Game: None was issued, which is no surprise. If you are a true fan, you could put one together with a Wheel of Fortune spinner, and some prize cards from The Price Is Right, but it still would be rather dull.

Reruns: Again, 60 episodes makes for a short set of reruns, and I expect the tapes have been destroyed.

Revivals: No way.

Curt Alliaume, Executive Producer: No way.

My Grade: C-.