A Day in LA

Today a fellow Ithacan, Craig, invited us to go to a taping of "Family Feud." When I told people where I was going, most thought the show had been cancelled many years ago. Well, actually Family Feud has been around for 30 years and is still going strong. It celebrated its 30th anniversary by creating a new stage/setup and bringing in a new host, John O'Hurley. O'Hurley was recently in "Dancing with the Stars," played Elaine's boss J. Peterman in "Seinfeld," has written several books and also starred in numerous commercials.

The experience was fun...long but fun. The show tapes in the same studio that Judge Judy and Judge Joe Brown use on the week days. The sets are there for those shows and they are surprisingly small! Basically all three shows have pretty small sets due to the nature of the content. "Family Feud" taped the Halloween specials today, which means we got to see the families dressed up and the stage decked out in ghoulish glory; they really went all out with the Halloween decorations. Everyone working on the show was very strict about audience participation and very concerned about the quality of audience shots. An AP came around with a cup for people to spit out gum and during the show audience members would be moved based on what seemed to be attractiveness or appropriateness of dress.

I sat next to the producer of the show and she was monitoring the answers, calling for options to show up on the screen and dealing with any other issues that came up. Occasionally the families would mess up, the buzzers would go off when not anticipated or no one would get the answers right. In that case, the question was thrown out and the "scene" was redone. I had never been on the set of a game show and it all seemed so fake while on site that it was hard to imagine that the contestants were actually competing for $20,000! On TV it all seems so slick and professional. Oh, TV magic!

We stayed for two shows and Craig got O'Hurley's autograph on our way out. We also saw O'Hurley's little boy and his wife. I don't want to spoil the surprise, but the little boy was dressed up for the Halloween specials. Adorable.

This is my third on-set experience for a show, and it is a lot more work than I anticipated. You have to clap your hands off and laugh when it isn't funny!