| Host | |
| Tom Dreesen | |
| Announcer | |
| Jack Clark | |
| Taped | |
 | |
| Packager | |
| InterMedia Entertainment Company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television | |
"What are your favorite TV shows? The ones that make you laugh? Make you cry? Maybe mystery shows? And how about the game shows? Well, today, we're going to talk about all of them and much more, because this is where TV'S THE GAME! And here's the star of our show, one of America's favorite television comedians, Tom Dreesen!"
TV's the Game was a game show pilot where contestants and audience members become TV program directors.
Gameplay[]
Main Game[]
Three contestants competed in this game show pilot devoted to television shows and how they and the studio audience would control them.
Host Tom Dressen, posed a series of TV show dilemmas. The contestants buzzed in and decided how to handle the situation. 100 members of the studio audience voted on the answers and the contestants scored points based how many of them voted on their answers. So the higher the votes, the higher the value.
Round 1[]
Tom posed four dilemmas and the contestants buzzed in Split Second-style. Each contestant gave an answer they thought would be the best answer and then the audience voted on their answers. The contestant scored based on the number of people who agreed with their answers. IOW, they scored Family Feud-style.
A typical question would go like this: "NBC is about to revive the TV game show Password. Who do you think would be the best replacement for the late Allen Ludden?" The typical possible answers would be: Bert Convy, Tom Kennedy and Bill Cullen.
Or like this (this was used on the actual show): "There are millions of game show addicts. Which do you think is the best game show of all time?" The typical possible answers would be (and these were actually given on the show): Jeopardy!, Concentration and Password.
At the end of the round after the four questions, the player with the lowest score was eliminated from the game.
Round 2[]
In this round, the two remaining players would be asked five dual choice-dilemmas, to which the audience has previously voted the answers on. The first player to buzz-in got a choice of the answers, leaving the other one for the opponent. Then the contestants scored accordingly.
At the end of this round, Tom would ask a 50 point bonus video question related to the final situation. The first player to buzz in with the correct answer scored the points.
Round 3[]
In the final main round, a category was given, followed by a brief video. Then Tom gave one final situation and two guests would come out one at a time and perform accordingly. After the performances, everybody (the contestants and studio audience) voted in secret. The contestants' choices were then revealed, followed by the vote numbers; and again, the contestants scored accordingly.
The round and the game ended with another video bonus question, this being related to the category and it was worth double of what the contestants just scored. After the clip, the question was asked, the first player to buzz-in got first chance to answer. A right answer scored the points, but a wrong answer gave the opponent a chance to steal. The player with the most points at the end of this round went on to play for $5,000. The losing contestant received parting gifts, but both contestants received their final scores in dollars.
Bonus Round[]
In the bonus round, the winning contestant was asked five more questions which were in the same style as the ones in round two. On each pair of choices, the champion of the day had to choose the one not only (s)he liked best, but also the one that received more votes. As always, the contestant scored according to how many of the 100 people polled voted on the chosen answer. If the winning contestant could reach 250 points or more in the five questions or less, (s)he wins the $5,000.