Letters to Laugh-In

"Letters to Laugh-In" was a daytime game show that aired on NBC from September 29 to December 26, 1969. The notable fact about this program was that it was a spin-off of NBC's popular nighttime comedy series at the time, "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In". It replaced "The Match Game", which had been cancelled after a seven-year run in the timeslot.

Gary Owens, the announcer for "Laugh-In", was the host of "Letters to Laugh-In".

In this game show, viewers at home mail their jokes to the program, in which they are read by a panel of four celebrities -- two of them "Laugh-In" regulars. Each joke was rated on a scale of zero to 100. The highest-rated joke on that day's program won a nice prize, while the lowest-rated joke won a trip to "beautiful downtown Burbank".

Unlike the nighttime "Laugh-In" series, which enjoyed 5 1/2 seasons on NBC, "Letters to Laugh-In" only lasted roughly three months in the 4 p.m./3 Central timeslot before being cancelled in favor of "The Who, What, or Where Game."

Episode Status

Unlike the nighttime series, the entire run of "Letters to Laugh-In" is rumored to be fully erased like all NBC daytime shows at the time (except "Days of Our Lives"), due to the videotape expense in the 1970s. At least one episode still exists among tape trading circles, while only the audio of the final show exists. Fact|date=August 2007

References

* "The Encyclopedia of Daytime Television", by Wesley Hyatt (Billboard Books, 1997)