Match Game Premiered 58 Years Ago Today and Became a New Year's Eve Tradition

Its Alec Baldwin-hosted revival is still alive and kicking on ABC, but Match Game was a very different show when it first premiered on NBC 58 years ago today, on December 31, 1962.

In the original pilot episode (above), we see that Gene Rayburn was the host from the very beginning, back when it was accepted to ask male contestants what they do for a living, while asking female contestants "where is your home?" We also learn that Rayburn didn't always have that trademark super-skinny microphone that Baldwin still uses today.

The format is also different, with a pair of celebrities each teaming with two contestants and going head to head with each other by trying to match answers to fairly mundane questions. This version of the show was technically cancelled in 1963, but in its final weeks writer Dick DeBartolo (who would go on to Mad Magazine fame) began to submit much more risque-sounding fill-in-the-blank questions, which led to an uptick in ratings that prompted NBC to rescind their cancellation and keep the show on the air until until 1969.

It was revived on CBS in the summer of 1973, with the format updated to the more familiar pair of contestants trying to match the panel of six celebrities. It also became much more bawdy in nature, with regulars like Richard Dawson, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Nipsey Russell often drinking during the show.

The show, which premiered on New Year's Eve, went on to have a series of New Year's Eve-themed episodes, and you can see just how different the show became over the course of the 70s, 80s and 90s in this Match Game New Year's Eve marathon first posted to YouTube lats year:

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Andy Hunsaker has a head full of sitcom gags and nerd-genre lore, and can be followed @AndyHunsaker if you're into that sort of thing.