Thanks
to YCDTOTV audio guy Jim Clarke, we came across a photo
featuring a handful of YCDTOTV kids with a different set
and a huge hanging sign that read "Something Else."
No one had heard of such a show before.
Thanks
to YCDTOTV director Geoffrey Darby, and YCDTOTV star Christine
McGlade, we now have information on this short-lived show.
THE
SERIES
Something
Else was a one-hour game show produced locally
at CJOH-TV in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada in the winter of 1981.
It went live every Saturday morning from Studio D.
The
show tried to marry simple plots around game shows, much
like the link sets on YCDTOTV. There were also games with
prizes for the studio audience and the call-in contestants,
much like the live YCDTOTV shows in 1979. Quickly, the show
plots were axed and the program changed to just a full hour
of games and a local high school garage band, which performed
each week.
Christine
McGlade was credited as producer, and Roger
Price and Geoffrey Darby oversaw and directed the show.
Christine, along with YCDTOTV alums Kevin
Somers, Lisa
Ruddy and Jono
Gebert rotated as hosts of the program. The
show also featured a local disc jockey -- a woman from CHEZ
106 in Ottawa. The show was very inexpensive to make, and
the production was usually done in half a day. They would
rehearse in the morning, go live and then wrap.
According
to Darby, there were a couple of call-in games were a member
of the studio audience would compete against someone on
the phone at home. Prizing was actually substantial, including
Sony Walkmans and assorted gift certificates.
As
the season progressed, many kids in the audience came dressed
in full costumes in order to get noticed so they would be
chosen to be selected to come down and take part in the
games. Darby explains that the whole show "sort of
turned into the kind of things one once saw on Let's
Make A Deal. We didn't expect that at all."
Reportedly,
there were 10 episodes made, and the program only last one
winter before the cast and crew went back to producing YCDTOTV
again. Again, Darby explains, "The show was based upon
giving work to the kids who we wanted to keep honed in craft
while we started work on the next season of You Can't Do
That On Television."
