Latest news with #WinkMartindale
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
CBS Gains ‘Jeopardy!' & ‘Wheel Of Fortune' Distribution Rights At Least Until Legal Battle With Sony Is Over
UPDATED, 2:35 PM: Sony and CBS spun the wheel one more time this month over who controls Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, and the still Shari Redstone-owned company hit the game show jackpot. Solidifying what a three-judge panel from the Second Appellate District temporarily put in place last month, that same panel has now ruled that CBS will remain the sole distributor of the lucrative Jeopardy! and now Ryan Seacrest hosted Wheel. More from Deadline 'Jeopardy!' & 'Wheel of Fortune' Legal Shocker: CBS Loses Out To Sony In Court Battle Over Rights To Distribute Game Shows Wink Martindale Dies: Game Show Host Of 'Tic-Tac-Dough', 'Gambit' And 'High Rollers' Was 91 Paramount Offers Millions To Trump To End $20B '60 Minutes' Suit & Let Skydance Merger Go Through 'Pending disposition of this appeal, the trial court's order of April 10, 2025 finding that 'Sony can begin distributing the Shows and need not deliver episodes to CBS' is hereby stayed, including all matters embraced therein or affected thereby by the trial court's order,' ordered Appeal Court Judges Gonzalo Martinez, John Segal and Natalie Stone on Wednesday in a short ruling after reviewing arguments from both sides. You can read the ruling here. The decision puts the shows in CBS' hands for the entire duration of the court battle between the network and Sony. CBS had 'no comment' on yesterday's ruling. Sony did not reply to request from Deadline for comment on the order. The once partnered companies have been in a breach-of-contract dispute since October 31 over CBS' more than 40-year-old distribution contract and claims by Sony Pictures TV of CBS licensing the blockbuster shows at below-market rates and engaging in 'self-dealing.' PREVIOUSLY, APRIL 16 PM: This is why they call it Jeopardy! Less than a week after Sony snagged back the distribution rights to the Ken Jennings-hosted game show and Wheel of Fortune, a California appeals court today handed those rights back to CBS, at least for now. 'The superior court's order of April 10, 2025 denying the preliminary injunction and allowing Respondents to begin 'distributing the shows and need not deliver episodes to CBS' is stayed pending further order of this court,' a three-judge panel from the Second Appellate District ordered Wednesday. With the petition for writ of supersedeas filed by CBS on April 11, Sony now has until April 28 to respond, with the Shari Redstone-owned CBS giving its reply by May 9. All of that means those new deals and platforms that Sony was hoping for the beloved and money-making game shows are in legal purgatory for at least a month. CBS had no further comment besides its petition and today's order. Sony did not respond to Deadline's request for comment Wednesday. The once-chummy companies have been in a breach-of-contract dispute since October 31 over CBS' more than 40-year-old distribution contract and claims by Sony Pictures TV of CBS licensing the blockbuster shows at below-market rates and engaging in 'self-dealing.' After a judicial pingpong match, things went sideways for CBS when Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kevin Brazile last Thursday favored Sony over CBS Media Ventures' pitch to pause Sony taking over full distribution of Wheel and Jeopardy! Agreements for the Merv Griffin shows have been place since 1982 and under the respective umbrellas of CBS and Sony since the late 1990s. Which begs the question: What is hassle? Best of Deadline Everything We Know About Netflix's 'The Thursday Murder Club' So Far 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Star Michigan Defender Posts Aidan Hutchinson Style Video Marking Return From ACL Injury
Last season was one with plenty of ups and downs for coach Sherrone Moore's Michigan Wolverines in Moore's first season as the team started off hot against Fresno State before getting drubbed by the Texas Longhorns and recovering to win eight games on the season. The Wolverines' underwhelming performance boiled down to two main factors: injuries and spotty quarterback play, as Michigan's Wink Martindale led defense was often forced to stay on the field for much of the game, getting stop after stop. Advertisement On Tuesday, Wolverines Nation got an update from one of the team's most effective defensive players, defensive back Rod Moore, who shared a video that might remind Michigan and Lions fans of Aidan Hutchinson's recent social media posts. Rod Moore attempts to strip the ball from Alabama running back Jase McClellan at the 2024 Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. © Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images "#Michigan DB Rod Moore posts on IG his first time running on ground in 14 months," reporter Brice Marich wrote on X. "Great to see." Moore also included a message in his Instagram post. "First time running on ground in 14 months thank you God," Moore wrote with a pair of praying hands. Moore was shown wearing a knee brace, a troubling development for fans expecting the brace to be off by this point in his rehab. Advertisement "There's no way he plays this season that sucks," one fan said. "Damn. That was a messed up injury," another added. "This seems like a super long recovery for an ACL tear, anybody know why?" another asked. "Did he have complications from his recovery?" "Good to see. Clearly not playing in 2025 though," another added about Moore after watching the video. Related: Ohio State, Michigan In Intense Recruiting Race For Projected $364k Star
Times
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Wink Martindale obituary: American TV game show host
Sometimes childhood names stick and so it was with Wink Martindale. In infancy, a young playmate had trouble saying his given name, Winston, and it came out as 'Winkie'. Shortened to Wink, he went on to use the name on his Top Ten hit Deck of Cards and throughout his long career as the king of American television game shows — with just one exception. When he took over his first in 1964, hosting NBC's What's This Song? the network decided 'Wink' sounded juvenile and billed him as Win Martindale. Common sense prevailed and for the 20 further game shows he went on to host he reverted to Wink. He joked that the name had served him well but that as long as he was
USA Today
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
TV host Wink Martindale, known for 'Gambit' and 'Tic-Tac-Dough,' dies at 91: Reports
TV host Wink Martindale, known for 'Gambit' and 'Tic-Tac-Dough,' dies at 91: Reports TV and radio host Wink Martindale, best known for helming the game shows "Gambit" and "Tic-Tac-Dough," has died, according to reports. He was 91. The former disc jockey, born Winston Conrad Martindale, died Tuesday in Rancho Mirage, California, while surrounded by his family, The Hollywood Reporter and the Los Angeles Times reported. A cause of death was not given. USA TODAY has reached out to a representative for Martindale for comment. Martindale, who previously hosted at the Memphis, Tennessee, station WHBQ, broke into the TV world with a hosting gig on the WHBQ-TV show "Mars Patrol," a sci-fi series for children he led from 1953-1955. After hosting the musical game shows "What's This Song?" and "Words and Music" for NBC, Martindale became a household name when he was chosen by CBS to head its blackjack-themed series "Gambit" in 1972. He hosted the show's original run through 1976 and later emceed a Las Vegas spinoff on NBC from 1980-1981. Martindale also hosted the CBS revival of the NBC trivia game show "Tic-Tac-Dough" from 1978-1985. His other credits include "High Rollers" and "Headline Chasers," the latter of which he created and co-produced with fellow TV host Merv Griffin. Martindale was married to Sandy Ferra, who previously dated singer Elvis Presley. Martindale was also friends with the rock icon, with Presley appearing on the TV personality's show "Teenage Dance Party" in 1956. 'Your acclaim will live on': Judas Priest drummer Les Binks dies at 73 Presley is "responsible for my marrying Wink," Ferra said in a 2015 interview with Elvis Australia. "When (Martindale) said he was from Tennessee, I thought, 'He must be a nice guy,' because I loved the state, I loved all the guys, I loved everything in the state of Tennessee because Elvis was such a wonderful part of my life." Aside from his hosting prowess, Martindale scored a pop hit in 1959 with his rendition of the recitation song "The Deck of Cards." The song peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. Jean Marsh dies: 'Upstairs, Downstairs' star and co-creator was 90 Martindale was honored with a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2006. Contributing: KiMi Robinson, USA TODAY
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Wink Martindale, the king of the television game show, dies at 91
Wink Martindale, the king of the television game show who hosted "Tic-Tac-Dough," "Gambit," "High Rollers" and a slew of other programs that became staples in living rooms across America, died Tuesday in Rancho Mirage. He was 91. Martindale, a longtime voice of Los Angeles radio who had an unexpected hit record in the late 1950s, died surrounded by family and his wife of 49 years, Sandra Martindale, according to a news release from his publicity firm. Throughout a long career in radio and television, Martindale was frequently asked how he came by his unusual first name. As he would explain, one of his young friends in Jackson, Tenn., had trouble saying his given name, Winston, and it came out sounding like Winkie. The nickname, shortened to Wink after he got into radio, stuck — with one exception. After Martindale signed to host his first national TV game show in 1964, NBC's head of daytime programming felt that the name Wink sounded too juvenile. So, for its nearly one-year run, 'What's This Song?' was hosted by Win Martindale. Not that he particularly minded having the 'k' dropped from Wink. 'Not really, because I loved those checks [from NBC],' he said in a 2017 interview for the Television Academy Foundation. 'They can call me anything they want to call me: Winkie-dinkie-doo, the Winkmeister, the Winkman, you name it.' Read more: Wink Martindale gets back in the game with new show The genial, dapper TV host with the gleaming smile and perfectly coiffed hair had hosted two local TV game shows in L.A. before going national with 'What's This Song?' Over the decades, according to his website, Martindale either hosted or produced 21 game shows, including 'Words and Music,' 'Trivial Pursuit,' 'The Last Word' and 'Debt.' 'That's a lot of shows,' he acknowledged in a 1996 interview with the New York Daily News. 'It either means everybody wants me to do their show or I can't hold a job.' Martindale was best known for hosting 'Tic-Tac-Dough,' the revival of a late 1950s show, which aired on CBS for less than two months in 1978 but continued in syndication until 1986. Unlike tic-tac-toe, in which two players simply try to get three Xs or three Os in a row in a nine-box grid, 'Tic-Tac-Dough' required contestants to select a subject category in each of the nine boxes, everything from geography to song titles. Each correct answer earned the players their X or O in the chosen box. 'Tic-Tac-Dough' achieved its highest ratings in 1980 during the 88-game, 46-show run of Lt. Thom McKee, a handsome young Navy fighter pilot whose winning streak earned him $312,700 in cash and prizes and a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. 'Our ratings were never as big until he came on and were never as big after he left,' Martindale said in his Television Academy Foundation interview. As he saw it, the simplicity of 'Tic-Tac-Dough' and other TV game shows helps explain their continued popularity. Read more: After All These Careers, Deejay Wink Martindale Is Still on the Air People at home, he said, 'gravitate to games that they know. They can sit there, and they say to themselves, 'Man, I could have gotten that; I can play that game.' And when you get that from a home viewer or a person in the audience, you've got them captured.' Martindale left 'Tic-Tac-Dough' in 1985, a year before it went off the air, to host a show that he had created. Alas, 'Headline Chasers' lasted less than a year. As Martindale told The Times in 2010, 'There have been a lot of bombs between the hits.' Born Winston Conrad Martindale on Dec. 4, 1933, in Jackson, Tenn., he was one of five children. His father was a lumber inspector and his mother a housewife. While growing up, Martindale was a big fan of the popular radio shows of the day and early on dreamed of becoming a radio announcer. For years, he recalled in his Television Academy Foundation interview, he'd tear out advertisements from Life magazine and, behind a closed bedroom door, he'd ad-lib commercials as he pretended to be on the radio. All that practice paid off. After repeatedly hounding the manager of a small, 250-watt local radio station in Jackson for a job, Martindale was offered an audition less than two months after graduating high school in 1951. At 17, the former drugstore soda jerk was hired at $25 a week to work the 4-11 p.m. shift at radio station WPLI. On-air jobs at two increasingly higher-wattage local radio stations followed before he landed his 'dream' job in 1953: hosting the popular morning show 'Clockwatchers' at WHBQ Radio in Memphis, Tenn. For Martindale, working at WHBQ was a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Read more: Chuck Woolery, host of 'Love Connection' and other game shows, dies at 83 One night in July 1954, he later recalled, he was showing some friends around the station when popular DJ Dewey Phillips played a demonstration disc of a recently recorded song that had been given to him by Sam Phillips (no relation), the founder of Sun Records in Memphis. The song was 'That's All Right' and the singer was a young Memphis electric company truck driver named Elvis Presley. 'Dewey put it on the turntable and the switchboard lit up,' Martindale said in a 2010 interview with The Times. 'He kept playing it over and over.' The song caused so much excitement that a call was made to Presley's home to have him come in for an on-air interview. Elvis wasn't home, so Gladys and Vernon Presley drove to a movie theater, where their son was watching a western, and drove him to the radio station for his first interview. 'That was the beginning of Presley mania,' said Martindale. 'I think of that as the night when the course of popular music changed forever.' After WHBQ launched a television station in Memphis in 1953, Martindale branched into TV, first hosting a daily half-hour children's show called 'Wink Martindale of the Mars Patrol.' The live show featured a costumed Martindale, who would interview half a dozen kids in a cheaply built spaceship set, and segue to five- or six-minutes of old Flash Gordon movie serials. Then, influenced by the success of Dick Clark's still-local teenage dance show 'Bandstand' in Philadelphia, Martindale began co-hosting WHBQ-TV's 'Top 10 Dance Party.' He scored a coup in June 1956 when he landed Elvis, by then a show-business phenomenon, for an appearance and interview with Martindale on his live show — for free. Col. Tom Parker, Presley's manager, 'would never speak to me after that because he wanted to be paid for everything. We had no budget. They hardly paid me, for Pete's sake,' Martindale told The Times in 2010. Read more: Peter Marshall, affable host of NBC's original 'Hollywood Squares,' dies at 98 Because of Martindale's local popularity with his 'Top 10 Dance Party,' a small Memphis record company, OJ Records, signed him to a recording contract. His recording of 'Thought It was Moonlove' led to his signing with Dot Records, for which he recorded well into the 1960s. Martindale, who had a pleasant but not memorable singing voice, also played himself as the host of a teen TV dance show in the low-budget 1958 movie 'Let's Rock!,' in which he sang the mildly rocking 'All Love Broke Loose.' While working on radio and TV in Memphis, Martindale graduated from what is now the University of Memphis, where he majored in speech and drama. In 1959, he moved to L.A. to become the morning DJ on radio station KHJ. That same year, he scored a surprise hit in 'Deck of Cards,' which reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 11 on its Hot Country Songs chart. Martindale, who received a gold record for the recording, performed the piece on Ed Sullivan's popular Sunday-night variety show. While working at KHJ Radio in 1959, he began hosting 'The Wink Martindale Dance Party' on KHJ-TV on Saturdays. The popular show, broadcast from a studio, also began airing weekdays, live from Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica. Over the years, in addition to KHJ, Martindale worked at L.A. radio stations KRLA, KFWB, KMPC and KGIL. In 2006, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A year later, he became one of the first inductees into the American TV Game Show Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. 'I always loved games,' he said in his Television Academy Foundation interview. 'Once I got into the world of games, I just seemed to glide from one to the other. … I never looked down upon the idea that I was branded as a game-show host, because most people like games.' Martindale is survived by his wife, Sandra; sister Geraldine; his daughters Lisa, Lyn and Laura; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. McLellan is a former Times staff writer. Sign up for Essential California for the L.A. Times biggest news, features and recommendations in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
