name that tune

The man who created the iconic horizontally spinning wheel on 'Wheel of Fortune' has died.

According to 'The Hollywood Reporter,' art director Ed Flesh died in California on Friday of congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 79 and is survived by his partner of 44 years, David Powers.

The prolific designer shaped the look of dozens of TV game shows including 'The $25,000 Pyramid,' 'Jeopardy!,' 'Name That Tune' and 'The Newlywed Game.'

Paying tribute to Flesh, Bob Eubanks, original host of 'The New Newlywed Game,' said "He truly was a master of his craft."

Recently I mentioned that NBC had a new game show in the works called The Great American Singing Bee. The game show would require contestants to sing lines from pop songs. Well, now FOX has just greenlit a similar game show, this one called Off the Charts (working title). The new series will feature a live band with a singer that will play part of a song. Then, the contestant must sing the rest of the song. The prize money increases as the songs become more obscure.

Meanwhile, CBS is still working on its own new adaptation of the classic game show Name That Tune, though there's not much new information on that particular project just yet. CBS is also creating another reality show called Life As a Song, which has real people breaking into song and dance numbers in order to make annoucements to friends and family.

Count 'em off. There's Deal or No Deal and Show Me the Money. Identity starts on NBC next week. CBS is developing a kiddie genius quiz show and a revamp of Name That Tune. Howie's outing was no fluke. Game shows are back on network TV in a big way. The latest game show-related announcement comes from ABC. The network has teamed up with the Weakest Leak production team to translate Germany's Wetten das...? (Wanna Bet?) to US television.

Wetten das...? has dominated German airwaves for two decades. The broadcast is part musical variety show and part game show. In the game show portion, a person says that they can do some wacky stunt. Celebrity guests than take bets on whether or not the person can actually accomplish the stunt. If the celebrity loses the bet, than he or she has do something equally wacky.

According to Variety.com (registration required to read entire article), CBS and Panet Grande Productions are teaming to bring back the classic game show Name That Tune, with Donny Osmond returning to the TV landscape as host.

The format of the show, where contestants try to guess the names of songs after portions of them are played by the house band, will be slightly different this time around. This time, teams of two people will participate; the team members will be in different age groups. "It increases the variety of music we can do," Osmond told Variety. "We can go from Sinatra to hip-hop to everything in-between." In addition, the producers want to have surprise guests come out and sing if one of their songs is correctly identified by a contestant. Also, a final round will be added that will award the contestant $1 million if he or she can identify 15 songs in 60 seconds.

All I want to know is: who is going to be the house singer? Donny? I say they should bring Kathie Lee Gifford back (she used to be the house singer for the show in the Seventies). She's not doing anything these days.