The Woolery version couldn't have been timed better. Game shows in daytime were starting to pick back up again in 1984 following the success of Press Your Luck, The New $25,000 Pyramid, and sister show Sale of the Century after a few lean years, with even the show it ultimately replaced, Dream House, not doing too badly considering it replaced a 13-week flop. The technology at the time was cutting edge, capped by the million-dollar rotating cube that was the centerpiece of the set, in addition to being one of the first game shows to use chyron graphics. It sustained itself being one of the top three game shows for most of its run, thanks to its high clearance rate and competing well against The Price Is Right, usually its stronger second half.
Scrabble Showdown's climax had some elements of the Woolery runs and it actually had some gameplay that was more true to the board game, but it struggled to find much of an audience on The Hub (now Discovery Kids) in an atmosphere full of much more choices compared to its original run when many households still didn't have cable.
Trivial Pursuit launched ironically around the time the 1993 revival of Scrabble was cancelled, and while the interactive game was a novelty, it was too much promotion and while the main game was decent with the categories taken directly from the board game, the unfavorable timeslot for new episodes on a network that wasn't as established for being a game show channel like even USA was at the time meant that it wouldn't have that long of a run, just 130 episodes with three cycles of reruns, about a tenth of the output that Scrabble received.
Best of luck for these revivals, along with the hope that this could eventually lead for BUZZR to potentially pick up their classic runs in the future.
