3's A Crowd

3's a Crowd was a game show where they decide who knows the man better; his wife or his secretary.

Gameplay
Three sets of husband-wife-secretary teams appeared, and the game started with the men answering three pointed questions, usually referencing their wives and secretaries in ways that would lead to potential marital discord.

The secretaries then were brought back to answer the same questions, followed by the wives. Whichever team — wives or secretaries — matched the men's answers more often split a $1,000 prize ($333.33 each or $166.67 if the wives & secretaries tied). The men received an announced prize for their participation.

Broadcast history
Because of the show's premise of adultery and sexual innuendo, Three's a Crowd immediately attracted strong criticism from both feminists and conservative religious activists. According to Barris in his first autobiography, The Game Show King, the protests against the show – as well as the sometimes-evident lack of fun the contestants seemed to be having on it – prompted him to retreat from television production entirely.

At the time, Barris' company had three other shows on the air: revivals of both The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game, and the still-running syndicated The Gong Show. Barris wrote that "The public backlash from Three's a Crowd not only caused the program to be canceled, but it took three other TV shows of mine with it. I went to my house in Malibu and stayed there for a year." Indeed, it was largely due to the backlash from Three's a Crowd that ratings for all of his other shows – including the still-popular Gong Show – plummeted and were removed from the air by the start of the next television season.

The series was replaced on February 4 by a revival of Camouflage, also produced by Barris. This show also failed and was canceled after thirteen weeks, largely due to poor clearances due to its being a weekly series as opposed to a daily "strip", the former of which had fallen out of favor with TV stations by 1980.

Episode status
Most, if not all, of the original series is intact. GSN reran many episodes, including two pilots from 1978 and a third from 1979. The pilots are distinguishable from the rest of the series through a somewhat different set (a brown backdrop with green stripes behind the contestants, plus Peck's podium having a large "3" as the backdrop) and Peck himself not having a "perm".

Links
Josh Rebich's 3's A Crowd Rule Sheets

3's A Crowd @ Game Show Garbage

YouTube Videos
A big fight ensued in the show's premiere

A clip from the GSN revival