'Gong Show' Revived by Fairfield Resident

Leslie Gold, a Fairfield resident known as "The Radiochick," always appreciated the good-natured and zany fun of "The Gong Show," a game show that aired on NBC in the 1970s.

"It was an amazing show for its time," Gold said in a phone interview Friday. "The Gong Show was the first show, really, to put real people on TV and allow themselves to humiliate themselves and celebrate it."

Some of today's TV shows, such as "American Idol," and YouTube clips have their roots in The Gong Show, Gold said. "People willingly humiliating themselves in the name of comedy and outrageousness, that was all borne of The Gong Show," she said.

On Aug. 12, "Gong Show Live" will premiere at B.B. King's Blues Club & Grill in New York, and Gold, who has rights to live versions of the show, said it will be the prototype for a hopefully longer run in New York theaters or a Las Vegas casino.

Several attempts have been made over the years to revive The Gong Show but they weren't successful, and Gold indicated they may not have captured the spirit of the original Gong Show, which was "celebratory of the deranged talent."

"The original Gong Show was just celebrating lunacy. It wasn't mean-spirited. Everything, everyone was a celebrant, everyone was in on the joke. It was light-hearted, celebratory and fun. That's the sensibility I'm going for," Gold said. "Whether you were good or bizarre or scared the hell out of the audience, the intention was to...capture people's fascination and funny bone."

Gold said she did a version of The Gong Show on radio and Chuck Barris, the producer and host of the original show, stopped by to help host. Gold said she learned that the rights were available for a live show on stage and she acquired them. "I just wanted to be involved in resurrecting The Gong Show in the way I think it deserves to be resurrected," she said.

Gong Show Live will have 12 acts whittled down from several hundred by Robert Russell, a New York casting director who's worked on a series of big hits including "The Dating Game," "The Apprentice," "Survivor," "The Bachelor," "Big Brother" and "Change of Heart." "He went through all 300 to 400 submissions, called in people to do live auditions and hand-picked each act, and, in some cases, gave them direction," she said.

But that doesn't mean all the acts will be good. This is, after all, The Gong Show.

"Some of them will be jaw-droppingly horrible, but fascinating, and they'll get gonged," Gold said.

The Aug. 12 show, which starts at 8 p.m., also has room for spontaniety, as an audience member or two can get up on stage and present their act without any advance screening. Gong Show Live will also have its version of recurring bits from the original show, such as Gene Gene the Dancing Machine and The Unknown Comic, Gold said.

Gold said it wasn't possible to do Gong Show Live with entirely unscreened acts because she wanted to deliver "a high level of entertainment value."

"If it was all spontaneous, it could be a disaster," Gold said, adding that the original Gong Show also pre-screened acts. "It is really presented very similarly on stage," she said.

"What we want is for people to walk out of the theater blown away," she said.

Ray Ellin, a standup comedian, will host the Aug. 12 show, and the three judges will be Chuck Nice, a comedian who's appeared on the "Today Show," We TV and truTV, Dan Naturman, a comedian, and Gold. The 90-minute show includes a live band called "The Gong Show 10" ("There's only four of them," Gold says) led by Sandy Gennaro, who's worked with Cyndi Lauper, Chubby Checker and Bo Diddley, Gold said.

Gold, if you look at her early career, would seem an unlikely candidate to revive a zany game show from the '70s. She received her master's degree in business administration from Harvard University and ran a 160-employee manufacturing company before selling it to a Fortune 500 company.

"I sold the business for the opportunity to do something for love," Gold said, adding that she ended up in radio because people find her entertaining and she's opinionated and too ugly for TV (pictures to the contrary.)

Gold said she talked her way into a job at WMMM in Westport, working for free at night when the station's signal strength was 2 watts. Gold said she "got delusions of grandeur" from the WMMM job and sent out home-made audition tapes to producers of Howard Stern's and Don Imus' radio shows, as well as producers at WABC Radio. Tim Sabean, who was Howard Stern's program director, responded in days after listening to Gold, saying she was "awful, but I hear genius in you."

Gold said Sabean helped her launch a career in radio and she was soon working Sunday nights at a Boston radio station, followed by weekdays in Boston and then onto New York, where she hosted what she described as a "tasteless, edgy, news-based comedic show."

Gold's now on Shovio.com, a site she co-founded, hosting a live, interactive radio show that reaches a global audience and that enables her and her callers to see each other and interact on camera in front of everyone who's tuned in. "It's the first live, two-way broadcasting network," she said.

In one show, a caller into Gold's Shovio.com show was a "hoarder" and Gold instructed him to pan across his room where, amid the clutter, Gold spotted fast-food wrappers that the caller said were a couple of weeks old. Gold tried for several minutes to get him to throw the wrappers in the garbage.

"It's not an opportunity I would have had on radio or television. We really get a glimpse into the caller's environment," Gold said. "All the cool, edgy programming like this, especially the interactive stuff, you have to go online. There's a whole generation that gets its entertainment almost exclusively online."

Gold's Shovio.com show airs at 6 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays.

Gold said she's kept up with evolving technology in her radio career because, "If you want to stay alive and be relevant, you have to keep moving."

Tickets to Gong Show Live are "a recession-friendly" $15 right now, though the price will increase in the days leading up to Aug. 12, Gold said. For information, check http://www.gongshowlive.net and http://www.bbkingblues.com