Thanksgiving Holiday Watch List (Nov. 26-28): "The Price Is Right", "Let’s Make A Deal", "Millionaire" and GSN Marathons

On Thanksgiving Eve (Wednesday, November 26) during CBS daytime, The Price Is Right and Let’s Make A Deal will be celebrating the holiday with special Thanksgiving-themed episodes. On Let’s Make A Deal, contestants will be dressed as turkeys, pilgrims and pumpkins and will play themed games including a 3-Turkey Deal for big bucks and games involving a Turkey hotline and a giant pumpkin that has apparently caught the eye of the "hungry" cast. As a special bonus, the studio audience will receive a family heirloom cookbook project featuring tools and directions on how to create your own cookbook filled with family recipes. Check your local listings for air times.

GSN To Develop Horror-Themed Game Show With "Paranormal Activity" Producer

GSN has been on a roll lately by seeing success within its original programming department with shows like It Takes A Church, Idiotest, Skin Wars and The American Bible Challenge all returning next year. The network plans to continue its winning streak with the creation of Hellevator. Hellevator will be produced by Matador and Blumhouse Productions (the latter most famous for creating the Paranormal Activity movie franchise) in association with Lionsgate Television. Jay Peterson and Todd Lubin will serve as the show's executive producers. The new series has contestants entering a warehouse through a mysterious elevator where they will compete in a series of scary and suspenseful challenges and the survivors who make it out will be crowned winners.

Afternoon News Updates For Tuesday, November 18

Good afternoon, game show fans! Today's brief batch of updates include the current state of the 2014 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, Ten Network's Family Feud building upon the success of its show by unveiling a new home game, Million Dollar Minute making a "game-changing" adjustment to its format and GSN airing a retrospect honoring classic game shows.

VIDEO REPLAY: Mark Contreras Becomes Third Biggest TPIR Daytime Winner

This season's edition of "Big Money Week" started off with a bang with Steven Heine winning $100,000 playing "Rat Race" on Monday's show and ended on a high note with Mark Contreras becoming the third biggest winner on the daytime version of The Price Is Right after winning $100,000 in "Grand Game" and his Showcase. To be more specific, Contreras won $143,545 for the day including four pairs of sunglasses, an outdoor kitchen with a gas grill and a mini refrigerator, patio furniture, a Honda Civic Natural Gas and $100,000 in cash. 

STAY TUNED: Million-Dollar “Plinko” on The Price Is Right’s “Big Money Week”

So far this week, nearly $500,000 has been up for grabs in the three super- sized pricing games combined during the third edition of The Price Is Right’s “Big Money Week”. Today’s featured pricing game for the special theme week will be raising the stakes by giving a contestant a chance to win up to $1 million playing “Plinko”. When it comes to big payouts, “Plinko” is the game to play. We’ve seen some pretty incredible prizes at stake within the past few decades of the game’s existence including the inflated increase to the now-permanent $50,000 format; $100,000 during primetime specials, $500,000 during the first “Big Money Week” and various other prizes including trips and cars during the All-Plinko episode last season. This year, the records for “highest daytime winnings” and “biggest daytime pricing game win” could be easily broken in one turn at $200,000 a chip. Check out this exclusive short sneak peak some snapshots of today’s episode featuring the million-dollar “Plinko” game.

November Sweeps Highlights For The Week of November 10-14

Millionaire introduced this year’s November sweeps month with the show’s first-ever "Whiz Kids" week. The second week of sweeps month is going to be quite eventful. Special, DVR-worthy episodes include with Ken Jennings attempting to reclaim the top spot among the list of biggest-winning American game show contestants on Millionaire, The Price Is Right airing its third "Big Money Week", Let’s Make A Deal debuting its first-ever all-musical special, former Jeopardy! champions set to play the quarterfinal rounds in this year’s Tournament of Champions and the third season of GSN’s The Chase premiering with its first celebrity episode. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get into it.

FOX Revives "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?" With Jeff Foxworthy

After cancelling the primetime version in 2009 after three seasons, FOX is looking to revive Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?. Jeff Foxworthy will be returning as the show’s host and the premise of testing how much information the contestants have retained since their days in elementary school for big bucks will remain the same. During its network run, the series became one of the most popular new shows in 2007 by the first season ranking 28th in the U.S. Nielsen ratings with a 12.7 million viewer-per episode average and several other countries adopting versions of their own including Canada, Norway and South Africa. After its original end on FOX in 2009, 5th Grader ran briefly in syndication from 2009-2011 and ended due to subpar ratings. No word on whether the revived series will retain the $1 million grand prize yet, but I will make sure to keep you updated. UPDATE: The producers are currently casting for contestants to compete in the FOX revival of the show. Go to Craigslist for more information.

Second Season of “Pawnography" Premieres Tonight on HISTORY

As yours truly had predicted, HISTORY’s new game, Pawnography, returns tonight to kick off its second season with two brand new episodes beginning at 10:03pm EST. For those of you who have never seen the show before, Pawnography has two contestants face Pawn Stars Corey Harrison, Austin “Chumlee” Russell and Rick Harrison in a series of three trivia rounds for a chance to win cash and a few valuable possessions from the world famous Gold & Silver Pawnshop.