Introduction

This chapter will discuss the history of game show music and the current state of game show scholarship. Since such scholarship is nonexistent, the introductory chapter will serve to highlight the need for this kind of research. The closest area of study to game show music is video gamevideo game music, another flexible form, and a survey of this field will show the differences between the two genres. This chapter will end with a brief overview of game shows of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well as a clarification as to which programs will be discussed.