Mindreaders

Main game

A team of four men played against a team of four women, each consisting of three civilian contestants and a celebrity captain. Host Martin read a question to the three civilian contestants on one team. Each player locked in an answer. One by one, the celebrity captain predicted how each of his/her teammates answered. A correct prediction kept that team in control and play moved to the next player in line. If the celebrity was incorrect, the celebrity captain of the opposing team predicted the controlling teammates' responses. Each correct answer was worth $50, with the money going to the other team if incorrect, and the first team to reach $300 won the game and went on to play the end game. Both teams kept their money.

Bonus round

The bonus round was played in two parts.

Judge the Jury

The winning team first played a game called "Judge the Jury". Ten randomly selected members of the studio audience comprised a jury. Each civilian member of the winning team had to predict how the jury answered a question, for a total of three questions. After each question was read, the jury locked in their answers, and the player guessed how many of them answered yes or no. Guessing the exact number won $500 for the team, missing the number by one or two higher or lower was worth $200, and any guess that was off by three or more awarded no money. If the team wins no money during the round, the bonus round ends.

The idea of having ten audience members (designed by producer Mimi O'Brien) answer a question was later instituted for the 1986-89 revival of Card Sharks.

Celebrity Turnabout

After the three questions, the winning team played a round called "Celebrity Turnabout". The civilian players predicted how the celebrity captain answered one last question. Each player made a guess and if the team majority matched the celebrity captain's answer, the civilians' winnings earned in the first half of the bonus game were multiplied by ten, for a maximum total of $15,000.

Returning champions

Unlike most game shows, Mindreaders did not use the typical "returning champions" carry-over; instead, the same two teams competed against each other for three consecutive games, after which they both retired.

Music

The Show's theme was composed by Score Productions, and was later used for the unsold Goodson-Todman pilot Puzzlers in 1980. In addition, the win cue from the show was also used for the 1983 pilots of Star Words and Body Language.

Broadcast history

NBC placed Mindreaders in a problematic timeslot, 12:00 Noon (11:00 AM Central), where it faced ABC's The $20,000 Pyramid and CBS' The Young and the Restless as well as low clearances by NBC affiliates for local news. Despite NBC's hopes that Martin's legacy from Laugh-In and his guest appearances on Match Game (a show still in syndication at the time and which had a very similar presence) would translate into instant audience appeal, the ratings were flat, as had those of the shows preceding it in that time slot since the network moved Jeopardy! from there in January 1974.

Mindreaders was replaced by Chain Reaction, which ended on June 20 of that year as one of three game shows to be replaced by The David Letterman Show. However, Chain Reaction later became successful in reruns and produced a revival from 1986 to 1991.

Unusually for a Goodson-Todman series, especially one in production as late as 1980, most of the Mindreaders archive was destroyed to recycle videotape. NBC was the last major network still recycling some of its videotapes, mostly restricted to game shows by this point, at the time.