CBS has been making changes to its schedule this week due to the wildfires overtaking Los Angeles, with the Hollywood Squares reboot getting pushed back. The latest iteration of the 1960s game show was set to premiere on Friday, but TVLine reports that the premiere is delayed by a week, stating that the game show’s comedy-driven dynamic “did not feel tonally appropriate amid coverage” of the continuing wildfires. Hollywood Squares will now premiere on Thursday at 8 p.m. ET.
Hollywood Squares was replaced by additional repeats of sitcoms Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage and Ghosts. After its premiere on Jan. 16, the series will move to Wednesdays beginning Jan. 29, joining The Price is Right at Night and Raid the Cage. The network also pulled a repeat of Fire Country that was set to air tonight and replaced it with an NCIS: Sydney repeat. As of now, the winter premiere of the NorCal-set firefighter drama, which will continue the fall finale’s storyline of a wildfire, is still set to air on Jan. 31.
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Starring Drew Barrymore and hosted by Nate Burleson, Hollywood Squares is a classic game show “in which two contestants play tic-tac-toe to win money and prizes. The “board” for the game is a vertical stack of open-faced cubes, each occupied by a celebrity seated at a desk and facing the contestants. The celebrities are asked questions and the contestants judge the legitimacy of their answers to win the game.” Barrymore will be the “center square” answering questions for the contestants.
The original series aired as a pilot on NBC in 1965, officially debuting on the network in October 1966. Since then, it’s had numerous iterations, most recently in 2023 with the Black culture-themed version Celebrity Squares on VH1. Hosted by DC Young Fly, the show ran for just one 17-episode season, ending in January 2024. It should be fun to see how this new reboot goes when it finally premieres on Jan. 16 at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.
Meanwhile, Hollywood has had to put a pause on productions of many shows as studios continue to be shut down due to the raging wildfires. Red carpet events and award shows have also been canceled, while iconic filming locations such as the Hacks mansion and the high school used in Carrie and Freaky Friday have also burned down along with tens of thousands of other buildings and houses as the wildfires continue to ravage L.A.