• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, June 12, 2023

Here is a Yahoo search question: Is there a game show based on Yahoo searches?

Yes, there is, and you do not have to search for it. It premieres Monday night (June 12) on Game Show Network. 

GSN has a knack for applying just the right touch to its original game shows and quiz shows, and this new one -- “Hey, Yahoo!” -- is no exception.

It is a fun, upbeat show whose format encourages playing along at home. After all, this game is about Internet searches, which is something everyone can relate to, whether they use Yahoo, Google or any other search engine.

Hosted by actor Tom Cavanagh (above photo, left), “Hey, Yahoo!” is a fill-in-the-blank show in which contestants are challenged to guess how certain subjects are ranked in Yahoo searches.

The TV Blog previewed a typical show on Friday. Not only was the game fun, but it was unexpectedly surprising when it came to some of the Yahoo searches the game featured.

On the show, two teams of three compete in each episode for a top cash prize of $10,000. Instead of trying to explain the show’s format, here is a description of one of the rounds.

The question taken from Yahoo searches was: “How many days until [blank]?” The answers were then ranked in order from first (for $100) to fifth (for $10).

The first letter was provided for each of the answers. The contestants were then able to choose any of the five answers to hazard a guess.

The answers to the “How many days” question were interesting. Not surprisingly, the top-ranked search was “How many days until Christmas?”

Lots of people also asked Yahoo, “How many days until spring?” That’s not surprising either.

But the fourth-ranked question was “How many days until April Fools’ Day?” I wouldn’t have thought that would be a question many people would seek to find out. Ranked fifth was “Cinco de Mayo” and third was “My Birthday.”

See if you can fill in the blank with the answer to this Yahoo search: “Is it hard to change a [blank]?”

I immediately looked for “tire” or “light bulb,” but neither were there. Instead, “showerhead” was the number one answer and number two was “car battery.” 

The third-ranked answer was a surprise to me: “toilet.” I did not know that the ease or difficulty of changing a toilet is something that is on the minds of so many.

Another surprise came in the answers to this Yahoo search: “Should you shake a [blank]?” 

Number one was “Should you shake a Polaroid picture?” This seemed to me like a question few would be curious about in this day and age. Even more surprising, it beat out the second-ranked answer, “martini.”

Last week, the TV Blog griped about the new Peacock murder drama “Based On a True Story” because of its violence, and also because it was dreary and unhappy.

“Maybe it comes from watching so many TV shows, but sometimes I just want to watch something nice instead of a show that sets its tone at the very outset with a scene of extreme violence,” I wrote then.

For me, the arrival of “Hey, Yahoo!” is right on time.

“Hey, Yahoo!” premieres Monday (June 12) at 8 p.m. Eastern on Game Show Network.