War of the Networks (1979)

Overview

Game of television network battles for ratings. Each player plays one of four semi-fictional TV networks (ABZ, NBZ, ZBS, IND), and the goal is to have the most money when the game ends, after three rounds.

Players move pawns around a standard square-track board, with spaces that trigger various events: drawing an event (Flash) card, buying a TV show or star, etc. Stars are assigned to shows, shows are assigned to time slots. Shows may be bumped to the next night to accommodate a new show just purchased. Each player goes around the board once, populating his Friday night schedule. Once all players have completed the round, each 30 min slot awards money to the top-rated network, with ex-aequos splitting the money. The process is repeated for Saturday and Sunday. When going around the board again, visiting an owned show space forces a payout to the owner. Finally, the Sunday round is followed by an additional weekend scoring, where the ratings across all three nights are summed and compared. The richest network wins.

Note that when one rolls doubles, one either moves ahead the full die score, or one goes backward by the single die score. This adds strategy.

The game was later republished by Avalon Hill as TV Wars (q.v.), but the latter's rules are considerably different.