WPIX's TV PIXXX

The future was here in the late 1970s and early 1980s when we could finally use our phone to play video games on broadcast television.

Like most kids in the early eighties, I was obsessed with video games. All I wanted to do when I wasn’t at school was sit in front of the TV and play with my Atari 2600. Video games were my world, so when they started making inroads into other mediums, I was all for it. One of the most memorable examples was a short-form TV game show called TV PIXXX (or sometimes TV PIXX or some other variant), which was broadcast on a local TV station, WPIX. Seeing games on television felt like a game-changer, the start of a new era, and I couldn’t get enough.

WPIX, or as most of us referred to it, Channel 11, was a favorite channel of mine. They showed older TV shows and movies, local sports, and the yearly Christmas broadcast of the Yule Log. Because they aired kid programming in the after-school time slots, it was the first channel I turned on when I got home. That’s where I first saw TV PIXXX.

What Was TV PIXXX?

TV PIXXX wasn’t a full program but instead a long commercial-length show. Hosted by the smooth-voiced Ralph Lowenstein, it began broadcasting in October 1979 and ran until 1982. Over the years, many lucky young people were given the opportunity to play a video game live on television.

To participate, you would send in a postcard with your information, and they would try to call you to play the game. Over the years, I probably sent in about two dozen entries. Sadly, though, I was never selected.

If you were lucky enough to be chosen, Lowenstein would explain the simple rules. You would play a Fairchild Channel F or Intellivision video game, controlling the fire button. When you wanted it pressed, you would say the word “PIXXX.” That triggered the button, and if you hit something while firing, you scored a point. When done, you were then asked what the day’s secret word or character was, and if you knew it, you doubled your prize. It was a clever wrinkle that incentivized you to watch the channel each day. Prizes were pretty low-stakes, like a savings bond. But for many of us who wanted to play, it wasn’t about the prize; it was about getting to participate and demonstrate our skills on a local television station.

Where Did the Idea for TV PIXXX Come From?

To get to the bottom of that, we need to leave the East Coast and travel to sunny California. There, a show called TV POWWW started on KTTV, where it ran for over a year, from January 15, 1979, to Friday, February 29, 1980. Now that you’ve seen TV PIXXX, the format of TV POWWW will be very familiar. It also featured young people calling in to play video games over the phone on television, but the format was longer, and the prizes were slightly more exciting (they had toys!).

The idea for the show came from Marvin Kempner, who would go on to license the show and the equipment to run it to over 50 American TV stations and a few overseas. Original participating stations were provided Fairchild Channel F consoles. That didn’t last long because Fairchild pulled out of the video game market. This opened the door for Intellivision, which became the console most people would remember.

A few games were used during the production of TV POWWW, and many of these same games appeared on TV PIXXX. Other games were used in marketing and were supposedly available, but these are the ones that have been verified as being used during broadcasts.

Fairchild Channel F Games:

• Baseball

• Bowling

• Shooting Gallery

Intellivision Games:

• Football

• Slots

• Soccer

• Space Battle

How Did It Work?

According to many sources, Kempner would take the consoles (starting with the Fairchild) and modify the firing mechanism so that it could respond to voice commands. This sounds pretty amazing, but there was a problem due to the nature of transmissions at the time. No matter how well-connected a phone was, there was always a certain amount of lag between the voice command and the action on the screen. This frustrated many players, leading them to rapidly yell out the command word.

Even for the late seventies, this technology, while seeming high-tech, does not seem beyond the realm of possibility. I imagine rack-mounted TV POWWW units powered all this TV video game fun. But maybe not all of it?

In 2008, during a retrospective on WPIX’s storied history, they touched on TV PIXXX and dropped a bombshell: despite the show’s premise of cutting-edge voice control, the game was actually operated by a staff member at the TV station who pressed the fire button every time a kid on the phone shouted 'PIXXX.'

I can’t find anything to confirm or deny this, so I am guessing one of two options could be true:

1. They licensed the tech but couldn’t get it to work, so they went with the simplest solution.

2. Over the years, people have forgotten how the game was actually played, and this story of a low-tech solution has just become popular over time.

I’ve watched broadcasts of both TV POWWW and TV PIXXX, and both seem to play the same. So either a machine does just as good a job as a human, or the real story has been lost in the mists of time.

Whatever the case, TV PIXXX was a fun reason to run home and turn on the television. It was a unique blend of interactive entertainment and the burgeoning world of video games, something that felt both novel and exciting at the time. For kids like me, it wasn’t just about playing a game; it was about being part of a new, evolving culture that combined our love for video games with the magic of television. Though the technology may seem quaint by today’s standards, TV PIXXX left a lasting impression, reminding us of a time when the boundaries between media were just beginning to blur, creating unforgettable memories for a generation of young gamers.