Game show host and producer Chuck Barris is dead at 87.

I ask you friends…would the modern competition reality show American Idol exist without Barris’ iconic 70’s daytime entertainment The Gong Show? I think not! The bad auditions were straight out of Barris’ playbook… Read more at the Associated Press.

NEW YORK (AP) — Chuck Barris, whose game show empire included “The Dating Game,” ”The Newlywed Game” and that infamous factory of cheese, “The Gong Show,” has died. He was 87.

Barris died of natural causes Tuesday afternoon at his home in Palisades, New York, according to publicist Paul Shefrin, who announced the death on behalf of Barris’ family.

Barris made game show history right off the bat, in 1966, with “The Dating Game,” hosted by Jim Lange. The gimmick: a young female questions three males, hidden from her view, to determine which would be the best date. Sometimes the process was switched, with a male questioning three females. But in all cases, the questions were designed by the show’s writers to elicit sexy answers.

The grinning, curly-haired Barris became a familiar face as creator and host of “The Gong Show,” which aired from 1976 to 1980.

Patterned after the Major Bowes Amateur Hour show that was a radio hit in the 1930s, the program featured performers who had peculiar talents and, often, no talent at all. When the latter appeared on the show, Barris would strike an oversize gong, the show’s equivalent of vaudeville’s hook. The victims would then be mercilessly berated by the manic Barris, with a hat often yanked down over his eyes and ears, and a crew of second-tier celebrities.

We’ll be back with more…STUFF. The Gong Show totally holds up…

The judges on this episode of The Gone Show: Arte Johnson, Jaye P. Morgan, David Letterman