Editing Match Game (section)

===1979–82, daily syndication===
[[File:McLean Stevenson Henry Blake MASH 1972.JPG|thumb|upright|[[McLean Stevenson]] became a regular panelist during its final season in syndication.]]

After the cancellation of ''Match Game 79'', there was still enough interest in the series for Goodson–Todman and Jim Victory Television to consider a continuation of the daily series in syndication as the weekly ''Match Game PM'' was still airing and had not stopped production. The consideration eventually came to fruition as a daily syndicated ''Match Game'', without a year attached and often referred to on-air as ''The Match Game'', debuted on September 10, 1979.

The rules and gameplay were the same as before, including the star wheel bonus, but the format was altered slightly. Each contestant on this version of ''Match Game'' played a two-game match against another contestant, and the Super Match was played after each game. As is the case with ''Match Game PM'', a contestant did not win any money for winning the game. There were also no returning champions on the daily syndicated series, as two new contestants began each match. The star wheel reduced the golden star sections to three, making it more difficult to double the winnings in the head-to-head match.

The maximum payout for a contestant was $21,000 (two $500 audience matches and two $10,000 head-to-head match wins), the same its syndicated sister series ''Match Game PM'' was offering during this time.

For the first two seasons [[Bill Daily]], [[Dick Martin (comedian)|Dick Martin]], [[Richard Paul (actor)|Richard Paul]], and [[Bob Barker]] were among the male semi-regulars who filled Dawson's old spot on the panel. [[McLean Stevenson]], who appeared once in September 1978 and twice near the end of the second year of this version, appeared in nearly all of the third season (1981–82) and became a regular from the eleventh taped week through the end of the season.

The syndicated ''Match Game'' helped exacerbate the perception of the 4:00&nbsp;p.m. time slot being a "death slot" for network programming. After CBS canceled ''Match Game 79'', the network moved the long-running soap opera ''[[Love of Life]]'' into the vacant time slot. Although the syndicated ''Match Game'' was not a direct cause of the ratings problems ''Love of Life'' faced—the 4:00&nbsp;p.m. time slot, the last network daytime slot, had been a problem for all three networks for years and ''Love of Life'' had seen a precipitous drop in ratings since the April 1979 move to the late afternoon—many stations ran the syndicated ''Match Game'' against the veteran soap opera, and several more stations, including many CBS-owned stations and affiliates, dropped ''Love of Life'' in favor of the new ''Match Game''. (''Love of Life'' aired its final episode on February 1, 1980, five months after the debut of the new ''Match Game''.) The daytime syndicated show produced 525 episodes, running until September 10, 1982 – exactly three years after its debut.

''Match Game''{{'}}s 1973–82 run was taped in Studio 33 at [[Television City|CBS Television City]] in Los Angeles, except for one week of shows in 1974 in which it was shot in Studio 41.<ref>{{cite web|title=Shows–CBS Television City|url=http://www.cbstelevisioncity.com/shows#|access-date=July 25, 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110713152856/http://www.cbstelevisioncity.com/shows|archive-date=July 13, 2011|df=mdy-all}}</ref>