"Hosted by Chuck Barris-who would later claim in a memoir that he was a CIA assassin- The Gong Show paraded a series of low-rent comedy and music acts whose performances were scored by a panel of C-list celebrities, or gonged off the stage. The show trafficked in stale bits with a twist, and sexual innuendo. But it also mocked America's infatuation with "talent," and flipped the bird at the earnest variety shows that had polluted prime time for decades."
"Gong show, it became clear, was a Canadian figure of speech and more akin to another characteristic of the TV program: chaos. The Gong Show routinely devolved into thrown props, a howling audience, and, when Gene Gene the Dancing Machine appeared in a green windbreaker and bell-bottoms and boogied to Count Basie's "Jumpin' at the Woodside," mayhem on the set."
On Hornby Island northwest of Vancouver, a bed-and-breakfast host described music nights and ferry lines as "a bit of a gong show." The Gong Show was a late-1970s network TV program hosted by Chuck Barris that featured low-rent comedy and music acts judged by a panel of C-list celebrities and often ended with performers being "gonged" off the stage. The program trafficked in stale bits, sexual innuendo, and parody of talent shows while routinely devolving into thrown props and mayhem. In Canadian usage, "gong show" came to mean chaos. An individual later embedded with Merriam-Webster in Springfield, Mass., to learn lexicography during the dictionary's online overhaul and to write a book.
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