Faithful to the classic format, each show presented a contest between amateur performers of often dubious talent, with a panel of three celebrity judges. If any judge considered an act to be particularly bad, he or she could strike a large gong, thus forcing the performer to stop and eliminating that contestant from the competition.
If the act survived without being gonged, the performers were given a score by each of the three judges on a scale of 0 to 500 (instead of 0 to 10), for a maximum possible score of 1,500. The contestant who achieved the highest combined score won the grand prize of $600 and a "Gong Show Championship Belt" trophy.
The last act of each show (which was interrupted by a siren and the doors closing) was usually performed by David Juskow.
Comedian Michelle Biloon interviewed the participants backstage, mainly for the website, but clips of the interviews were played over each episode's credits.
