NEW YORK — Judging from the amount of red orange shag carpeting on the set of ABC’s “Match Game,” Alec Baldwin may have used a time machine to get to work last week.

In front of an audience at a studio on Manhattan’s West Side, Baldwin was soliciting racy fill-in-the-blank answers from a panel of boozed-up celebrities who took advantage of a full bar backstage. With a long, skinny microphone made famous on the 1970s daytime hit, he breezily played his host role as if it was one long “Saturday Night Live” sketch. At one point, he introduced himself as “the love child of Charles Nelson Reilly” — a reference to the flamboyant panelist from “Match Game’s” past.

The Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated actor is bringing some marquee value to a genre that doesn’t get much critical respect, especially in an era when quality scripted TV is abundant. But when “Match Game” premieres Sunday, ABC will have four game shows on the air, the most of any prime-time broadcast network lineup since “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” first became a white-hot hit 16 years ago.

This summer’s game show wave is driven by revivals of classic titles such as “To Tell the Truth,” “$100,000 Pyramid” and “Celebrity Family Feud” filling a network need for recognizable, low cost and easy-to-launch first-run programming at a time when it’s tougher to get viewers to notice new shows.

“The audience’s options are endless, and these game shows are known commodities,” said Rob Mills, head of alternative programming at ABC. “They are known and loved.”

Networks were once able to draw summer audiences with reruns of their hit shows once the official TV season ended in May. Those days are long gone as viewers can catch up on their favorite programs through online streaming, video-on-demand services or their DVRs.

Although complex serial dramas draw buzz and accolades, there is still a large segment of the TV audience with an appetite for programming they can just turn on and enjoy without requiring any binge-watching to catch up on plot points. And classic game shows fit the bill.

“At the end of the day, people like to see other people win,” said CBS Daytime President Angelica McDaniel. “When you turn on a game show, you have that inevitable opportunity to experience joy. It’s a great escape.”

Although game shows are cost-efficient to produce, as several episodes can be shot in one day on a single set, they are by no means cheap programming when a big name is attached. For “Match Game,” Baldwin’s talent fee is said to be more than $200,000 an episode.

But the license fee a network pays for a game show — typically $600,000 to $1 million for an hour — is well under the cost for a scripted series, making them an affordable option for the summer.

Three of ABC’s shows come from FremantleMedia North America, stewards of the classic game formats created by Goodson-Todman Productions during the first few decades of television. “To Tell the Truth” — hosted this summer by “Black-ish” star Anthony Anderson — first showed up in 1956, while “Match Game” premiered in 1962. Both have been revived numerous times. “Celebrity Family Feud” with Steve Harvey as host, is a spinoff of the current syndicated “Family Feud,” which first appeared on ABC daytime in 1976.

CBS has tapped Fremantle for a summer program as well, airing three episodes of its long-running daytime show “The Price Is Right,” with Drew Carey, late last month.

“The fact that there is a lot of demand for original programming in the summer definitely helps,” said Jennifer Mullin, co-chief executive of FremantleMedia North America.