Game Shows and Scandals

With the exception of the early 2000's -- which saw the massive popularity of Who Wants to Be a Millionarie and copycats like Greed -- primetime television game shows have largely been a relic of the past since the early 1970's. In fact, The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows: Third Edition recounts that from the fall of 1971 to August 1999 when Millionaire premiered, there were virtually zero regularly scheduled primetime network TV game shows. However, this reality was not the case during the 1950's, an era in which several primetime network game shows were incredibly popular. These game shows inclued Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life, Strike It Rich, I've Got a Secret, What's My Line?, Name That Tune, and the original, Bill Cullen-hosted version of The Price is Right. Many of these game shows - including Price is Right, What's My Line?, and I've Got a Secret - owe their success to the genius of Mark Goodson. Goodson, who worked alongside Bill Todman in many of these programs, was the chief producer - and sometimes, creator - of several game shows of this era. The brilliance of Goodson and Todman (pictured left) was seen in the coming decades as well with the success of Password and Match Game in the 1960's and 1970's, respectively. While these game shows were very fascinating and popular, programs like The $64,000 Question and Twenty-One were nevertheless plagued by scandal.

Question, emceed by host Hal March and so highly viewed that President Eisenhower hesitated to schedule speeches during the show's time slot, revolved around the concept of one contestant continually playing for escalating amounts of money. Upon the start of an episode, a contestant would pick a category and be asked questions pertaining to this category. If the contestant answered the first question - worth $1 - correctly, he or she could win double the amount of money, or $2, by answering the next question correclty. If the contestant consistently, without fault, correctly answered question after question thereafter, he or she can keep doubling his cash winnings with each right answer. If a contestant correctly answered 17 consecutive questions, he or she would win the maximum cash prize of $64,000. The exhiliration of the show was especially high when the contestant was placed in a soundproof isolation booth - dawning "Revlon," the show's sponsor, at the top - at the $8,000 level where he or she can only hear the sound of the host. At any point, a contestant could quit and leave with his or her earned money but if a contestant answered a question incorrectly after the $8,000 level, he or she would walk away with no money but a consolation prize instead.

The popularity of The $64,000 Question was never in question -- no pun intended. In fact, the first contestant who won the show's $64,000 top prize - Richard McCutchen - became an almost universally well-recognized national icon. Viewership was so high that the quiz show became the #1 most watched show on TV in the 1955-56 season, according to the Nielsen ratings system. Nevertheless, merely two years later, the show fell in an embarassing demise. After changing its name to The $64,000 Challenge, the game show's practices were exposed in a federal grand jury when contestant Rev. Charles Jackson conceded he had been notified of answers to questions prior to going on air. Jackson's revelation was part of a broader stain on the reputation of the show as it was soon revealed that many of the categories and questions used in the show were explicitly selected to appeal to the speciality or interests of a contest that sponsor Revlon liked. Revlon's unethical practices extended further as the sponsor tried to do what it can to make the questions exceptionally difficult for contestants who Revlon saw as uninspiring and uninteresting. By November 1958, scandal took the show off the air.

A similar story unfolded with the popular game show, Twenty-One. This quiz show, hosted by Jack Barry, featured more complicated rules than The $64,000 Question. Two contestants, both placed in isolation booths, were given the objective of earning a total of twenty-one points, the number necessary to advance to the next episode and to continue winning money. If a contestant answered a question correctly, he or she would earn more points but an incorrect answer meant points were deducted from the score. The contestant would pick the point value of the question, ranging from one to eleven points, yet there existed a reality that a higher point value meant the question was more difficult. If a contestant successfully earned 21 points at any time during the episode - without the opponent consequently being able to tie that score - he or she would win the game and play a new challenger in the next episode. However, there was somewhat of a twist. After merely two categories, a contestant could choose to stop the game and whoever was ahead would win regardless if he or she was at 21 -- but neither contestant would know the other one's score as they were both in isolation booths.

Of all the shows that were hit by scandal in the 50's, the most well-known case was that of Twenty-One. This scandal - portrayed in the Oscar-nominated 1994 film Quiz Show - revolved around contestant Charles Van Doren. Van Doren, a contestant producers considered an"All-American Boy," told a U.S. House committee investigating quiz shows that he was told the answers to all of the questions on the show by the producers before each episode he appeared on during the program's tenure. The revelation was particularly stinging as Van Doren was a long-running contestant on Twenty-One, winning cash on a seemingly endless array of consecutive episodes and continually beating opponents week after week to advance. His consistent success on Twenty-One landed him on the cover of Time magazine. His supposed intelligence and mastery at questions also earned the adoration and amazement of TV viewers who briefly dethroned I Love Lucy's spot at the top of the ratings in favor of watching Van Doren. However, his victories were a sham all along. Producers desperate for ratings did the unimaginable: they successfully urged previous continual show winner Herbert Stempel to answer a question about the 1955 Academy Awards incorrectly so that Stempel's more attractive opponent, Van Doren, could win the match and advance.

However, since this time, trust in the institution of TV game shows has long been restored as these scandals have become part of history. No longer are contestants' large winnings ever questioned as part of a broader conspiracy. When John Carpenter became the first contestant to win $1 million on Millionaire in 1999, there was little to zero suspicion. In 2004, when Ken Jennings successfuly won over $2 million after 74 consecutive days of winning, the same lack of suspicision existed. The era of the quiz show scandal is no more.

Sources:

1. The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows: 3rd Completely Updated Edition,1999. David Schwartz, Steve Ryan, and Fred Wosthrock.

2. The American Experience: The Quiz Show Scandal, www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/quizshow/filmmore/transcript/index.html

3. Quiz Show, Robert Redford, 1994.

4. Internet Movie Databse (imdb.com), The $64,000 Question.

Pictures:

1. www.museum.tv

2. www.timstvshowcase.com

3. www.liketelevision.com