Quiz show scandals
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The American quiz show scandals of the 1950s were the result of the revelation that contestants of several popular television quiz shows were secretly given assistance by the producers to arrange the outcome of a supposed competition.
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Background
In the 1950s, television burst into the mainstream. While at the beginning of the decade only 9% of U.S. households had a television, over half had one by 1954, and 86% had them by the end of the decade. The medium proved to be a powerful influence on American society.
Over the same period, the United States was engaged in a technology race with the Soviet Union, as a component of the Cold War. American political and military dominance was bolstered by the nation's technologies that harnessed the power of the atom. This focus on technological superiority contributed to a national reverence of intelligence and knowledge.
It was against this backdrop that quiz shows became popular. Questions asked on these shows required substantial knowledge across a broad spectrum of cerebral topics. The spectacle of people achieving huge financial success through the exercise of brain power was riveting to a nation that revered intellectualism as well as wealth.
Prizes Grow
The 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Federal Communications Commission v. American Broadcasting Co., Inc. that quiz shows were not a form of gambling paved the way for their introduction to television. The prizes of these new shows were astonishing in magnitude, and gave them an aura of significance that went well beyond mere entertainment. The $64,000 Question's predecessor radio show was The $64 Question, and few prizes exceeded even $100. There was no gradual escalation; The $64,000 Question burst on the scene on June 7, 1955, with a top prize a hundred times bigger than the shows that had gone before. Note too that $64,000 in 1955 is equivalent to approximately $440,000 today; Teddy Nadler's $252,000 prize is worth more than $1.7 million today.
Sponsor Interference
In the 1950s, it was common practice for game shows and other shows to be sponsored solely by one company, even to the extent of having the company's name in the title of the show. Examples included Sylvania's Beat the Clock, or Geritol's Twenty-One.
It was empirically determined by show sponsors and the networks that influencing the outcome of a game show could increase the dramatic value, and therefore its attraction to viewers. More viewers naturally increased the advertising exposure a sponsored company would receive.
Outcome influence came in many forms, some relatively benign. For example, contestants would be given stage directions on how to act while on camera. On The $64,000 Question, contestants were placed in an "isolation booth" when answering questions, presumably to prevent them from receiving any help from the audience. To heighten the drama, the ventilating fans in the isolation booth were turned off after the question was asked. Under the hot stage lights, the temperature rose quickly, causing the contestant to sweat visibly. This would lead contestants to mop their brows before answering the question.
Other forms of influence were less benign. More popular contestants would be asked questions within their areas of expertise, or even provided the answers to upcoming questions. Less popular contestants would be given more difficult questions in areas outside their expected knowledge.
Sponsor interference wasn't foolproof. Though Dr. Joyce Brothers was disliked by Charles Revson, whose Revlon cosmetics firm was the sponsor of Question, and was therefore given difficult questions about boxing, she managed to answer without help and won legitimately against her coached opponent.
The most notorious participants in this deception were Charles Van Doren and Herb Stempel, leading competitors on Twenty-One. Both were heavily coached by the show's producers.
The Story is Revealed
After Stempel's scripted loss to the more-popular Van Doren on December 5, 1956, he blew the whistle on the operation. Initially, he was dismissed as a sore loser. It wasn't until August 1958 that his credibility was bolstered. Ed Hilgemeyer, a contestant on Dotto, announced that he had found a notebook containing the very answers contestant Marie Winn was delivering on stage. But the final stroke came from Twenty-One contestant James Snodgrass, who sent registered letters to himself containing the advance answers. Such evidence was irrefutable.
By October, the story was everywhere, and the quiz shows' ratings were dropping. The networks denied everything and canceled the now-suspicious shows. Meanwhile, New York prosecutor Joseph Stone convened a grand jury to investigate the charges. Many of the coached contestants, who had become celebrities due to their quiz show success, were afraid of the social repercussions. They were unwilling to confess, even to the point of committing perjury. The judge sealed the grand jury report.
Congress saw the political opportunity; in October, 1959, the Oren Harris-led House Committee on Legislative Oversight began to hold hearings investigating the scandal. Child actress Patty Duke testified to having been coached, as did Stempel, Snodgrass, and Hilgemeyer. But the bombshell dropped on November 2 when Van Doren said to the Committee "I was involved, deeply involved, in a deception. The fact that I too was very much deceived cannot keep me from being the principal victim of that deception, because I was its principal symbol."
Aftermath
Law and Politics
The entire matter was called "a terrible thing to do to the American people" by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. After concluding the Harris Commission investigation, Congress passed a law prohibiting fixing quiz shows.
Contestants
Quiz show contestants' reputations were ruined. Van Doren, who had become a regular on NBC's Today Show, lost his job in the television industry.
Hosts and producers
Jack Barry and Dan Enright suffered the most from the scandals as the result of the rigging of Twenty-One. Barry, who had no direct involvement in the rigging, did not work in national television for 10 years, while Enright headed to Canada to continue working in television. Barry and Enright would reunite their partnership in 1976 and the production of squeaky-clean game shows of the mid to late 1970s resulted in millions of dollars in revenue and forgiveness from the public in their involvement in the scandals. Other producers met the same fate as Barry & Enright. Hosts such as Jack Narz and Hal March continued to work on television after the scandals.
Society
The public impact of the scandal was immense. In 1956, viewers believed that what they were seeing was real. This sort of trust seems naïve today, which illustrates the effect that the scandal had in fostering public cynicism about television.
Television
Quiz shows all but disappeared from prime time American television for decades. Those that continued to air had substantially reduced prizes, and many shows adopted limits on the number of games a player could win (usually five). Quiz shows became game shows, shifting focus from knowledge to puzzles and word games. A quiz for big money would not return until ABC showed 100 Grand in 1963; it went off the air after two weeks. The big-money jackpots returned to TV in 1973 with the success of the Pyramid series, starting with The $10,000 Pyramid. Eleven years later came the Alex Trebek-hosted revival of Jeopardy! with its own increased dollar amounts.
Networks were forced to adapt winnings limits to meet standards and practices guidelines. CBS had a winnings cap limit of $25,000 which remained in place until the mid-1980s, when it was increased to $50,000 then eventually $75,000. NBC did have a winnings cap limit of $50,000 at one time, but eventually by the 1980s, the cap limit was scrapped, and one contestant, Barbara Phillips, became the first daytime game show contestant to win over $100,000, by retiring with over $150,000 on Sale of the Century. ABC had a cap limit of $25,000, but was later increased to $50,000. Today, there are no limits in game show winnings on any of the networks.
The game show earnings cap of $75,000 resulting from the scandal forced Jeopardy! contestant Frank Spangenberg to give up $27,597 of his $102,597 winnings to charity. After a second contestant gave up over $7,000, Jeopardy! raised its earnings cap on regular season shows, first to $100,000, then to $200,000 after automobiles were awarded for five-time champions, and removed after the show went to unlimited champions.
Networks required game shows to be heavily monitored by their standards and practices departments. Contestants were kept away from anybody who might know questions to be asked. The scandal also marked an end to widespread naming of television shows by their sponsors. Future game shows like The Price is Right or Let's Make a Deal were not sponsored by any one company.
It has been suggested that the scandals helped inspire Merv Griffin's 1964 introduction of Jeopardy! and its answer-and-question format, where contestants were given answers to the questions, but contestants had to give the question to win.
In addition, the major television networks took a greater hand in creative production to avoid similar problems in the future. This extended to changes to unrelated television series, like demanding that the premise of the dramatic series Mr. Lucky be changed from a riverboat casino to a restaurant to avoid the idea of games on prime time TV.
Other media
The altered reality of Philip K. Dick's Time Out of Joint (1959) is a science fiction reworking of the deceptions Dick saw on the quiz shows.
This scandal is dramatized in the feature film Quiz Show.
More Recent Reverberations
In 1984, Press Your Luck contestant Michael Larson memorized the patterns of the game board (which were believed to be random but in fact were predictably repetitive) to help him stop the board where and when he wanted. He spun over 40 times without hitting a losing "Whammy," which would have erased all his winnings; as a result, he earned $110,237 in cash and prizes. Because Larson did not cheat but instead used his intelligence to exploit a flawed game design, Press Your Luck's network, CBS, gave him the money after Larson threatened a lawsuit and CBS made the pattern of the game board more complex.
In an episode of the British Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? show recorded on September 10, 2001 Major Charles Ingram won the £1,000,000 prize. Following subsequent analysis of the tape by the producers of the show, it became apparent Ingram was being helped to select the correct answers by a fellow contestant coughing. The prize was not awarded and Ingram and accomplices were taken to court.
Late in 2004, a phone-in game show from Greece suffered another scandal. TV presenters, station officials, and producers were arrested after being charged with fraud, after it revealed that show organizers were telephoning accomplices, who all gave wrong answers on an "outlandingly stupid quiz", according to an online article. They had made €10,000,000 of toll charges, with over 115,000 people calling over a 5-month period, without anyone getting through the line. Some were kept on their phones for over 15 minutes before disconnection, although most weren't giving up. The producers tried this system out for themselves, running up a €225 bill for each attempt before being arrested.
References
- {{cite book
| first = Joseph | last = Stone | coauthors = Tim Yohn | title = Prime Time and Misdemeanors | publisher = Rutgers University Press | location = New Jersey | id =
}}