Talk:1950s quiz show scandals

Greek scandal
Here you go! http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_100014_25/09/2004_47693 TVfanatic2K (talk) 13:56, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

WWTBAM
I have removed the following from the article because it is both uncited and contradicted by the Millionaire article:

Just four years later, in November 2005, Martin Flood, a contestant on the Australian version of the show, was rumored to have been doing the same thing (he had won AU$250,000 and was going for AU$500,000), and Naomi Robson of Today Tonight was preparing herself for a story, but the "incident" turned out to be nothing more than a story made up by producers as part of a publicity stunt in an attempt to boost the ratings, which were very low. Eventually, Flood would go on to win the AU$1,000,000 prize, and unlike Ingram, Flood was allowed his prize money.

Please feel free to put it back with a citation. Fat Red 12:23, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Flood incident
The Flood incident hardly rates as a scandal (the interest by Today Tonight indicates nothing more than the desire by a rival network to run a spoiler for the show), but the matter is covered in the Martin Flood entry.

Cleanup?
What needs cleaning up? I see a user without an account added the tag months ago. I'll leave this for a while and may remove the template unless somebody has a better idea than I do about what is wrong. Erechtheus 23:37, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and removed it, since nobody bothered explaining why it was there in the first place. PoppaInu 09:29, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I have one question
Sorry for being intrusive but I want to know more info about the 2004 greek TV scandal. Please give a link or something so I can read more. I know this isnt the place to ask for this but I would apreciate more info on this. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mike0 (talk • contribs) 22:36, 19 February 2007 (UTC).

I am sure this is probably just another conspiracy theory
But has anyone heard about the suggestion that Ken Jennings of Jeporady (the guy who won like 50 shows in a row and left with a few million dollars) was coached? DerwinUMD 04:39, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

What does the timing of a registered letter prove?
In the movie Quiz Show and other sources, including this article, James Snodgrass is reported to have mailed himself the questions on Twenty-One episodes in which he appeared prior to the date of the show. This offered the hard evidence that cracked the case, so to speak. I understand from a transcript of the Congressional hearing, a police crime lab was engaged by Congress to verify that one of the envelopes had not been opened and then re-sealed. At the hearing, Snodgrass was handed one of his sealed envelopes, and dramatically opened it during his testimony, and read from the contents.

Here's what I don't understand. What would have prevented Snodgrass from mailing himself an UNSEALED envelope by registered mail prior to the show date, and then stuffing it with the questions after the show date and sealing it? Was it impossible to mail an unsealed envelope by registered mail? I thought greeting cards were often sent that way (albeit obviously not by registered mail). There must be an explanation that either seemed obvious at the time or was examined carefully, but is not reflected in most contemporary accounts.

Richard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bolt1955 (talk • contribs) 16:16, 28 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Although it would be original research, have you tried it? If the mail is registered and found to be open, wouldn't that raise flags? Screenwriters mail their scripts to themselves to prove date of creation all the time. MMetro (talk) 11:41, 6 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Registered mail then as now required every postal employee handling it to sign for it and is kept separate from other mail in a special locked container through much of the processing. Given all that no postal employee in the 1950s was going to let a piece of registered mail that was unsealed go into the system because they would be held responsible for it when it was pulled out of the special locked container and found to be unsealed. The 1913 edition Postal laws and regulations of the United States of America spelling out all of the requirements for registered mail (begining on page 516) can be found at google books and even then they were pretty strict. --BruceGrubb (talk) 22:59, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

More recent scandals - moved from article
I have removed the following from the article: the source does not give a name to the supposed game show or even identify which station is accused of running the scam. Without such basic information, the following section does not appear to have merit to be included in an encyclopedia, despite being "sourced". -- The Red Pen of Doom 12:41, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

The "outstandingly stupid quiz"
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 was revealed that show organizers were only taking the calls of accomplices, who all gave purposefully wrong answers on an "outstandingly 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 any of the honest participants getting through into the show. Some were kept on their phones for over 15 minutes before disconnection, although most gave up before that time. The police tried out this system for themselves, running up a €225 bill for each attempt before the arrests were made.

Intellectualism revered?
The following statement astounded me:

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.

The American masses revered intellectualism in the 1950s???!!! If so, the cultural- and social-history books need to be rewritten! Lavengro1954 (talk) 17:17, 7 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't know what cultural- and social-history books you have been reading but that was much the view in the 1950. Bell, Edison, and Ford were all poster children of brain power bringing financial success and long after their deaths that view of them would be pushed clear into the 1970s. This was why the quiz shows took off in the 1950s--people saw the contestants as modern day examples of these great minds. --BruceGrubb (talk) 23:07, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Article "to do" list
This article is titled in general terms but is basically entirely about the specific (the twenty one thing). This is pretty misleading. I think either the article ought to be renamed something like "1950s Quiz Show scandals" or "Twenty-One cheating scandal" or else it needs to cover scandals generally by clearing up most of the twenty one stuff and adding some other stuff (like the press your luck thing) and some general introduction about game shows offering an effecient way of making money and people being inclined to cheat etc but technological advances more recently making this difficult (maybe mentioning the early producers being inclined towards a narrative format if theres some source for that).

The section naming seems a bit off, 'The truth is revealed' really? this sounds like a headline or a chapter of a novel, and 'Rigging in other countries' is followed by a list of occurances which were scandals but not rigging.

Obviously theres also a lot of unreferenced claims including quotes

A lot of the wording also needs to be looked at, for example '(Congress) quickly saw the political opportunity the scandals offered' probably isnt appropriate. Nor is the use of terms like 'bombshell', 'sore loser' and 'final stroke'.

I'll try to make some impovements in a few days time if nobody objects Bob House 884 (talk) 02:05, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Despite some regular edits, a lot of these issues haven't been addressed yet - the "Rigging" section in particular caught my eye as neither of the Australian examples listed involve rigging, and the Mole-Weakest Link crossover wasn't even scandalous. The fact that that section features the phrase "in other countries" also highlights that the main body of the article is heavily biased toward US quiz shows, so I agree the article should be renamed to accurately reflect this.Tuskah (talk) 16:22, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

biased pov
Lines such as this one "The 86th Congress, by then in its first session, quickly saw the political opportunity the scandals offered..." are scattered throughout this article and they clearly show no neutrality to what happened. This whole article should probably be rewritten to both remove those and add a lot of facts that are missing from here but are in the individual game show articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.169.28.12 (talk) 07:24, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Such a poor article
Really, can't someone just clean up the language and grammar?

This is a well annotated piece of history, it should be simple to write something vaguely encyclopedic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.89.174.132 (talk) 10:11, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Uncited material in need of citations
I am moving the following uncited material here until it can be properly supported with inline citations of reliable, secondary sources, per WP:V, WP:CS, WP:IRS, WP:PSTS, WP:BLP, WP:NOR, et al. This diff shows where it was in the article. Nightscream (talk) 15:14, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Background
One of the first such programs in the United States was Information Please in 1938, and one of the first major successes was Dr. I.Q. in 1939. Winner Take All, a Goodson-Todman Production which premiered in 1946, was the first to use lock-out devices and feature returning champions. A variant of the quiz show, the giveaway show, appeared in 1948 when the ABC Radio Network introduced Stop the Music, in which people randomly called by telephone and members of a studio audience would identify music to win prizes provided by the show's sponsor. Stop the Music and other giveaway shows were popular both for the size of prizes they could give away and for the drama produced when random people were called and given the chance to win them. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) attempted to ban the giveaway show format in August 1949, calling it a form of illegal gambling. A judicial stay was quickly put in place. and although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Federal Communications Commission v. American Broadcasting Co., Inc. 347 U.S. 284 that giveaway shows were not a form of gambling in 1954, by that time the allure of the giveaway was in decline.

According to Enright in a 1992 PBS documentary, "from that moment on, we decided to rig Twenty-One."

As a result, many contestants' reputations were tarnished.

Most networks also imposed a winnings and appearances limit on their existing and future game shows, which would eventually be removed by inflation and the rise of the million-dollar jackpot game shows starting in 1999.

Twenty-One
As part of their plan, the producers of Twenty-One arranged the first Van Doren-Stempel face-off to end in three ties. As prize money per-point in the margin of victory increased by $500 after each tie game, the next game would offer $2,000 for every point the winner led by; this was duly noted in promotion of the following week's episode, which helped to attract significant viewership.

Initially, Stempel was dismissed as a sore loser, due in part to the fact that there was no solid reason to question the reputations of the quiz shows themselves.

The Big Surprise
The Big Surprise was cancelled by April 1957 after a low level Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation had been launched. Concluded a year later, the FTC only sought statements from the producers of the show asserting that it was above board.

Doubt had now been sown about the integrity of the programs.

Dotto
Although the reason for Dotto's August cancellation was never given to the press, it was worked out in the days after that the reason was the implication that the game had been fixed.

Backlash
Van Doren, initially reluctant, finally agreed to testify also in a press conference on October 15.

Law and politics
However, at the time, while the actions may have been disreputable, they were not illegal. As a result, no one went to prison for rigging game shows. The individuals who were prosecuted were charged because of attempts to cover up their actions, either by perjury or obstruction of justice.

Contestants

 * Marie Winn, whose notebook triggered Dotto's exposure and subsequent demise, eventually became a journalist whose books include The Plug-In Drug, a scathing critique on television's influence over children.

Hosts and producers
Some producers included Barry, Enright and Frank Cooper. Barry and Enright's reputations suffered the most from the scandals as the result of the rigging of Twenty-One. Barry was effectively blacklisted from national television until 1969. Enright was unable to get another job in American television, working in Canada for a time, until Barry's own recovery from the scandal allowed him to bring Enright back as a partner in 1975. Although he went through a difficult five-year period (according to an interview with TV Guide before his death in 1984), Barry moved to Los Angeles, eventually finding work on local television. He would later admit in an article in TV Guide that, in order to determine if he still had a bad reputation (because of the requirement to have a license with the FCC), he raised money to buy a Redondo Beach radio station, which is now KDAY. Barry returned to hosting with The Generation Gap in 1969 and had success with The Joker's Wild, which premiered in 1972 and ended in 1975. Barry and Enright resumed their partnership full-time in 1976. Their production of game shows, notably the syndicated revivals of Tic-Tac-Dough (which Barry did not host) and Joker (which he did) in the late 1970s to mid-1980s, resulted in millions of dollars in revenue and, more importantly for both, forgiveness from the public for their involvement in the scandals. Indeed, Barry and Enright were able to bankroll the teen-sex comedy film Private Lessons using revenue from their renewed success.

Fox's replacement, Ralph Story, went on to become a newscaster for KNXT-TV/KCBS-TV in Los Angeles.

Television
Quiz shows virtually 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, the number of programs that could make up one broadcast week). Quiz shows became game shows, shifting focus from knowledge to puzzles and word games. NBC's comedy/game show Jackpot Bowling and ABC's more serious Make That Spare! were the only big-money game shows still on television after the fallout. Professional bowlers competed for prizes on these shows and the shows were typically considered sporting programs rather than game shows; Jackpot Bowling was reformatted as a comedy show with Milton Berle as host to shift that show's emphasis in 1960. Those shows continued to air into the early 1960s. The original version of The Price Is Right and CBS's slate of low-budget panel games were largely unaffected by the collapse; those shows would continue to air on network television into the mid-1960s, with The Price Is Right still offering lavish prizes throughout its prime time run.

With clue values allowing for a theoretical limit of $28,320 during the entire run of the original NBC daytime series, which in theory would allow a champion to win no more than $141,600 in five days, in reality even the best contestants won less than $12,000 including tournament play. It would not be until the late 1960s that five-figure prizes would again be offered on American television, and not until the late 1970s that six-figure prizes could be won; seven-figure prizes were sparingly awarded on The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime (which aired between 1986 and 1987), but would not be fully introduced until August 1999 when Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? premiered, setting off an era of million-dollar game shows including Greed (which premiered in November 1999), The Weakest Link (which premiered in April 2001) and Deal or No Deal (which premiered in December 2005 and became a regular series in March 2006).

Australia's short-lived Million Dollar Wheel of Fortune format was adopted to the U.S. version in 2008, and Millionaire ultimately ended its run in syndication in May 2019 after seventeen seasons, after which a new ABC network season premiered in March 2020. ABC limited a contestant's winnings to $30,000 (although contestants were retired after winning $20,000) before permanently removing the limit in 1984. CBS initially limited a contestant's winnings to $25,000 beginning in 1972; contestants were allowed to keep up to $10,000 in excess of this limit, which would increase to $50,000 in 1984 (after Michael Larson won $110,237 on Press Your Luck by memorizing the game board's light patterns; contestants were now allowed to keep up to $25,000 above that limit and the next one), $75,000 in 1986 (which did not apply to the short-lived Blackout in 1988 due to its maximum total winnings of $54,000) and $125,000 in 1990 (with no money being allowed above that limit) before being permanently eliminated by 2006, when contestants on the current incarnation of The Price Is Right won over $140,000 in both the first and final episodes of the season during Bob Barker's final season; the show has since offered a high-stakes $100,000 pricing game, prizes over $100,000 during themed weeks (Big Money and Dream Car) and has also offered $1,000,000 in primetime specials. NBC never utilized a winnings limit on any of its game shows but kept cash and prizes within a reasonable range that created a de facto limit (for instance until its 1989 NBC cancellation, Wheel of Fortune forced contestants to cash in their winnings per round on presented merchandise or apply it to a gift certificate or build their winnings for a later round at the risk of losing those winnings on penalties such as a "Bankrupt" spin). Some syndicated game shows also used a winnings limit: for example, contestants on Jeopardy! were limited to $75,000 in regular play between the start of its current incarnation in 1984 to 1990 (with any excess winnings being donated to a charity of the contestant's choice); after Frank Spangenberg set the winnings record with $102,597, the cap was raised to $100,000, and later to $200,000 in 1997 (before being abolished in 2001 after the clue values were doubled). Jeopardy!'s five-day champions limit was abolished in 2003, allowing for the show to create star contestants; since then, three contestants have won over $1,000,000 in regular play on the show—Ken Jennings, James Holzhauer and Matt Amodio.

The demise of the big-money quiz shows also gave rise to television's newest phenomenon: westerns. The disappearance of quiz shows, many of which were (apparent) demonstrations of highbrow intelligence and their replacement by dumbed-down game shows may have been one of many factors in the end of the Golden Age of Television; by 1960, numerous television critics were lamenting the rise of a vast wasteland of lowbrow television.

Rigging in other countries
In 1958, ITV pulled its version of Twenty-One almost immediately after contestant Stanley Armstrong claimed that he had been given "definite leads" to the answers. In 1960, this resulted in the Independent Television Authority's placement of a permanent winnings cap for ITV game shows of £1,000, which the Independent Broadcasting Authority increased to £6,000 in 1981 (though the British version of The $64,000 Question did receive special permission to offer £6,400 when it premiered in 1990). The winnings cap was permanently eliminated by the IBA's successor organization, the Independent Television Commission in 1993. For many decades, British game shows earned a reputation for being cheap, low-budget affairs that focused more on entertainment than actual game play and prizes, in large part because of the restrictions put on game shows following the scandal. In addition to prize limits, games of chance were also largely forbidden, meaning that a number of American game shows could not be faithfully reproduced in the U.K. The lifting of these limits initially allowed more American shows to be adapted into British versions and within a few years, the rise of game shows with much higher prize limits — in particular Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? — would originate largely in the U.K. and make its way to the U.S. in the late 1990s.

Introduction orphan line is eternal
I can't or don't know how to trace this eternal orphan line in the Introduction. At the end it says "After the scandals took place, networks began phasing out quiz shows as th"

Can anyone help please? Or shall I end the sentence at "...quiz shows." Thanks in advance, Manytexts (talk) 23:41, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Sealed testimonies / court documents
Were the sealed documents unsealed by now? Will they ever be unsealed? Nakonana (talk) 16:15, 8 June 2024 (UTC)