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	TCOM 365/Broadcast History 8 October 2008 The Quiz Show Scandals In the early days of television people believed everything they saw. People were enamored with the shows. There were shows like Texaco Star Theater that had the first television star in Milton Berle, there were also children’s show like Howdy Doody. In the 1950s there was a new type of show that grabbed the attention of the viewers. These shows were called quiz shows. In these shows contestants would have to answer questions to get the prize. Some of the biggest quiz shows on the air were The $64,000 Question, Twenty One, and Dotto. The quiz shows had sponsors that paid the station for the show. The sponsors would have total control of the show. People loved these shows, they liked the idea that average every day people could get on these shows and win money. However, the viewers did not know that they were getting lied to. The sponsor’s of the show would give the contestants the answers to the questions beforehand. Sometimes they would tell one of the competitors to get a question wrong. When viewers found out about this, in the late 1950s, they lost the trust they had for television and felt betrayed. The major influences of the quiz show scandals were what the shows were like before the scandals became public, what happened during the scandal, and the consequences were after the scandal was over. Quiz shows did not start on television they started on the radio with the $64 Question (The Museum of Broadcast Communications). After the success of the show on the radio the sponsors made it into a television show. They had to make the prize much larger so they called it The $64,000 Question and made the prize $64,000. The show aired in 1955. That was not the only show that had a larger cash prize. The show Twenty One had a large prize and whoever the contestant was that won would get to be on the show the next time and compete again for the cash prize. It was different from the other quiz show because it had people compete head to head to determine the winner. It was similar to today’s Jeopardy, with the competition between the contestants. One of the most popular contestants on that show was Charles Van Doren. He was an English professor at Columbia University and he was the perfect American. He had blonde hair, good looks and the people loved him. He was on the show for fifteen weeks and won about $129,000(Goldman). His first time on the show he tied defending champion Herb Stempel. Stempel was not very popular to the viewers because he did not look as good as Van Doren. The next week they faced each other again and this time Van Doren won and became the new champion and the viewers fell in love with him. After his run on the show he became the cultural correspondent for the Today Show on NBC. Contestants who participated in quiz shows would become famous because everybody would watch these shows. The producers of the shows did not really do much to the show. The people who were really in charge of the show were the sponsors, they controlled the producers. They would pay the television station for the time block they were using and they control everything on the show. Another influence of the quiz show scandals was what happened during time that everything was becoming known about the scandals. As previously mention the sponsors were in charge of all aspects of the show. They chose who got to be a contestant, what they were going to do on the show, how the show would be set up, etc. For example in the show Twenty One had the contestant go in a small box, called an isolation box, with head phones so they could hear what question the host was asking them. However, they box they were in was very hot and made the contestants sweat. This made it look like the contestants were getting nervous from the questions they were being asked. The contestants would take long pauses in the box and wipe off their forehead for so it would appear as if they were sweating because of the question. When really they were sweating because of the hotness of the box they were in. Herb Stempel was one of the smartest contestants on a quiz show. He had a tremendous memory and could remember almost anything. He was on the show Twenty One and had beaten everyone he had faced on the show. The sponsors however did care Stempel all that much. As smart as he was he did not get the reaction from the reviewers that the sponsors wanted. He was not very good looking. Therefore he did not get the right reaction. So the sponsors put Charles Van Doren on the show to beat him. The sponsor’s told Stempel that he was going to lose on purpose to Van Doren. In an article in Electron Media Van Doren had this to say about the producers giving him the answers, “I asked him to let me go on the program honestly, without receiving help. He said that was impossible. He told me that I would not have a chance to defeat Stempel because he was too knowledgeable. He also told me that the show was merely entertainment and that giving help to quiz contestants was a common practice and merely a part of show business” (NBC). The question that he answered wrong was “what movie won the best picture in 1955?” His answer was “One the Water Front” when he really knew it was “Marty” (Goodman). He answered wrong so Van Doren would the contest. Later on during the unraveling of the quiz show scandals it became known that Van Doren was given the answers before the show was broadcast. Years later Herb Stempel wrote an article for Entertainment Weekly were he explained his reason for coming out about what happened on the quiz show. He said, “The funniest part of it all is that if Twenty-One producer Dan Enright--who had promised me that he would put me on the shows staff and arrange appearances for me--had kept his word, I would've said nothing. He could've bought my silence very cheaply. I'd be a liar if I said I raised the issues I did for moral reasons. It was a sheer act of revenge”(Stempel). Stempel is saying that he knew that he was being set up to lose to Van Doren and that he and the producer had made an agreement for him to lose if they would have made him part of the staff. There were other shows that gave the contestants the answers before they were on air. Charles Jackson was a contestant on The $64,000 Challenge went to the grand jury and said that he was given answers to the screening questions so he would get picked to be on the air. The same week he testified in 1958 P. Lorillard Tobacco dropped the sponsorship of the show (PBS). Several months later Twenty One and The $64,000 Question were off the air. This is the first time that television viewers found out that they were lied to on television. The last influence of the quiz show scandal was the aftermath of the scandal. The viewers knew that they could no longer trust what they were watching on television. There were also legal ramifications that followed the scandals. The producers of the quiz shows, like Dan Enright, were blacklisted. There were also changes in the Communications Act in 1960. One of the amendment’s that was passed in the act made it illegal for the outcomes of any contest of skill or knowledge to be put forward in any way that was pre-arranged. There was also another amendment that required stations to make it clear on the air when money or other consideration has been received for broadcast material (PBS). After the quiz show scandals the networks took control of their stations. They took control of the shows on their stations and sold air time to sponsors, not the whole show. The networks would sell small time blocks fifteen seconds to thirty seconds on air time for an advertisement. Today these are known as commercials. The networks also wanted to get the trust of the viewers back. They decided that they would have more news programs. They made more documentaries so people would see that they were doing good things for them. There are still quiz shows around today. Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and The Price is Right are a few examples of the quiz shows that are on television today. There are also other shows on television that have predetermined outcomes when skill and knowledge are involved. An example of this show would be Survivor. It is supposed to be a reality show but show had there are writers and directors. If it was real then why is there a director? The winner on the show gets one million dollars. So it is kind of like a quiz show with the large cash prize for the winner. There was an incident a few years ago on Jeopardy when one man won over $2.5 million. Ken Jennings competed on the show seventy-four times, a Jeopardy record (Gliatto). Everyone would watch Jeopardy to watch and see if Ken Jennings could win again. It seems very similar to the quiz show scandals. Jennings can be seen as a lot like Charles Van Doren, one person that everyone was rooting for to win the show. And he won and won. He just did not beat the other competitors, he crushed them. Kind of like Van Doren had done his quiz show, Twenty One. There has been a film made about the quiz show scandal. The film is called Quiz Show. It was released on September 14, 1994. Robert Redford directed the film. Ralph Fiennes stars as Charles Van Doren and John Turturro stars as Herbert Stempel. The film does a great job of show what happened during the quiz show scandal. It shows the behind the scenes part of the scandals. The corruption of the sponsor’s on the show, how they controlled everything. The quiz show scandals were a very big turning point in broadcast history. It changed the way viewers thought about television. They went from believing everything they saw to not trust the programs that were on. Viewers felt betrayed. The networks also had a big change as a result of the scandals. They took control of the programs they had on their station. They sold advertising blocks, to companies, not shows. There were also laws that were passed to make sure nothing like this happened again. But somehow there are still shows like Survivor that have predetermined outcomes on the air. Today people are more acceptable to being lied to on television. With all the reality show on television today people understand that it is not real and just and act. Overall the quiz show scandal was one of the worst things that has ever happened on television. Works Cited Gliatto, Tom,Warrick, Pamela. “What is $2,520,700?” People. 12/13/2004, Vol. 62 Issue 24, p110-111. Academic Search Complete. Bowling Green State University. 1 October 2008. < http://0-search.ebscohost.com.maurice.bgsu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db= a9h&AN=15261587&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=site> Goldman, David. "The Quiz Show Scandal" Biography; Dec98, Vol. 2 Issue 12, p2. Academic Search Complete. Bowling Green State University. 1 October 2008. http://0-web.ebscohost. com.maurice.bgsu.edu/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=22&sid=669fae9d-7548-4f83-8a28-79eb5d54e8ae%40sessionmgr3&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY 29wZT1zaXRl#db=a9h&AN=1492022 “NBC’s 1950s Quiz Show Scandal” Electronic Media. 11/12/2001, Vol. 20 Issue 46, p12. Academic Search Complete. Bowling Green State University. 1 October 2008. < http://0-search.ebscohost.com.maurice.bgsu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=5589399&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=site> PBS. "The $64,000 Question" 1999. 1 October 2008 <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/quizshow/peopleevents/pande06.html>. Stempel, Herbert.“HERB AND RENEWAL.” Entertainment Weekly. 9/16/94 Issue 240, p89. Academic Search Complete. Bowling Green State Univeristy. 1 October 2008. < http://0-search.ebscohost.com.maurice.bgsu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=9409217519&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=site> The Museum of Broadcast Communications. 1 October 2008 <http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/Q/htmlQ/quizshowsca/quizshowsca.htm>.