The Quiz Show Scandal of the 1950s: The $64,000 Question
These shows reached the height of popularity in 1957 with “The $64,000 Question” receiving an ARB rating of 35.2. However, the exposure of rigged shows in which contestants were given answers and the scandal that ensued established the need for a change, demonstrated the ostentatious nature of the business of television, and marked a loss of innocence in the overall development of television as a medium.
The information and entertainment industry has long been a business in which structure, rules and regulations are by no means immune to change. With the influx of new technology and methods of reaching audiences, situational issues have arisen which involve the conduct of the industry and its responsibility to the public. Television, in all its prominence as a medium, is by no means an exception and arguably the most worthy of constant monitor in order to make sure that the needs of the public are met in a manner of utmost integrity.
Any forthright analysis of the intricate role television plays in the communication and information age must begin in the early stages of its development, when the first televisions became affordable. With the mass production of television sets came both a change in programming and an increase in the public’s reliance on TV. As the general public came to rely on television, they came to trust what they watched. At the time, the industry’s interest was no longer in providing quality programs, but in maintaining popularity and garnering advertising dollars.
This is was the atmosphere around quiz shows of the late 1950s like “Twenty-One”, and the setting for the quiz show scandals of 1959. The set of Twenty-One, produced by Dan Enright and Jack Barry, was significantly more visually elaborate and the environment one of much more excitement than radio and TV quiz shows of the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Television programs were largely funded by a single sponsor who contributed most of the advertising dollars to the show, and generally had a vested interest in the nature of the programming. For “Twenty-One,” the main sponsor was a company by the name of Geritol. To create more revenue from Geritol, NBC was driven to make the show popular.
Fixing the outcome of the show made it more likely to be watched for its dramatic value. They did this by giving stage directions to the contestants on how to act, choosing topics that the contestants were good with, and most notably giving answers to contestants in advance. On occasion for added effect, air conditioning inside of the isolation booths where contestants sat was turned off in order make the contestant sweat under the hot lights of the studio set.
In one particular instance in the fall of 1957, it was determined by the producers and executives at NBC Studios that a contestant by the name of Herb Stempel, who had enjoyed extended success on the show, was not appealing enough to a contemporary television audience and that his success was not helping the show sell Geritol. He was told to “take a dive” when his next challenger Charles Van Doren, came on the show. Van Doren was younger, more handsome and a bit of a celebrity in and of himself-his father was a famous poet and his family name was well-known in academic circles.
At a critical moment, Stempel was told to give a particular wrong answer to a question that he knew the right answer to, thus ending his streak and handing over the control of the game to Van Doren. To his own objection but at the mercy of the intimidating power of the studio, Stempel took the dive.
A Supreme Court ruling that released the format particular to Twenty-One and The $64,000 Question (“Jackpot” quizzes) from being classified as illegal gambling was issued in 1954. Only a year later, Twenty-One and The $64,000 Question were quickly becoming the most popular shows prime-time television. The format was legal, but with television still in early stages of popularity and not oriented at the time around quiz shows of the type that were previously illegal, the Supreme Court ruling could not have foreseen the problems that would arise.
The NBC studio was not only allowed to run the show, but it was given no restrictions with regard to the integrity of the product. Therefore, when contestants such as Herb Stempel pondered the possibility of answering based upon his own knowledge and not predetermined answers imposed upon him by the network, there were no specific laws or regulations of any sort to back him up. There was only the studio’s influence. The idea, for co-producers Dan Enright and host Jack Barry, was that the show was simply entertainment-an escape for many people from daily stress-and what the public didn’t know could not hurt them.
In the Fall of 1958, Herb Stempel decided to go public with accusations that Twenty-One was rigged. A New York Grand Jury convened to investigate, and by November of 1959, the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce held hearings on what is now referred to as the “quiz-show scandals.” Van Doren was called to testify, and after originally denying the accusation by Stempel that he too received answers, he later signed a statement saying he in fact was given answers.
In a show of the influence of television in and of itself, it wasn’t until a statement from someone with as much credibility fame, and camera appeal as Van Doren was evidenced that indictments could be brought upon Dan Enright and Jack Barry. Not long after the hearing, Twenty-One was cancelled along with the $64,000 Question and other quiz shows such as a smaller show named “Dotto” (which was also found to be a rigged show, but with less fanfare). Although no real punishment was brought down on Enright and Barry, their careers suffered tremendously. Enright ended up producing for television in Canada, and Barry would never host or produce any show of the caliber of Twenty-One again.
Charles Van Doren’s rise to fame a shows a lot about the change in entertainment that was brought about by television. Handsome and charming people like Van Doren were the type that producers wanted in front of the camera, as opposed to intellectually strong characters like Stempel who were not as camera-friendly. People watched Van Doren and wanted to hear what he had to say, and in comparison could not relate to Stempel as well. The producers of Twenty-One had the best of the “old” audience and “new” audience because they were able to both glorify intellectualism with the quiz show format (appealing to veteran TV audiences) and appeal to the masses (who had just bought the now affordable television sets) by making the show as camera-friendly and storybook as possible.
Twenty-One bridged the gap, but it destroyed some of the integrity of the medium in the process. The events of the House Committee Hearings were followed closely by the news media and it has been said that the result was the beginning of a perception in the general public that continues to a certain degree today-that one cannot trust everything that one sees on TV. Further, that television consists of a certain degree of “low-brow” entertainment; dazzling visuals and enticing advertising based upon the sole intention of keeping the audience watching, and not on providing the audience with an enriching experience. Television to some was no longer an innocent and amusing form of guiltless entertainment. It was scrutinized a great deal more after the quiz show scandals.
At long last in 1970, the FCC put into law two regulations that took the production of shows out of the hands of networks and more into the hands of the producers themselves (especially on a local level) with the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules (Fyn-Syn) and the Prime Time Access Rule (PTAR). These regulations essentially gave producers more creative license and deflected pressure from the network advertisers to where it belonged-with the network. It brought some necessary closure to the issue. No longer would sponsors like Geritol have such a vested interest in the programming, therefore freeing the producer to produce the show the way they saw fit as opposed to the way the advertiser felt they would sell more of their product.
The quiz show scandals marked a pivotal point in television history. The shows have been remembered as a telling portrait of the tremendous impact of the medium on society even in the early years of television, and the scope of their influence has been tremendous on television as a whole.
