Hannah's Quiz Show Workpage

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[edit] Radio to Television: A Transition

In 1940, 50 quiz shows were on the radio and by the time the decade ended there were more than 200. Their success was partially due to the depression; quiz shows involved everyday people using their knowledge to win money, a concept that fit easily within the historical “American Dream” of the average citizen striking it rich with his/her own talents. One quiz show called Information Please even relied upon questions mailed in by the listeners themselves to stump their contestants.

Television as an accessible, affordable and viable medium began to appear in the mid-1940's. In 1946 .5% of American homes contained a television set, a number that grew to 56% by 1954 and finally to 90% in 1962. Radio and Television occupy the same niche within the American culture and, as television began to grow in popularity, so did its competition with the already established radio medium. "Television," says ABC's Howard K. Smith by way of explanation, "is not just a picture medium. It is pictures, plus words, plus personality." Only few of the 200 plus quiz shows filling the airwaves in the 1040’s successfully made the transition from radio to television (Stop the Music, a wildly popular radio show was one of them).

The majority of quiz shows, however, had to reinvent themselves to take advantage of television’s main feature, the moving picture. In David Halberstam’s The Fifties he quotes Jack Benny, a television comedian, saying that “The Television camera is like a magnifying glass and you can’t enjoy looking at anything blown up for too long” (p. 202). Quiz shows like Twenty One utilized this unique characteristic to boost the competition between contestants and allow viewers to closely identify with each character. In the 1959 scandal, Charles Van Doren eventually testified that he had been coached about making dramatic pauses and when to mop his brow. Each movement was choreographed to capture the audience and make them sweat alongside him as he attempted to win huge sums of money using his “average” brain power. Thus, television dominated the entertainment industry and radio, once the primary source of music, news and entertainment, was left behind.


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[edit] Popularity

Quiz shows first gained popularity on the radio after the depression. They were fast and inexpensive to produce, and provided a way for an “average” person to potentially win money based upon their “average” knowledge. One quiz show called Information Please even relied upon questions mailed in by the listeners themselves to stump their contestants. The popularity of quiz shows followed them onto television in the 1950’s.

In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that jackpot-type quizzes did not fall under the category of gambling, thereby making it possible for quiz shows to utilize the “jackpot” formula in television. Both the $64,000 Question and Take it or Leave it were able to dramatically increase the size of their prizes and changed the low-budget, small scale aspect of television quiz shows that had been a hallmark of the medium until then. The larger prizes matched the new prosperity of the nation. What had previously been Take it or Leave It’s $64 question on the radio just after the Depression became the $64,000 Question in an era of plenty. But the prizes weren’t the sole attraction of quiz shows.

With the advent and burgeoning number of television sets in America, viewers could now see the contestants, bringing an entirely new dimension to the casting process. The Twenty One scandal in the late 1950’s was possible because of the pressure to show increasingly attractive and empathetic contestants. Quiz shows seemed to tell the public that “We’re all pretty much alike, and we’re all smart” (Halberstam, p. 645). The producers rigged the show so that Charles Van Doren would beat the reigning champion Herb Stemple. The reason? Van Doren was more attractive, more cultured, young and increased the show’s ratings. Dan Enright once said, “He was the kind of young man you’d love to have your daughter marry.” Better ratings meant that Revlon, the show’s sponsor, sold more products and the show received more money. The “better” the contestant was at capturing the audience’s attention and empathy, the more successful the show. “… The show had transcended mere entertainment: it had become the property of an entire nation” (Halberstam, p. 659).

Early quiz and game shows focused on a popular host with a new set of contestants each episode. The quiz show Winner Take All was the first show to feature returning contestants which shifted the focus from the host to contestants like Charles Van Doren and Joyce Brothers from Twenty-One and the $64,000 Question. The new celebrity status of these “average Americans” only increased the charm of quiz shows for the American public.

The scandals of the late 50’s momentarily checked the rising popularity of quiz shows. After all, “Charles Van Doren had become the symbol of the best America had to offer” (Halberstam, p.664). Afterwards, quiz shows made an attempt to distance themselves from the negative connotations associated with the term “quiz” by calling themselves “game” shows, a distinction that didn’t exist before the scandals.

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Courtesy of Wired Magazine.

[edit] Research (Beginning)

[edit] Links:

The Museum of Broadcast Communications "Quiz and Game Shows": http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/Q/htmlQ/quizandgame/quizandgame.htm

PBS, "The Rise of TV Quiz Shows": http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/quizshow/peopleevents/pande05.html

List of Game Shows from throughout the fifties: http://www.fiftiesweb.com/quizshow.htm

History of CBS: http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/CBS-Television-Network-Company-History.html

"The First 75 Years of Television History": http://www.tvhistory.tv/facts-stats.htm

[edit] Movies:

The Quiz Show Scandal (a PBS program).

[edit] Books:

DeLong, Thomas A. "Quiz Craze: America's Infatuation With Game Shows" A link to the online version

Kaminer, Wendy. "It's All the Rage: Crime and Culture."

Stone, Joseph. "Prime Time and Misdemeanors: Investigating the 1950's Quiz Scandal: A.D.A.'s Account."

Boddy, William. "Fifties Television: The Industry and Its Critics

[edit] Articles:

Tedlow, Richard S. Intellect on Television: The Quiz Show Scandals of the 1950's. American Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 4, Autumn 1976, pp. 483-495.


The Wizard of Quiz. Time Magazine, Feb. 11, 1957.

[edit] Factoids:

By the close of the Fifties, the late U.S. President Eisenhower had signed a bill that declares illegal any contest or game which intentionally deceives its viewers.

homesite for tv statistics. television vs. radio revenue statistics, 1950-2000.

Unesco Television and Radio Statistics 1950-1960: pages 11, 16, 21, 22, 26, 27.

Number of Television sets in American Homes

[edit] Quotes:

Matched vicariously with--or against--a player, a viewer experiences a measure of both complacency and im­punity, victory and defeat. "So like the theoretical horseplayer, with his infallible system," journalist Milton Bracker once wrote, "the viewer gets no cash but has the soothing feeling that he could have cleaned up. At the same time--tieless, shoeless and as relaxed as he likes--he can miss the answer with impunity. He gets credit for what he knows without suffering for what he doesn't. In a double sense, he can't lose." From Quiz Craze, pg. 253.

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Ebenkamp, Becky. From We're Playing for Keeps. Brandweek, May 8, 2000. Like many others, he likens the current environment to the '50s, when game shows were born--an era of challenging quiz shows like 21 and The $64,000 Question, whose popularity reflected a country obsessed with finances, but also smarts.

"In the postwar period, everyone was concerned with making money, that was the zeitgeist," Fischoff said. One interesting aspect then: "There was an air of innocence. People were impressed with intellect, it was a far more important value that shows of the time reflected in society," he said.

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The $60 Million Question. Time Magazine. Ap. 22, 1957.

"For all their mastery of the situation, the quiz producers seem helpless before the major ailment afflicting their shows. The sum of $64.000 no longer inspires audience awe. Viewers have become so blase that the producers arbitrarily changed their rules to enable Schoolboy Strom to win as much as $256,000, and devised new rules to let Clerk Nadler keep winning too. More important, a kind of inflation has also hit the contestants: instead of the kind of ordinary people who struck a responsive chord in viewers, they now run to narrow specialists and photographic minds—"freaks," as the trade calls them. Given a margin of error for the contestants' human foibles, the producers seem to be able to control virtually everything—except their own fears of losing their audience."

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The Most Intimate Medium. Time Magazine. October 4, 1966.

No Back Pages. "Television," says ABC's Howard "K. Smith by way of explanation, "is not just a picture medium. It is pictures, plus words, plus personality."