The Quiz Show Scandals: "The $64,000 Question"

We end our podcast's first season with a two-part look at the quiz show scandals of the 1950s. Part two drops next week.

During the summer of 1955, a new TV show kept people in front of their sets on hot Tuesday nights. “The $64,000 Question” was a big-money quiz show that made its contestants instant celebrities and the show even displaced “I Love Lucy” as the nation’s top TV program. What nobody realized at the time was that the show was planned, paced and cast like a drama, and a contestant’s success depended not on the questions he or she answered correctly, but on a sponsor who would drop you when you ceased to be useful.

Sources:

The Box: A Oral History of Television, 1920-61, by Jeff Kisseloff

Prime Time and Misdemeanors: Investigating the 1950s TV Quiz Scandal — A D.A.’s Account, by Joseph Stone and Tim Yohn

TV Game Shows, by Maxine Fabe

Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties, by Richard Goodwin

Fire and Ice: The Story of Charles Revson, the Man Who Built the Revlon Empire, by Andrew Tobias

Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television, by Erik Barnouw

“The Cop and the $64,000 Question,” TV Guide, July 9, 1955

“A Summer Show Hits the Jackpot: $64,000 Prize, Carefully Picked Contestants Keep Nation Glued to Its Television Sets,” TV Guide, August 20, 1955

“Come and Get It: TV Giveaway Shows Lure Viewers with Bigger and Bigger Jackpots,” TV Guide, December 31, 1955

“The Quiz Show Scandals: An Editorial,” TV Guide, October 24, 1959

“Letters,” TV Guide, November 21, 1959

A Short History of Ridiculous Sponsor Interference

For almost as long as there has been broadcasting, there has been commercial sponsorship. But from the 1930s through the 1960s sponsors had an unusual amount of power because, through advertising agencies, they owned entire blocks of time on the program schedule and produced their own shows. In this episode we look at a few examples of sponsor power run amok, resulting in complications that were sometimes dangerous, sometimes just silly. Along the way we will sample clips from “The Jack Benny Program,” “The Flintstones,” “I Love Lucy,” “Playhouse 90,” “The $64,000 Question” and “30 Rock,” among others.