The $64,000 Question—“the show where knowledge is king”—hired bank guards to transfer money on camera, creating an aura of authenticity for its viewers. In fact, that quiz show and several others routinely coached contestants and predetermined winners in their competition for television audiences and advertising dollars.
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
Little Rock Dentist Bags Big Money Prize on Television Quiz Name Game, photograph, 1958
Television Quiz Shows
Television quiz shows offering substantial cash prizes became enormously popular in the 1950s. Their future was jeopardized, however, when in December 1956 Columbia University Professor Charles Van Doren beat longtime winner Herbert Stempel on the quiz show Twenty-One. Stempel later complained to the New York district attorney that the show was rigged. Following a grand jury investigation, the House Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight further investigated television quiz shows. The committee heard testimony from network officials, producers, and contestants, including Van Doren. After initial denials, Van Doren attested that Twenty-One was fixed. On the committee’s recommendation, Congress passed legislation in 1960 making quiz-show rigging a federal crime.
It is symptomatic of some far more basic problems in this whole industry with you people in a mad rush to develop something which is salable, which will draw a greater dollar, without any regard to public obligation.
Representative John E. Moss of California, Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 1959–1960
The $64,000 Question—“the show where knowledge is king”—hired bank guards to transfer money on camera, creating an aura of authenticity for its viewers. In fact, that quiz show and several others routinely coached contestants and predetermined winners in their competition for television audiences and advertising dollars.
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
