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For sheer entertainment, the game show has something for every taste. The sight of ordinary people--and sometimes celebrities--competing for prizes in front of their fellow humans engulfs the viewer for a brief time in a pageant of human emotions: laughs, excitement, embarrassment, triumph, disappointment, anticipation, suspense, closure. Add to this a charming (or abrasive) host or hostess, lively, often raucous audience participation, and you have a formula for success.
What is a Game Show?
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a game show is a “television program on which contestants compete for prizes in a game (as a quiz).” The year this definition was entered–1958-- is significant because it was the time of the now infamous quiz show scandals which were, in fact, a coming of age for television entertainment.
The Encyclopedia Britannica doesn’t limit its description to television. The “game show” is a “broadcast show designed to test the memory, knowledge, agility, or luck of persons selected from studio or broadcast audience or to contrive a competition among these people for merchandise or cash awards.” This summary applies, more or less, to more than sixty-five years of game shows, from the earliest quiz programs to the currently popular Survivor and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
The game/quiz show most likely originated in 1935, when a Canadian school teacher, Roy Ward Dickson, used his own money to broadcast a radio quiz program which offered prizes for the correct answers. He had approached his radio station after the local newspapers rejected his idea. Over the next two years, more than 200 similar shows sprang up in the U.S. and Canada, with audience participation as a key element.
From Radio to Television, A Rocky Road
Radio quiz shows were popular throughout the 1930s. Uncle Jim's Question Bee and Stop the Music moved to television in the late 40's, along with Information Please and Quiz Kids, which used panels answering questions mailed in by listeners. Other shows followed suit, and soon, they were being created solely for television.
In the 1950s television producers strove to increase shows’ ratings by offering large cash prizes to the successful contestants. Radio’s $64 Question, for example, became the $64,000 Question on television. Thus began the saga of television's big-money quiz shows. These led to unprecedented public scandal, rocking the very future of the game show as an accepted form of public entertainment.
What corrupted the game show in the mid-Fifties is easily understood but was not as easily forgiven by a trusting public. Driven by competition from other networks, producers were under pressure from their advertisers to do all things necessary to boost their shows’ popularity. In a few cases, this pressure led to collaboration with selected contestants to manipulate the outcomes of shows.
In 1958, the year of Merriam-Webster’s definition, a contestant who had lost out made accusations of unfairness against the producers of the show Twenty One. Investigations by a New York grand jury and a congressional subcommittee of this and other big-money shows followed . The scandal led to a cancellation of Twenty One, The $64,000 Question, and others, and left a formerly unsuspecting public shocked and shaken, though definitely wiser for the experience.
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. The combination of a reasonably forgiving public and television networks who were serious about self-regulation insured that the game show format would return to television. Throughout the Sixties and Seventies a number of long-lasting shows arrived on the scene, and by the 1980s the scandals were all but forgotten.
Innovation was the key word for television producers who specialized in game shows. As an example, one brilliant innovator, the late Mark Goodson, teamed up with fellow producer Bill Todman to build a game show empire which included, between 1948 and 1962 What’s My Line?, Stop the Music, I’ve Got a Secret, The Price is Right, To Tell the Truth, Concentration, Password, and The Match Game, many of which continued well into the seventies and eighties and beyond. Goodson received an Emmy award for lifetime achievement in 1990 and was later inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Among the dozens of shows which flourished in the Seventies and Eighties, entertainment giant Merv Griffin was responsible for the most enduring game show Jeopardy (1978) in syndication since 1984 and its later versions like Double Jeopardy and Super Jeopardy. This was followed closely by Griffin’s Wheel of Fortune. The Newlywed Game and Family Feud (1976) were prime time shows which appealed to family viewing. Hollywood Squares, a show using celebrities, was the number one daytime game show in the 1970-71 season and remained in first position over Match Game ‘75 and The Price is Right.
Late twentieth century newcomers like Survivors, Greed, and the no-holds barred Temptation Island are forms of game shows conceived in the “reality” genre which the Jerry Springer and Geraldo era had earlier introduced. A not-so-subtle reminder of the Roman Circus spectacle in which the loser was thrown to the lions, they can hardly be considered “family entertainment” and, though compelling to follow, these shows have many detractors.
The latest addition to the game show scene (2001), originating in Britain, as did Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, is The Weakest Link, hosted by a stern, red-headed combination of school mistress and dominatrix, Anne Robinson, now a celebrity in her own right. Her rapid-fire questions and no smiling, sarcastic delivery reduce her contestants to jelly. They must vote each other out of the game, reminiscent of Survivor’s format, and no mercy exists for the losers--"You are the weakest link--goodbye." Thus far, the show has been copied into eight countries, all reported to be using redheaded females as their hostesses.
Competitive shows that abuse, insult, and embarrass their contestants to the chagrin or amusement of their viewers are not new. The Weakest Link follows in a time-honored tradition of shows like You Bet Your Life (radio 1947, TV 1950-1961), a quiz show hosted by funny man Groucho Marx and peppered with his barbed insults and derogatory humor, and The Gong Show (1976-80) conceived by producer Chuck Berris, in which amateur performers displayed their talent, or lack of it, and were eliminated with the clash of an enormous gong, often sounded before they had barely started their acts.
At the bright end of the spectrum are the longest running game show, Jeopardy, and Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, premiered in 1998. In each, contestants are treated with respect; their intelligence and accumulated knowledge are their strengths. Only consider the demeanor of hosts Alex Trebek and Regis Philbin, respectively, for setting a dignified tone. Make no mistake, these shows are serious; and the contenders are serious, whether they are college students seeking to finance their education or homeowners eager to pay off their mortgages.
When integrity becomes an issue, a show tends to loses its appeal. Unlike innovator Chuck Berris’s Blind Date of Eighties vintage, which projected and maintained an innocent appeal, Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? (2000), an example of “reality TV” conceived by producer Mark Darnell, embarked on dangerous ground with its promise of a fairy tale marriage When the fairy tale clashed with “real life” and scandals surrounding the unhappy couple ensued, the show’s concept was widely criticized.
In conclusion, game shows will continue to be as much a staple of network television as the daily soaps. If they have an advantage over the soaps, it is that they appeal to a much wider demographic and have the flexibility to change formats with the times.
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