Quiz show scandal

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The biggest quiz show scandal was uncovered in the USA at the end of the 1950s : candidates for several popular quiz shows had been prepared by the show's producers in such a way that they could determine the course and outcome of the competition in advance.

background

The 1950s were the television decade. In 1950, only 9% of American households had their own television; by the end of the decade it was 86%. The influence of the medium on public opinion was correspondingly great.

At the same time, the USA was in a scientific and technological competition with the Soviet Union. In this climate, “intelligence” and personal “knowledge” gained general appreciation as symbols of America's technological and intellectual superiority.

Ever since there have been quiz and guess shows on television , some of which have extremely high sums of money to be won, there have been repeated attempts to eliminate luck and chance through fraudulent manipulation.

procedure

In 1955, the US broadcaster CBS started the quiz show The $ 64,000 Question , a kind of genius version of Trivial Pursuit , which rewarded "knowledge" not only with recognition, but also with financial wealth. In order to guarantee the success of the show, the producers soon selected only those candidates who aroused strong sympathy among the television audience and thus guaranteed good ratings. So it was important that these candidates stayed on the show as long as possible. And that was only possible if you answered all the questions correctly. That was when the fraud began.

Charles Van Doren (right) with Twenty-One presenter Jack Barry (center)

In 1956, the NBC broadcaster developed a competitive format , Twenty-One , whose process was based on the card game blackjack . The star of the show soon became the candidate Charles van Doren , son of a distinguished family and young assistant professor at Columbia University . He won around $ 138,000 (which corresponds to the purchase value of just under 1 million euros today), graced the front page of Time Magazine as "the smartest man in the world" and received a well-paid cultural section on an NBC morning program.

Although there were rumors of fraudulent practices at the quiz shows very early on, it took a long time for the first newspaper reports to describe the allegations of manipulation. A reserve candidate for the quiz show “Dotto” finally said he had noticed that a winner was reading a notebook backstage that had all the answers to the questions asked. Only then, in 1958, were the confessions of Herb Stempel , one of the best-known candidates for “Twenty-One” , printed, which no one wanted to publish until then, as the program managers had denied them. Stempel claimed that he and numerous other candidates had all the answers to the game questions in advance. At the instructions of the producers, he appeared as a poor ex-GI who had to laboriously finance his studies. In addition, he had been subjected to a regular training, in which his appearance was meticulously rehearsed: stuttering, biting the lip and the exact way in which questions were answered. Then one day he was told that he would have to lose to van Doren because he was damaging the quota. Deeply offended by this, Stempel now wanted to take revenge.

Legal processing

In the summer of 1958, a New York court dealt with the manipulation allegations for the first time. The competent judge Mitchell Schweitzer refused to publish the evidence of the prosecution . (He was expelled from the bar for corruption in the 1970s.) The Congressional Special Committee on Legislative Oversight , which was responsible for telecommunications and thus television, stepped in. The special committee interviewed candidates, producers, sponsors and broadcasters and held public hearings in October and November 1959.

The investigation turned out to be difficult, as most of the ex-candidates feared for their public reputation and did not want to testify. The broadcasters and sponsors denied any knowledge of the quiz show practices. Stamps accused her of being in psychiatric treatment. Nevertheless, new shows were always convicted of cheating: For Love or Money , the devices were manipulated to keep profits as low as possible, for Name That Tune and The Big Surprise the same questions were asked in the show as in the casting, for The $ 64,000 Question there were only questions from the subject area of ​​the respective candidate. In the case of the program Tic-Tac-Dough , which, like Twenty-One , was developed and hosted by Jack Barry and was the model for the Tick-Tack quiz in Germany, the questions were simply asked in advance, just as with Twenty-One . TTD producer Howard Felsher finally admitted the manipulation. He said more than 75% of his shows were cheated. And he asserted: "I never had the feeling of doing anything really wrong." The decisive factor, however, was the testimony of Twenty-One candidate James Snodgrass , who had sent the answers given to him as registered mail to be on the safe side. This evidence was irrefutable. After long denial, van Doren finally admitted his involvement in the manipulation. "I would give almost anything if I could undo the last three years of my life," he said in court. But his reputation and university career were ruined.

The problem was that all the manipulations that those responsible were accused of were dishonorable but not punishable under American law at the time. Since Americans did not pay television license fees at the time, no one suffered financial damage. That's why no one was convicted of cheating on the audience. Only a group of candidates and a few producers were found guilty of "obstruction of justice" and "false statement".

consequences

A direct consequence of the investigations was that the broadcasters immediately withdrew all quiz shows with high profits from the program and dismissed the program managers and presenters. Some were never allowed to work for television again. In addition, from then on all shipments in the USA were subjected to strict state control. And the discredited term quiz show disappeared from American parlance and was replaced by the word game show .

The social effects were at least as drastic. "The attack on television fraud was just a trivial, early crack in the bedrock of the complacency and apathy that increasingly dominated American life," wrote then-Special Committee investigator Goodwin. Americans had lost their naivety for simply believing what they could see. Even President Dwight D. Eisenhower said that with this fraud "something terrible was done" to the American people .

The development of quiz and guess shows in Germany remained unaffected by this scandal, although the two most affected formats were also broadcast here at the time: “ All or nothing ” ( “The $ 64,000 Question” ) and “ Would you have known? "( " Twenty-One " ). But manipulation was not an issue - back then - in non-quota public television.

Adoption into popular culture

  • The US scandal of the 1950s was filmed in 1994 by Robert Redford under the title Quiz Show . The script is largely based on the memoirs of Richard N. Goodwin , then an investigator on the Congressional Special Committee , later a key adviser to President John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson .
  • The quiz show scandal is an element in John Steinbeck's novel Geld macht Geld (German 1964, English: The Winter of Our Discontent , 1961).
  • Philip K. Dick's classic Zeit aus den Fugen (Ger. 1962, English: Time out of Joint , 1959), which creates the scenario of a falsified reality, was created under the influence of the allegations of manipulation at the time.
  • The Simpsons also mentioned the scandal: In the episode In the Beginning was the Word (English: Lisa's First Word , 1992) Grandpa Abe claims to have built his house with his own hands. Homer knows better: “No, Dad. You won it on one of those crooked 1950s game shows. " (" No, Papa. You won it on one of those dishonest game shows from the 1950s. ")

Other manipulation cases

  • In November 1953, the guessing and skill show Er und Sie started on German television , in which candidates were selected from the studio audience based on the number of their ticket. Game director was Hans-Peter Rieschel. The first broadcast was catastrophic: “Without precise direction, elaborately explained and popular and threatened by all kinds of coincidences, the broadcast tormented its way through the minutes. Despite the handsome cash prizes ... the audience came on stage reluctantly to take part. ” Therefore Rieschel placed preselected candidates for the second episode - who, however, were not informed about the further course of the game - with prepared tickets in the audience. Rieschel was immediately dismissed from the NWDR (the forerunner of WDR and NDR ) and the program was canceled.
  • In the 48th Wetten-dass episode on September 3, 1988, Titanic editor Bernd Fritz won his bet under the pseudonym Thomas Rautenberg. He had pretended that he could only tell the color of crayons by taste. However, Fritz had looked under the rim of the 'black glasses' that were supposed to make it impossible to see the pencils. He announced on the program that he would not reveal the trick until the next edition of the Titanic, and was hooted by the audience for this.
  • In the Swiss quiz program Risk on January 5, 1998, a player won 95,000 Swiss francs. The fraud was discovered because the candidate gave a wrong answer ( Viorel Moldovan ) to a question (Head of the Year) , but the answer was correct to a subsequent question. The fraud could take place because the test candidates were asked the same questions in front of an audience during the final rehearsal in the afternoon. The station management was later accused of being naïve. The afternoon's questions and answers were written down by accomplices in the audience. In the days that followed, the candidate denied the fraud and spoke of coincidence. Only after the overwhelming burden of proof and confessions from his accomplices did he admit the fraud. He was subsequently sentenced to four and a half months probation.
  • On the English show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? won the grand prize on September 10, 2001, Charles Ingram . Upon reviewing the recording, it was found that a helper in the audience had coughed to help Ingram with the answers. Ingram did not receive the money; he was reported instead and given a suspended sentence in 2003.
  • In 2006 Reinhold Schlager made it to the chair of the RTL quiz show Wer wird Millionär? A second time under a false name . As early as 2003 he had applied for the show under the false name Luis Meyer , but only won 500 euros. Because of the different names, nobody noticed at the time. The low profit annoyed him so that he illegally applied a second time, he said. The broadcaster refused to pay out the profit of 64,000 euros and examined legal action.
  • The former call-in broadcaster 9Live was repeatedly accused of fraud by viewers because of suspected arbitrary rule interpretations and alleged manipulation of the displayed graphics.

literature

  • Richard N. Goodwin: Quiz Show. From the memoirs of Richard N. Goodwin . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1995, ISBN 3-499-13654-6 .
  • Gerd Hallenberger, Joachim Kaps (ed.): Did you know? Jonas, Marburg 1991, ISBN 3-89445-117-3 .
  • John P. Holms, Ernest Wood: Game Show Almanac . Chilton, Radnor (Penn.) 1995, ISBN 0-8019-8740-7 .
  • Bernd Klepin: Quiz and advice shows . Cologne: Aim 1998 (Nemoqua seminar scripts)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. s. Richard N. Goodwin: Quiz Show. From the memoirs of Richard N. Goodwin . Reinbek 1995, p. 81
  2. Quiz Scandal (Contd.) , In: Time Magazine, September 8, 1958
  3. The Big Fix , in: Time Magazine, October 19, 1959
  4. ^ John P. Holms / Ernest Wood: Game Show Almanac . Radnor (Penn.) 1995, p. 131; Richard N. Goodwin: Quiz Show. From the memoirs of Richard N. Goodwin . Reinbek 1995, p. 99
  5. ^ Richard N. Goodwin: Quiz Show. From the memoirs of Richard N. Goodwin . Reinbek 1995, p. 109f.
  6. Quiz with Turks . In: Der Spiegel . No. 51 , 1953, pp. 34 f . ( online ).
  7. see also Gerd Hallenberger, Joachim Kaps (ed.): Did you know? Marburg 1991, p. 36ff.
  8. 05.01.1998: “Das isch de Fuessballer Moldovan gsi” - Tommaso R. provides the biggest “bite” in Swiss television history. In: watson.ch from January 5, 2016
  9. "risk" -Betrüger R. conceded four and a half months. ( Memento of October 31, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), December 15, 2000
  10. s. plusminus (ARD), August 24, 2004.