Quiz Show Scandals


The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation Presents

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QUIZ SHOW SCANDALS

No programming format mesmerized televiewers of the 1950s with more hypnotic intensity than the "big money" quiz show, one of the most popular and ill-fated genres in U.S. television history. In the 1940s, a popular radio program had awarded top prize money of $64. The new medium raised the stakes a thousand fold. From its premiere on CBS on 7 June 1955, The $64,000 Question was an immediate sensation, racking up some of the highest ratings in television history up to that time. Its success spawned a spin-off, The $64,000 Challenge, and a litter of like-minded shows: The Big Surprise, Dotto, Tic Tac Dough, and Twenty One. When the Q and A sessions were exposed as elaborate frauds, columnist Art Buchwald captured the national sense of betrayal with a glib name for the producers and contestants who conspired to bamboozle a trusting audience: the quizlings.

Broadcast live and in prime time, the big money quiz show presented itself as a high pressure test of knowledge under the heat of kleig lights and the scrutiny of fifty-five million participant-observers. Set design, lighting, and pure hokum enhanced the atmosphere of suspense. Contestants were put in glass isolation booths, with the air conditioning turned off to make them sweat. Tight close-ups framed faces against darkened backgrounds and spot lights illuminated contestants in a ghostly aura. Armed police guarded "secret" envelops and impressive looking contraptions spat out pre-cooked questions on IBM cards. The big winners--like Columbia university student Elfrida Von Nardroff who earned $226,500 on Twenty One or warehouse clerk Teddy Nadler who earned $252,000 on The $64,000 Challenge--took home a fortune in pre-inflationary greenbacks.

By the standards of the dumbed-down game shows of a later epoch, the intellectual content of the 1950s quiz shows was downright erudite. Almost all the questions involved some demonstration of cerebral aptitude--retrieving lines of poetry, identifying dates from history, and reeling off scientific classifications, the stuff of memorization and canonical culture. (Who wrote "Hope is a thing with feathers/it whispers to the soul"?) Since victors returned to the show until they lost, risking accumulated winnings on future stakes, individual contestants might develop a devoted following over a period of weeks. Among the famous for fifteen pre-Warhol minutes were opera buff Gino Prato, science prodigy Robert Strom, and ex-cop and Shakespeare expert Redmond O'Hanlon. Matching an incongruous area of expertise to the right personality was a favorite hook, as in the cases of Richard McCutchen, the rugged marine captain who was an expert on French cooking, or Dr. Joyce Brothers, not then an icon of pop psychology, whose encyclopedic knowledge of boxing won her (legitimately) $132,000.

If the quiz shows made celebrities out of ordinary folk, they also sought to engage the services of celebrities. Orson Welles claimed to have been approached by a quiz show producer looking for a "genius type" who guaranteed him $150,000 and a seven week engagement. Welles refused, but bandleader Xavier Cugat won $16,000 as an expert on Tin Pan Alley songs in a rigged match against actress Lillian Roth on The $64,000 Challenge. "I considered I was giving a performance," he later explained guilelessly. Twelve-year-old Patty Duke won $32,000 against child actor Eddie Hodges, then the juvenile lead in The Music Man on Broadway. Hodges had earlier won the $25,000 grand prize on Name That Tune teamed with a personable marine flyer named John Glenn.

Far and away the most notorious quizling was Charles Van Doren, a contestant on NBC's Twenty One, a quiz show based on the game of blackjack. Scion of the prestigious literary family and himself a lecturer in English at Columbia University, Van Doren was an authentic pop phenomenon whose video charisma earned him $129,000 in prize money, the cover of Time magazine, and a permanent spot on NBC's Today, where he discussed non-Euclidean geometry and recited seventeenth century poetry. He put an all-American face to the university intellectual in an age just getting over its suspicion of subversive "eggheads."

From the moment Van Doren walked onto the set of Twenty One on 28 November 1956 for his first face-off against a high-IQ eccentric named Herbert Stempel, he proved himself a telegenic natural. In the isolation booth, Van Doren managed to engage the spectator's sympathy by sharing his mental concentration. Apparently muttering unself-consciously to himself, he let viewers see him think: eyes alert, hand on chin, then a sudden bolt ("Oh, I know!"), after which he delivered himself of the answer. Asked to name the volumes of Churchill's wartime memoirs, he mutters, "I've seen the ad for those books a thousand times!" Asked to come up with a biblical reference, he says self-depreciatingly, "My father would know that." Van Doren's was a remarkable and seductive performance.

Twenty One's convoluted rules decreed that, in the event of a tie, the money wagered for points doubled--from $500 a point, to $1000 and so on. Thus, contestants needed to be coached not only on answers and acting but on the amount of points they selected in the gamble. A tie meant double financial stakes for each successive game with a consequent ratcheting up of the tension. By pre-game arrangement, the first Van Doren-Stempel face off ended with three ties; hence, the next week's game would be played for $2000 a point, and publicized accordingly.

On Wednesday, 5 December 1956, at 10:30 P.M., an estimated 50 million Americans tune in to Twenty One for what host and co-producer Jack Berry calls "the biggest game ever played in the program." A pair of twin blondes escort the pair to their isolation booths. The first category is boxing and Van Doren blows it. Ahead sixteen points to Van Doren's zero, Stempel is given the chance to stop the game. Only the audience knows he's in the lead and, if he stops the game, Van Doren loses. At this point, on live television, Stempel could have reneged on the deal, vanquished his opponent, and won an extra $32,000. But he opts to play by the script and continue the match. The next category--movies--proves more Van Doren friendly. Asked to name Brando's female co-star in On the Waterfront Van Doren teases briefly ("she was that lovely frail girl") before coming up with the correct answer (Eve Marie Sainte). Stempel again has the chance to ad-lib his own lines, but-- in an echo of another Brando role--it is not his night. Asked to name the 1955 Oscar Winner for Best Picture, he hesitates and answers On the Waterfront. Stempel later recalled how that choice was the unkindest cut. The correct answer--Marty--was not only a film he knew well but a character he identified with, the lonesome guy wondering what he was gonna do tonight.

But another tie means another round at $2,500 a point. "You guys sure know your onions," gasps Jack Berry. The next round of questions is crucial and Van Doren is masterful. Give the names and the fates of the third, fourth, and fifth wives of Henry the Eighth. As Berry leads him through the litany, Van Doren takes the audience with him every step of the way. ("I don't think he beheaded her...Yes, what happened to her.") Given the same question, Stempel gets off his best line of the match up. After Stempel successfully names the wives, Berry asks him their fates. "Well, they all died," he cracks to gales of laughter. Van Doren stops the game and wins the round. Seemingly gracious in defeat, in reality steaming with resentment, Stempel says truthfully, "This all came so suddenly...Thanks for your kindness and courtesy."

 

 

The gravy train derailed in August and September of 1958 when disgruntled former contestants went public with accusations that the results were rigged and the contestants coached. First, a standby contestant on Dotto produced a page from a winner's crib sheet. Then, the still bitter Herbert Stempel, Van Doren's former nemesis on Twenty One, told how he had taken a dive in their climatic encounter. The smoking gun was provided by an artist named James Snodgrass, who had taken the precaution of mailing registered letters to himself with the results of his appearances on Twenty One predicted in advance. Most of the high-drama match-ups, it turned out, were as carefully choreographed as the June Taylor Dancers. Contestants were drilled in Q and A before airtime and coached in the pantomime of nail-biting suspense (stroke chin, furrow brow, wipe sweat from forehead). The lucky few who struck a chord with audiences were permitted a good run before a fresh attraction took their place; the patsies were given wrist watches and a kiss off.

By October 1958, as a New York grand jury convened by prosecutor Joseph Stone investigated the charges and heard closed-door testimony, quiz show ratings had plummeted. For their part, the networks played damage control, denying knowledge of rigging, canceling the suspect shows, and tossing the producers overboard. Yet it was hard to credit the Inspector Renault-like innocence of executives at NBC and CBS who claimed to be shocked that gambling was not going on in their casinos. A public relations flack for Twenty One best described the implied contract: "It was sort of a situation where a husband suspects his wife, but doesn't want to know because he loves her."

Despite the revelations and the grand jury investigation, the quiz show producers, Van Doren, and the other big money winners steadfastly maintained their innocence. Solid citizens all, they feared the loss of professional standing and the loyalty of friends and family as much as the retribution of the district attorney's office. Thus, even though there was no criminal statute against rigging a quiz show, the producers and contestants called to testify before the New York grand jury mainly tried to brazen it out. Nearly one hundred people committed perjury rather than own up to activities that, though embarrassing, were not illegal. Prosecutor Joseph Stone lamented that "nothing in my experience prepared me for the mass perjury that took place on the part of scores of well-educated people who had no trouble understanding what was at stake."

When the judge presiding over the New York investigations ordered the grand jury report sealed, Washington smelled a cover up and a political opportunity. Through October and November 1959, the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight, chaired by Oren Harris (D-Arkansas), held standing room only hearings into the quiz show scandals. A renewed wave of publicity recorded the now repentant testimony of network bigwigs and star contestants whose minds, apparently, were concentrated powerfully by federal intervention. At one point, committee staffers came upon possible communist associations in the background of a few witnesses. The information was turned over to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, a move that inspired one wiseacre to suggest the networks produce a new game show entitled Find That Pinko!

Meanwhile, as newspaper headlines screamed "Where's Charlie?", the star witness everyone wanted to hear from was motoring desperately through the back roads of New England, ducking a congressional subpoena. Finally, on 2 November 1959, with tension mounting in anticipation of Van Doren's appearance to answer questions (the irony was lost on no one), the chastened professor fessed up. "I was involved, deeply involved, in a deception," he told the Harris Committee. "The fact that I too was very much deceived cannot keep me from being the principal victim of that deception, because I was its principal symbol." In another irony, Washington's made-for-TV spectacle never made it to the airwaves due to the opposition of House Speaker Sam Rayburn, who felt that the presence of television cameras would undermine the dignity of Congress.

The firestorm that resulted, claimed Variety, "injured broadcasting more than anything ever before in the public eye." Even the sainted Edward R. Murrow was sullied when it was revealed that his celebrity interview show, CBS's Person to Person, provided guests with questions in advance. Perhaps most significantly in terms of the future shape of commercial television, the quiz show scandals made the networks forever leery of "single sponsorship" programming. Henceforth, they parceled out advertising time in fifteen, thirty, and sixty-second increments, wrenching control away from single sponsors and advertising agencies.

The fall out from the quiz show scandals can be gauged as cultural residue and written law. To an age as yet unschooled in credibility gaps and modified, limited hang-outs, the mass deception served as an early warning signal that the medium, and American life, might not always be on the up and up. As if to deny that possibility, Congress promptly made rigging a quiz show a federal crime. A televised exhibition may be fixed; a game show must always be upright.

-Thomas Doherty

 

FURTHER READING

Anderson, Kent. Television Fraud: The History and Implications of the Quiz Show Scandals. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1978.

Karp, Walter. "The Quiz-show Scandal." American Heritage (New York), May-June 1989.

Real, Michael. "The Great Quiz Show Scandal: Why America Remains Fascinated." Television Quarterly (New York), Winter 1995.

Stone, Joseph. Prime-time and Misdemeanors: Investigating the 1950s TV Quiz Scandal: A D.A.'s Account. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992.

 

Highlights
Patty Duke on how her managers gave her the answers for the $64,000 Challenge; on testifying before Congress during the Quiz Show Scandals
04:10
Herbert Stempel on finally being "defeated" by Charles Van Doren on Twenty-One
03:24
Albert Freedman on the head of Geritol (Twenty One's sponsor) wanting Herbert Stempel off the program and how Freedman convinced Charles Van Doren to become a contestant
07:41
Monty Hall on briefly hosting Twenty-One and on the subsequent Quiz Show Scandals that emerged
04:33
Ruth Engelhardt on the Quiz Show Scandals, and how they impacted the sponsors
02:42
Florence Henderson on working on Today when Charles Van Doren was a correspondent
01:28
Who talked about this topic

Larry Auerbach

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Larry Auerbach on the Quiz Show Scandals
02:04

Bob Barker

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Bob Barker on how Truth or Consequences was not affected by the quiz show scandals
01:24

Erik Barnouw

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Erik Barnouw on the quiz show scandals of the 1950s
01:04

Joseph Behar

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Joe Behar on security issues surrounding Let's Make a Deal as a result of the Quiz Show Scandals
01:40

Ted Bergmann

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Ted Bergmann on the fixed game show Twenty-One
01:48
Ted Bergmann on how the Quiz Show Scandals affected the advertising agencies
00:43

Robert Caminiti

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Robert Caminiti on his duties as stage manager on Concentration, and on the Quiz Show Scandals
02:59

Steve Carlin

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Steve Carlin on the start of the Quiz Show scandals
04:00
Steve Carlin on the Congressional Investigation into the game show Twenty-One
03:35
Steve Carlin on testifying to the Grand Jury investigating quiz shows
03:24

Gilbert Cates

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Gilbert Cates on the Quiz Show scandal surrounding Dotto
02:38
Gilbert Cates on the Quiz Show scandal surrounding Dotto (contd.)
14:00

Walter Cronkite

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Walter Cronkite on the question of whether he found it difficult to report the news when CBS itself was the news; as in the Quiz Show Scandals
01:13

Milton Delugg

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Milton Delugg on working on Treasure Hunt, and on the show's personnel making deals with potential contestants
02:27

Dixon Dern

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Dixon Dern on the Payola investigation, which involved taking money for product endorsement; it came about after the Quiz show scandals

Phil Donahue

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Phil Donahue on how the television industry was affected by the Quiz Show Scandals
01:44

Hugh Downs

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Hugh Downs on hosting the popular game show Concentration and security on the show during the Quiz Show Scandals
02:52

Bob Doyle

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Bob Doyle on how the Quiz Show Scandals and the assassination of John F. Kennedy impacted television
02:41

Charles S. Dubin

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Charles S. Dubin on directing Twenty One produced by Dan Enright just before the Quiz Show Scandals broke, and on being called to testify about it
05:10

Patty Duke

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Patty Duke on how her managers gave her the answers for the $64,000 Challenge; on testifying before Congress during the Quiz Show Scandals
04:10

Ralph Edwards

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Ralph Edwards on the effect of the Quiz Show scandals on Truth or Consequences
02:17

Ruth Engelhardt

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Ruth Engelhardt on the Quiz Show Scandals
01:27
Ruth Engelhardt on the Quiz Show Scandals, and how they impacted the sponsors
02:43

Barbara Feldon

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Barbara Feldon on her appearance on the $64,000 Question -- around the time of the Quiz show scandals
02:44

Sonny Fox

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Sonny Fox on the Quiz Show Scandals
05:42

Albert Freedman

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Albert Freedman on his dealings with Twenty One contestant James Snodgrass during the Quiz Show Scandals
03:02
Albert Freedman on the most difficult pre-test of all the quiz shows - on Twenty One - and how producers selected which answers to give contestants
00:51
Albert Freedman on becoming a producer on Twenty One, coaching contestants, and casting Charles Van Doren on the program
29:12
Albert Freedman on the head of Geritol (Twenty One's sponsor) wanting Herbert Stempel off the program and how Freedman convinced Charles Van Doren to become a contestant
07:40
Albert Freedman on Charles Van Doren becoming a celebrity because of his appearances of Twenty One; on the beginning of the Quiz Show Scandals; on not wanting to implicate Charles Van Doren
28:55
Albert Freedman on the beginning of the Quiz Show scandals in 1958 - Ed Hilgemeier going to the press about the fixing of Dotto
07:26
Albert Freedman on Charles Van Doren contacting him when the D.A.'s office announced an investigation into the quiz shows (including Twenty One)
01:22
Albert Freedman on the sequence of events that led to the press scrutinization of TV and the explosion of the Quiz Show Scandals
01:43
Albert Freedman on how he got embroiled in the investigations surrounding the Quiz Show Scandals; on how he was counseled by lawyers
03:03
Albert Freedman on being poorly coached by lawyers for the Grand Jury testimony for the Quiz Show Scandals; on realizing he was being set up for an indictment
04:00
Albert Freedman on not giving names to prosecutor Joseph Stone when he was questioned during the Quiz Show Scandals
02:28
Albert Freedman on being indicted for perjury after his testimony during the Quiz Show Scandals; on recanting his testimony and perjuring himself again
11:23
Albert Freedman on being blacklisted because of the Quiz Show Scandals
05:30
Albert Freedman on Charles Van Doren being persuaded to testify before the House Committee after Van Doren had seen the notes from the original Grand Jury testimony; on returning from Mexico to testify
02:57
Albert Freedman on reaching out to Charles Van Doren's lawyer to explain the circumstances under which Freedman would be testifying before the House Committee (to explain that Freedman would not be speaking about Van Doren)
03:55
Albert Freedman on CBS allegedly paying off the Harris Commission, Charles Revson perjuring himself, and other testimony at the Congressional hearings
02:26
Albert Freedman on testifying before the Grand Jury for a third time during the Quiz Show Scandals and his indictment finally being dropped after four years
02:49
Albert Freedman on Robert Redford's movie "Quiz Show" and whether or not the film was accurate
06:21
Albert Freedman on who the "bad guys" were in the Quiz Show Scandals
03:01
Albert Freedman on the impact of the Quiz Show Scandals on the medium of television - the end of the intelligent era of live TV
03:00
Albert Freedman on what the quiz shows were really about - making education respectable via entertainment
01:01
Albert Freedman on whether today's quiz shows are affected by the Quiz Show Scandals
01:46

Julian Goodman

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Julian Goodman on Charles Van Doren's appearance on the public affairs show Comment
01:21

Monty Hall

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Monty Hall on briefly hosting Twenty-One and on the subsequent Quiz Show Scandals that emerged
04:33
Monty Hall on the impact of the Quiz Show Scandals on game shows
03:23
Monty Hall on briefly hosting Twenty-One and on the subsequent Quiz Show Scandals that emerged
04:33

Florence Henderson

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Florence Henderson on working on Today when Charles Van Doren was a correspondent
01:28

Jeff Kisseloff

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Jeff Kisseloff on his interview with Twenty-One producer Al Freeman, Jr. and attempting to interview Charles Van Doren
08:03

Charles Lisanby

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Charles Lisanby on designing sets for Dotto
00:50

Wink Martindale

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Wink Martindale on producers Jack Barry and Dan Enright and the Quiz Show Scandals
03:03

Jayne Meadows

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Jayne Meadows on the Quiz Show Scandals
02:26

E. Roger Muir

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E. Roger Muir on the Quiz Show Scandals and on producing game shows in Canada
05:14

Lee Rich

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Lee Rich on the Quiz Show Scandals and the subsequent impact on the networks and advertising agencies
00:56

Pat Sajak

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Pat Sajak on the Quiz Show Scandals 
00:24

Alfred Schneider

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Alfred Schneider on the Quiz Show and Payola Scandals and his part in writing legislation in response to the scandals
05:11

Ira Skutch

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Ira Skutch on the Quiz Show Scandals
01:22

Herbert F. Solow

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Herbert F. Solow on his recollections of the quiz show scandals
00:51

Frank Stanton

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Frank Stanton on the Quiz Show Scandals
01:35
Frank Stanton on the quiz show scandals
03:10

Johnny Stearns

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Johnny Stearns on the Quiz Show Scandals
02:34

Herbert Stempel

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Herbert Stempel on becoming involved with Twenty-One  via producer Dan Enright
03:58
Herbert Stempel on Dan Enright prepping him to "act" and cheat on Twenty-One, and on dealing with host Jack Barry
06:01
Herbert Stempel on the format of Twenty-One  and how the game was played
01:31
Herbert Stempel on the broadcast facilities and set of Twenty-One, including the "isolation booth"
02:23
Herbert Stempel on his first Twenty-One  opponents having been coached as he had been
01:32
Herbert Stempel on the aftermath of his first appearance on Twenty-One  and on the scripted banter on the show
02:03
Herbert Stempel on his initial lack of recognition from being on Twenty-One, and on meeting with producer Dan Enright before each air time to get instructions and answers
04:17
Herbert Stempel on the details of the monetary wins on Twenty-One
02:42
Herbert Stempel on telling some friends early on that Twenty-One  was rigged
00:52
Herbert Stempel on the other members of the Twenty-One  team including host Jack Barry
02:05
Herbert Stempel on the producers inadvertently giving him a wrong answer to a question on Twenty-One
02:11
Herbert Stempel on Charles Van Doren, his final "opponent" on Twenty-One
01:16
Herbert Stempel on finally being "defeated" by Charles Van Doren on Twenty-One
03:24
Herbert Stempel on Dan Enright reneging on his promises to Stempel after his run Twenty-One
03:27
Herbert Stempel on contacting the DA's office and testifying about the misconduct on the set of Twenty-One
03:51
Herbert Stempel on appearing on the PBS American Experience  episode "The Quiz Show Scandal"
02:58
Herbert Stempel on his involvement in Robert Redford's feature film "Quiz Show" in which John Turturro played Stempel
05:58
Herbert Stempel on the impact of the Quiz Show Scandals on America and his being asked to return to play on the revived version of Twenty-One,  and on trying out for Jeopardy!
03:43
Herbert Stempel on the so-called Stempel law, and his then-current dealings with the public
02:24
Herbert Stempel on the legacy of the Quiz Show Scandals
00:50
Herbert Stempel on having his credibility questioned when he testified about misconduct on the set of Twenty-One
04:49
Herbert Stempel on the psychological impact the Twenty-One  scandal had on him, and on the public perception of his testimony regarding Charles Van Doren
04:10
Herbert Stempel on the psychological impact the Twenty-One  scandal had on him, and on the public perception of his testimony regarding Charles Van Doren
04:10

Bob Stewart

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Bob Stewart on the Quiz Show Scandals and how it affected game show producers
04:49
Bob Stewart on record companies secretly paying an AD to use their music on The Price is Right
00:58

William Tankersley

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William Tankersley on how the Quiz Show scandals (which started with NBC shows) affected CBS Standards & Practices
04:29

Grant Tinker

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Grant Tinker on Revlon and the Quiz Show Scandals
00:44
Grant Tinker on how the Quiz Show Scandals changed the relationship between advertising agencies and television shows
02:45

Vanna White

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Vanna White on not being allowed to talk to contestants on Wheel of Fortune
00:51

Betty White

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Betty White on the Quiz Show Scandals and how they never touched Goodson/Todman shows
02:11

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