From 1956 to 1958, numerous quiz shows airing on CBS and NBC, two of the three American TV networks at the time, were revealed to have prearranged outcomes, such as certain contestants winning after being given the answers before filming by producers. These shows had claimed to be objective and fair competitions, and often involved high-stakes money rewards. These revelations shocked the public, and led to numerous changes in television, which was a new and growing medium.
Executives of the networks claimed that, along with the public, they too were victims of the scandals, and that the shows' producers and contestants were responsible. The U.S. Congress investigated the scandals, and amended the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit TV networks from prearranging the outcomes of quiz shows.
Certain conspirators were not able to work in television ever again. All of the shows involved—including The $64,000 Question and The $64,000 Challenge, The Big Surprise, Dotto, For Love or Money, Tic-Tac-Dough, and Twenty-One—were cancelled. The TV quiz show format gained a stigma among the public which only went away after Jeopardy!, a legitimate show, debuted in 1964. It became standard practice for quiz shows' networks and producers to monitor the competitions for cheating. The Twenty-One scandal was portrayed in the 1994 film Quiz Show.
From the mid-1950s to the 1980s, there were three commercial broadcast television networks (the "Big Three") in the United States: ABC, CBS, and NBC. All three started out as broadcast radio networks, and by 1948, were broadcasting TV programs to multiple U.S. cities. DuMont Television Network was a fourth broadcaster from 1946 to 1956. In the 1950s, these networks adapted their popular radio programs, such as quiz shows, for the growing TV audience. The radio quiz show Take It or Leave It, for instance, was turned into The $64,000 Question for CBS's TV channel. Competitions between contestants on early radio and TV quiz shows were relatively low-stakes, as the networks did not give out money or other prizes to the winners; the legal matter as to whether these shows would constitute gambling had not been settled. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in FCC v. American Broadcasting Co., Inc. that they did not; if the prize was money, the contestants could not wager their personal funds. Soon, quiz shows involved high-stakes money rewards.
In September 1956, the game show Twenty-One, hosted by Jack Barry, premiered on NBC. Its first show was played legitimately, with no manipulation of the game by the producers at all. This initial broadcast was, in the words of co-producer Dan Enright, "a dismal failure", as the two contestants were so lacking in the required knowledge that they answered a large number of the questions incorrectly. Further, show sponsor Geritol, upon seeing this opening-night performance, reportedly became furious with the results and said that they did not want to see a repeat performance.
Three months into its run, Twenty-One featured the contestant Herb Stempel. While Stempel was in the midst of his winning streak, both of the $64,000 quiz shows (The $64,000 Question and its spin-off, The $64,000 Challenge) were in the top-ten rated programs, but Twenty-One did not have the same popularity. Enright and his partner, Albert Freedman, were searching for a new champion to replace Stempel to boost ratings. They soon found what they were looking for in Charles Van Doren, an English teacher at Columbia University. Van Doren decided to try out for the NBC quiz show Tic-Tac-Dough. Enright, who produced both Tic-Tac-Dough and Twenty-One, saw his tryout and was familiar with his prestigious family background that included multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and highly respected professors at Columbia. As a result, Enright felt that Van Doren would be perfect as the new face of Twenty-One.
Stempel was then asked to allow his new opponent, Van Doren, to win the game, and Stempel was coached by Enright on how to make it happen. After achieving winnings of $69,500, Stempel's scripted loss to Van Doren occurred on December 5, 1956. One of the questions Stempel answered incorrectly involved the winner of the 1955 Academy Award for Best Motion Picture. The correct answer was Marty, one of Stempel's favorite movies. As instructed by Enright, however, he gave the incorrect answer On the Waterfront, which had won the previous year. Although the manipulation of the contestants helped the producers maintain viewer interest and ratings, the producers had not anticipated the extent of Stempel's resentment at being required to lose the contest against Van Doren.
A year later, Stempel told the New York Journal-American's Jack O'Brian that his winning run as champion on the series had been choreographed and that the show's producer had then ordered him to purposely lose his championship to Van Doren. With no proof, an article was never printed.
James Snodgrass was another contestant on the show who became a whistleblower. He had made lists of all the questions and answers on which he was coached and mailed them to his own home in a series of letters before his games aired. The dates on these letters served as indisputable proof that the show had been rigged, and Snodgrass testified before Congress on this matter in 1959.
In December 1956, Dale Logue, a contestant on NBC's The Big Surprise, filed a lawsuit against the show's production company, Entertainment Productions, Inc., seeking either $103,000 in damages or reinstatement on the show as a contestant. Her claim was that, after being asked a question she did not know the answer to in a "warm-up" session, she was asked the same question again during the televised show. Her assertion was that this was done intentionally with the express purpose of eliminating her as a contestant. At the time Logue's lawsuit was filed, Steve Carlin, executive producer of Entertainment Productions, Inc., called her claim "ridiculous and hopeless". Assertions that Logue had been offered $10,000 to settle in January 1957 were called baseless. Charles Revson, head of Revlon and The Big Surprise's primary sponsor, asked the producers if Logue's accusation was true, and was told that it was not.
In August 1958, Stempel and Logue's credibility was bolstered when Edward Hilgemeier, Jr., a stand-by contestant on the game show Dotto three months earlier, sent an affidavit to the FCC claiming that while backstage, he had found a notebook on set containing the answers contestant Marie Winn was to deliver.
In April 1957, Time magazine published an article detailing the depths to which producers manipulated game shows, just short of involving the contestants themselves. In August, Look magazine ran the article "Are TV Quiz Shows Fixed?", which concluded "it may be more accurate to say they are controlled or partially controlled."
The American public's reaction was swift and dramatic when the fraud became public; between 87% and 95% knew about the scandals as measured by industry-sponsored polls. Through late 1958 and early 1959, quiz shows implicated by the scandal were quickly cancelled. Among them, with their last-aired dates, were:
The Big Surprise (April 2, 1957)
The $64,000 Challenge (September 7, 1958)
The $64,000 Question (November 2, 1958)
Tic-Tac-Dough, prime time edition (December 29, 1958)
For Love or Money (January 30, 1959)