Mark Leo Goodson (January 14, 1915 – December 18, 1992) was an American television producer who specialized in game shows, most frequently with his business partner Bill Todman, with whom he created Goodson-Todman Productions.
Goodson was born in Sacramento, California, on January 14, 1915. His Jewish parents, Abraham Ellis (1875–1954) and Fannie Goodson (1887–1986), emigrated from Russia in the early 1900s. As a child, Goodson acted in amateur theater with the Plaza Stock Company. The family later moved to Hayward, California. Goodson recalled that his childhood was impoverished, and that he developed an intense work ethic out of fear of returning to poverty. Originally intending to become a lawyer, Goodson attended the University of California, Berkeley. He financed his education through scholarships and by working at the Lincoln Fish Market. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1937 with a degree in economics.
That year, he began his broadcasting career in San Francisco, working as a disc jockey at radio station KJBS (now KFAX). In 1939, he joined radio station KFRC, where he produced and hosted a radio quiz called Pop the Question in which contestants selected questions by throwing darts at multicolored balloons.
In 1941, while working on the local quiz show, The Battle of the Boroughs, he met Bill Todman, a radio writer, director, and advertising copywriter. This was soldiifed into the Goodson-Todman partnership to start the radio hit Winner Take All.
Goodson and long-time partner Bill Todman produced some of the longest-running game shows in American television history, and their names were well known at least to the large audiences for these shows. Their first television show, Winner Take All, debuted on CBS television on July 1, 1948. The long list of Goodson-Todman productions includes The Price Is Right, Family Feud, Classic Concentration, Match Game, Password, Beat the Clock, To Tell the Truth (Goodson's personal favorite show), I've Got a Secret, What's My Line?, Card Sharks, and Tattletales. Goodson-Todman Productions/Mark Goodson Productions created content for American channels and other international channels. (including Talbot Television Ltd. and Fremantle UK Productions Ltd.). such as CBS, NBC, and ABC in the US, BBC1, ITV (Anglia, Central, Granada, LWT, TVS, Scottish Television, and Yorkshire Television), Channel 4, and Sky One, (also Challenge TV). It licensed many of its shows to the Reg Grundy Organisation to be adapted in Australia and Europe.
Goodson and Todman's shows endured through the decades, many over multiple runs, because of Goodson's sharp eye for production and presentation, and their strict insistence on maintaining clean, honest contests, thus allowing their shows to survive the quiz-show scandals of the late 1950s. After those scandals wiped out most of their competition, much of the newer game-show output of the 1960s and 1970s came from either Goodson-Todman or companies launched by their former employees: Merv Griffin, Bob Stewart, Monty Hall, and later Jay Wolpert. Goodson-Todman was involved with Jack Barry's comeback vehicle The Joker's Wild for its 1969 pilot, but ended involvement with the show before it debuted in 1972 (coincidentally, on the same lineup as Goodson and Todman's own daytime game show comeback vehicle, The Price Is Right).
While Todman oversaw the company's lucrative businesses outside of television, Goodson handled the creative aspects of producing game shows. The people who worked for the company and created most of the Goodson-Todman shows were pivotal to the success of those shows. Goodson-Todman executives Bob Stewart, Bob Bach, Gil Fates, Ira Skutch, Frank Wayne, Chester Feldman, Paul Alter, Howard Felsher, Ted Cooper, Mimi O'Brien, Jay Wolpert, and others were instrumental in making the shows successful.
Goodson-Todman twice sold two game shows to CBS, one in 1958 for What's My Line?, and one in 1960 with Garry Moore (as Telecast Enterprises) for I've Got a Secret, although both shows continue to employ Goodson-Todman's talent and production staff. Both shows eventually got bought back by Goodson-Todman around the 1970s, although I've Got a Secret was sold to The Carsey-Werner Company in 1992.
The company proved itself to be masterful at games, but was not as successful when it tried other fields of television programs, including the anthology dramas The Web and The Richard Boone Show, a talk-variety show for famed insult comic Don Rickles – and what was possibly the company's biggest failure, a sitcom titled One Happy Family. Goodson-Todman Productions was also involved with three Westerns: Jefferson Drum (1958–59), starring Jeff Richards as a newspaper editor in the Old West; The Rebel (1959–1961), starring Nick Adams as a former Confederate soldier who traveled to the West after the American Civil War (Johnny Cash sang the theme); and Branded, starring Chuck Connors as a soldier who had wrongly been given a dishonorable discharge from the Army.
Goodson received substantial criticism from within the television industry, particularly from the 1970s onward, for tolerating a broad, lowbrow style of entertainment for his game shows, such that David Susskind once attempted to talk him out of the business and into more reputable fare. He responded to Susskind: "What do you do that is so distinctive and so much better than what I do?" He also remarked to TV Guide in 1978 that he often spent years of development on each new series and that "we give game shows the same dedication—perhaps foolishly—that Hal Prince gives to the opening of a Broadway show." Regarding the lack of respect for his work, he stated: "I regret it and I resent it."
For many years, the company was headquartered in the Seagram Building at 375 Park Avenue in New York City. Most of the company's production moved to Hollywood in the early 1970s (as did many other production companies), starting with the ABC revival of Password in 1971. The Los Angeles offices were based at 6430 Sunset Boulevard, moving to 5750 Wilshire Boulevard. The company's last New York-based show was the 1980 version of To Tell the Truth, but the New York office remained open and was used for East Coast Child's Play auditions.
A few years after Bill Todman's death in 1979, Goodson acquired the Todman heirs' share of the company, and in 1982, the company was renamed Mark Goodson Productions. Goodson had already been the dominant partner in the business by the early 1970s after Todman's retirement. Traditionally, shows signed off with: "This is (announcer's name) speaking for (show name), A Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Production/A Mark Goodson Television Production." After Goodson's death, to pay off a massive inheritance tax, Goodson's family sold the rights (except for Concentration/Classic Concentration, which had been licensed from NBC) to All-American Television, which was subsequently taken over by Pearson PLC (an educational publisher and communications company based in the United Kingdom), and, in turn, was acquired by RTL Group (a division of Bertelsmann), to form Fremantle, which now owns the rights to the library from Mark Goodson Productions. The Mark Goodson Productions name, logo, and announcement continued to be used for some shows until 2007, when Bob Barker's last show of The Price Is Right aired. Afterward, at the close of each episode of The Price Is Right, the announcer credits the show as "a FremantleMedia Production" until 2018; it is now credited simply as "a Fremantle Production", reflecting the name change of the company. However, for decades week kicking off season 44 in 2015 the Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions announcement was brought back for the throwback 1970s episode and Mark Goodson Productions announcement was brought back for the 1980s and 1990s episodes albeit the Fremantlemedia logo in place.
Copyrights to many of the Goodson-Todman's game shows were assigned to its specially formed companies, named in The (program name) Company scheme, such as The Family Company, The Password Company etc. They are currently in-name-only units of Fremantle North America.