Abstract

This paper offers an overview of the 1950s American quiz show scandal that revolved around the ‘rigging’ of CBS and NBC programs The $64,000 Question and Twenty-One during an unprecedented transformation and rapid growth of the postwar American media landscape.

Highlights

  • | This paper offers an overview of the 1950s American quiz show scandal that revolved around the ‘rigging’ of CBS and NBC programs The $64,000 Question and Twenty-One during an unprecedented transformation and rapid growth of the postwar American media landscape. |

  • The dashing, young, Columbia professor had risen to fame through his success on a popular quiz show, Twenty-One, only to be forced to admit to the United States Congress that the game had been rigged and that America’s intellectual heart-throb was a fraud

  • This revelation would shock and disappoint millions it would prompt an amendment to the 1934 Communications Act making it a federal crime punishable by imprisonment to ‘influence, pre-arrange, or predetermine’ the outcome of ‘a ‘bona fide contest of intellectual knowledge’.2. It is difficult for modern viewers, who are so accustomed to televised deception for the sake of ratings, to understand the impact this case had on the American audience

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Summary

Introduction

This revelation would shock and disappoint millions it would prompt an amendment to the 1934 Communications Act making it a federal crime punishable by imprisonment to ‘influence, pre-arrange, or predetermine’ the outcome of ‘a ‘bona fide contest of intellectual knowledge’.2 It is difficult for modern viewers, who are so accustomed to televised deception for the sake of ratings, to understand the impact this case had on the American audience.

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