History Channel looks at the rigging scandals

Haven't watched History Channel much since the early years of Pawn Stars. I kind of liked the "old man," though sadly he's dead now.

The channel runs a web site, like almost all cablers, and they post interesting tidbits now and then. An example is this story about the game show rigging scandals of the 1950s. There's probably not much in the article that will surprise readers of this blog. But it does offer some classic old-fashioned black-and-white photos. See the screeenshot of Charles Van Doren swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to Congress. (He did.)

The story points out an odd fact: a Supreme Court ruling in 1954 paved the way for big-money game shows like $64,000 Question and Twenty-One. With real money (and real ratings) on the line, the temptation to rig the shows proved irresistible. The nasty little secret started to leak when Dotto suddenly disappeared from the air in 1958. Publicity-hungry prosecutors were soon piling onto our little genre and, well, you know the rest of the story.

Nowadays the merest hint of a rumor about rigging starts the media baying like starved wolves. So the shows do their best to stay squeaky clean. Things are different now.

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