Limits on loot

So I was watching a Match Game '75 ep, and Gene told a winner that she was bumping up against CBS's game show money limit of twenty-five grand. Okay, twenty-five thousand dollars in 1975 would equate to one hundred and twenty thousand bucks in today's shriveled currency. So the limit wasn't that severe. But such limitations on contestant loot got dropped eventually on broadcast game shows, though I don't have the patience to research the historical details.

The limits were the result of the 1950s rigging scandals, of course. Broadcasters figured that those nasty producers would be less tempted to rig their shows if the money was less imposing. In 1975 the memory of the scandals was still very fresh. As the years went by and no more scandals erupted, the limits gradually got looser and then vanished.

Except nowadays game shows build limits right into the formats, in an era when TV shows fight over tinier and tinier slivers of the audience. But there are no hard-and-fast limits on the loot for shows with returning champs. Ken Jennings could have theoretically won an infinite amount of money if he had kept winning and winning and winning. Although sooner or later age would have caught up with him, no?

Tweet

Subscribe to receive free email updates: