Quiz Show Scandal

L to R: Contestant Viviene Nearine, Jack Barry and Charles Van Doren, 1957
Photo courtesy Library of Congress

The quiz show scandal provided the perfect opening for opponents of  BMI and rock and roll were looking for. The investigation revealed that Jack Barry and Dan Enright owned several Top 40 radio stations making connection of payola and  game show fixing easy

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Federal Communications Commission v. American Broadcasting Co., Inc. 347 U.S. 284, that quiz shows were not a form of gambling; this paved the way for their introduction to television. The prizes of these new shows were unprecedented. The $64,000 Question became the first big-money television quiz show during the 1950s. In 1955, Joyce Brothers first earned fame by becoming the first woman to earn the $64,000 prize. It was revealed later that the show was "controlled"; the producers did not want her to win and deliberately gave her questions perceived to be beyond her ability, which she answered correctly anyway. The $64,000 Question was one of the game shows ultimately implicated to be fixed in some fashion. In 1956, the Jack Barry-hosted game show Twenty-One featured a contestant, Herb Stempel, who had been coached by producer Dan Enright to allow his opponent, Charles Van Doren, to win the game. Stempel took the fall as requested. 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 to his advantage, and that the show's producer then ordered him to purposely lose his championship to Van Doren. With no proof, an article was never printed

Stempel's statements gained more credibility when match-fixing in another game, Dotto, was publicized in August 1958. Quiz show ratings across the networks plummeted and several were cancelled amidst allegations of fixing. The revelations were sufficient to initiate a nine-month long County of New York grand jury. No indictments were handed down, and the findings of the grand jury were sealed by judge's order. A formal congressional subcommittee investigation began in summer 1959. Enright was revealed to have rigged Twenty-One; Van Doren also eventually came forth with revelations about how he was persuaded to accept specific answers during his time on the show. These elements of the scandal were portrayed in the 1994 movie Quiz Show. As a result, many contestants' reputations were tarnished.

Stempel was a contestant on Twenty-One who was coached by Enright.While Stempel was in the midst of his winning streak, both of the $64,000 quiz shows 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 Van Doren, who was an English teacher at Columbia University when a friend
suggested he try out for a quiz show. Van Doren decided to try out for the quiz show Tic-Tac-Dough. Enright, who produced both Tic-Tac-Dough and Twenty-One, saw Van Doren's tryout and was familiar with his prestigious family background that included multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and highly respected professors at Columbia University. As a result, Enright felt that Van Doren would be the perfect contestant to be the new face of Twenty-One. As part of their plan, the producers of Twenty-One arranged the first Van Doren-Stempel face-off to end in three ties. As prize money per-point in the margin of victory increased by $500 after each tie game, the next game would offer $2,000 for every point the winner led by; this was duly-noted in promotion of the following week's episode, which helped to attract significant viewership. After achieving winnings of $69,500, Stempel's scripted loss to the more popular 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, Stempel gave the incorrect answer On the Waterfront, winner of Best Motion Picture the previous year).

Although the manipulation of the contestants on Twenty-One 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. After his preordained loss, Stempel spoke out against the operation, claiming that he deliberately lost the match against Van Doren on orders from Enright. Initially, Stempel was dismissed as a sore loser, due in part to the fact that there was no solid reason to question the reputations of the quiz shows themselves. In  August 1958, the abrupt cancellation of the quiz show Dotto bolstered his credibility when Edward Hilgemeier, Jr., a stand-by contestant three months earlier, sent an affidavit to the Federal Communications Commission claiming that while backstage, he had found a notebook containing the very answers contestant Marie Winn was delivering on stage. Although the reason for Dotto's August cancellation was never given to the press, it was worked out in the days after that the reason was the implication that the game had been fixed. The story of fixing was widely known soon after. The American public's reactions were quick and powerful when the quiz show fraud became public: between 87% and 95% knew about the scandals as measured by industry-sponsored polls. Over the course of the second half of 1958, quiz shows implicated by the scandal were canceled rapidly. Among them, with their cancellation dates, were the following shows:

Dotto (August 16)
The $64,000 Challenge (September 14)
Twenty-One (October 16)
The $64,000 Question (November 9)
Tic-Tac-Dough, primetime edition (December 29)

Late in August, New York prosecutor Joseph Stone convened a grand jury to investigate the allegations of the fixing of quiz shows. At the time of the empaneling, neither being a party to a fixed game show nor fixing a game show in the first place were crimes in their own right. Some witnesses in the grand jury acknowledged their role in a fixed show, while others denied it, directly contradicting one another. Many of the coached contestants, who had become celebrities due to their
quiz show success, were so afraid of the social repercussions of admitting the fraud that they were unwilling to confess to having been coached, even to the point of perjuring themselves to avoid backlash. Show producers, who had legally rigged the games to increase ratings but did not want to implicate themselves, the show sponsors or the networks they worked for in doing so, categorically denied the allegations. After the nine-month grand jury, no indictments were handed down and the judge sealed the grand jury report in Summer 1959. The 86th United States Congress, by then in its first session, soon responded; in October 1959, the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight, under Representative Oren Harris' chairmanship, began to hold hearings investigating the scandal. Stempel, Snodgrass and Hilgemeier all testified. Van Doren, initially reluctant, finally agreed to testify also. The gravity of the scandal was confirmed on November 2, 1959 when Van Doren said to the Committee in a nationally televised session that, "I was involved, deeply involved, in a deception. The fact that I, too, was very much deceived cannot keep me from being the principal victim of that deception, because I was its principal symbol."

All of the regulations regarding television at that time were defined under the Federal Communications Act of 1934, which dealt with the advertising, fair competition, and labeling of broadcast stations. The Act and regulations written by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission  were indefinite in regards to fixed television programs. Due to the fact that there were no specific laws regarding the fraudulent behavior in the quiz shows, it is debatable whether the producers or contestants alike did anything illegal. Instead, it could be inferred that the medium was ill-used. After concluding the Harris Commission investigation, Congress passed a law prohibiting the fixing of quiz shows (and any other form of contest). These public hearings triggered amendments passed to the Communications Act in 1960. Therefore, the bill that President Eisenhower signed into law on September 13, 1960, was a fairly mild improvement to the broadcast industry. It allowed the FCC to require license renewals of less than the legally required three years if the agency believes it would be in the public interest, prohibited gifts to FCC members, and declared illegal any contest or game with intent to deceive the audience. However, at the time, while the actions may have been disreputable, they were not illegal. As a result, no one went to prison for rigging game shows. The individuals who were prosecuted were charged because of attempts to cover up their actions, either by obstruction of justice or perjury.

Enright and Barry owned a couple top 40 stations providing the link opponents of rock and roll were looking for.

In the wake of the quiz show scandals ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) urged House Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Oren Harris to look into the recording industry's practice of payola. In 1957,  Harris was chairman of the House Commerce Committee which held authority over the FTC, when he and House Speaker Sam Rayburn hired NYC law professor Bernard Schwartz to look into the operation of several independent government agencies.

It was discovered by the FCC that Harris had bought with a $500 and a $4,500 promissory note, which was never paid, a 25% interest in a television station  KRBB-TV in El Dorado, Arkansas. Later after the deal, Harris presided over a stalled license renewal and a power expansion for the station. The FCC which had previously turned down  the station's request for a wattage increase, reversed itself. Also after Harris bought the station, it received a $400,00 bank loan and another $200,00 from RCA.When this was leaked to the press it would end up causing Harris to sell his share and fire Schwartz.