In mid-August 1958, while both
The $64,000 Question and
The $64,000 Challenge had already been announced as part of CBS's
fall lineup, the network's quiz show
Dotto was cancelled without explanation. A federal investigation was launched by the end of August on the allegation that a
Dotto contestant had been given answers in advance. The probe soon included
NBC's Twenty-One, On September 13,
Lorillard Tobacco Company pulled its sponsorship of the show;
The $64,000 Question, which had not yet begun airing for the new season, assumed
Challenge's Sunday time slot on September 21. After the federal probe of quiz shows surfaced, quiz shows suffered badly in the Fall 1958 Nielsen ratings. In late October, strong rumors had surfaced that
The $64,000 Question was slated for movement to a less desirable time slot or cancellation. Cancellation was made official after
The $64,000 Question's November 2 airing. The game show ceased operations on November 21, 1958.
Scandal The $64,000 Question was closely monitored by its sponsor's CEO,
Revlon's
Charles Revson, who often interfered with production, especially attempting to bump contestants he himself disliked, regardless of audience reaction. Revson's brother, Martin, was assigned to oversee production, including heavy discussions of feedback the show received. According to
The $64,000 Question producer Joe Cates, an IBM sorting machine was used to present lower dollar value questions, to give the illusion that the questions were randomly selected – in fact, all of the cards were identical. Nadler's victory was called into question when he failed a civil service exam in 1960 applying a job for the
United States Census Bureau. Producers eventually acknowledged he had been shown questions beforehand but not answers, noting that he already knew the answers beforehand; he was deemed innocent. The most prominent victim may have been the man who initially launched the franchise. Louis Cowan, made CBS Television president as a result of
The $64,000 Question's fast success, was forced out of the network as the quiz scandal ramped up, even though it was
NBC's quiz shows bearing most of the brunt of the scandal – and even though CBS itself, with a little help from sponsor
Colgate-Palmolive, had moved fast in cancelling the popular
Dotto at almost the moment it was confirmed that that show had been rigged. Cowan was never suspected of attempting to rig either
The $64,000 Question or
The $64,000 Challenge; later CBS historians suggested his reputation as an administrative bottleneck may have had as much to do with his firing as his tie to the tainted shows. Cowan may have been wrongly accused in an attempt to stop any further scandal while the network tried to recover, and while president
Frank Stanton accepted complete responsibility for any wrongdoing committed under his watch.
Aftermath By the end of 1959, all first generation big-money quizzes were gone, with single-sponsorship television following and a federal law against fixing television game shows (an amendment to the 1960 Communications Act) coming. Over the course of the early 1960s, the networks wound down their five-figure jackpot game shows;
Jackpot Bowling (1959–1961) and
Make That Spare (1960–1964), which both escaped the fallout due to bowling being harder to fix, a period on
Beat the Clock (1960) when its Bonus Stunt grew in $100 increments past the $10,000 mark until finally being won for $20,100 on September 23,
You Bet Your Life (ended 1961) and the more lavish prize offerings on
The Nighttime Price Is Right (1957–1964) were the few remaining shows offering large prizes. Only one traditional big-money quiz show, the short-lived
ABC quiz
100 Grand (1963), was attempted in the following years; the networks stayed away from awarding five-figure cash jackpots until the premiere of
The $10,000 Pyramid and
Match Game 73 in 1973. The disappearance of the quiz shows gave rise to television's next big phenomenon–
Westerns. The scandals also resulted in a shift of the balance of power between networks and sponsors. The networks used the scandals to justify taking control of their programs away from sponsors, eliminating any potential future manipulation in prime-time broadcasting, and giving the networks full autonomy over program content. None of the people directly involved in rigging the quiz shows faced any penalty other than suspended sentences for perjury before the federal grand jury that investigated the scandal, even if many hosts and producers found themselves frozen out of television for many years. One
The $64,000 Question contestant, Doll Goostree, sued both CBS and the producers in a bid to recoup $4,000 she said she might have won if her match of
The $64,000 Question had not been rigged. Neither Goostree nor any other quiz contestant who similarly sued won their cases. •
Louis Cowan – In addition to
Quiz Kids (1949–1951) and
Stop the Music (1949–1952, 1954–1956), Cowan also created
Down You Go (1951–1956) and the short-lived
Ask Me Another (1952). Cowan briefly served as
CBS Television Network president before leaving in the wake of the quiz show scandals. He later joined the faculty of the
Columbia University school of journalism. He and his wife Polly were killed in an apartment fire in New York City in 1976. Lou Cowan's son Geoffrey later produced brief revivals of
Quiz Kids in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s and is currently dean of the
University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication. •
Hal March – The former comic actor who became an overnight star on
The $64,000 Question continued to appear as an actor in television and movies during the 1950s and 1960s. Shortly after he signed on as host of ''
It's Your Bet'' in 1969, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and died in 1970, four months short of his 50th birthday. •
Irwin "Sonny" Fox – The first
Challenge host was also known at the time for co-hosting the CBS children's travelogue ''Let's Take a Trip'' (Fox described it as "Taking two children on sort of an electronic field trip every week–live, remote location, no audience, no sponsors"), but his fame rests predominantly on his eight-year (1959–1967) stint as the fourth host of
New York City's Sunday morning children's marathon,
Wonderama. Fox hosted
Way Out Games (1976–1977), a Saturday-morning series for CBS, then later spent a year (1977–1978) running children's programming for NBC and eventually became a chairman of the board for Population Communications International, a nonprofit dedicated to "technical assistance, research and training consultation to governments, NGOs and foundations on a wide range of social marketing and communications initiatives". Fox had also been a board chairman for the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He died in 2021. •
Patty Duke – A child star (thanks to her
Broadway portrayal of
Helen Keller) when she appeared on
Challenge, she eventually testified to Congressional investigators – and broke to tears when she admitted she had been coached to speak falsely, an incident Sonny Fox described when interviewed for the PBS program reviewing the quiz scandals. Duke survived to become a television star (
The Patty Duke Show) in the early-to-mid-1960s, before moving on to more film and television work (including a role in
Valley of the Dolls), becoming an activist in the
Screen Actors Guild, writing two memoirs (
Call Me Anna and
A Brilliant Madness) describing her troubled child acting career and her lifelong battle with
manic depression, and becoming an advocate for better protection and benefits for child actors, as both of her biological children,
Sean Astin and
Mackenzie Astin, became actors themselves. She died on March 29, 2016, from sepsis, resulting from a ruptured intestine. •
Charles Revson – Inspired by cosmetics competitor
Hazel Bishop (whose sponsoring of
This Is Your Life provided big sales to Bishop) to think about television sponsorship in the first place, Revson was never investigated in his own right for his role in the quiz show scandals despite testifying (as did his brother, Martin) before Congress when the scandals broke in earnest. The cosmetics empire he founded, however, continued its success – and continued to sponsor television programming – for many years after the scandals faded away. Revson's success left him a billionaire when he died in 1975. His charitable foundation has since given over $145 million in grants to schools, hospitals, and service organizations in various Jewish communities. •
Dr. Joyce Brothers – Only the second contestant to win the show's big prize (after successfully preventing numerous attempts to bump her from the show because Martin Revson was said to have disliked her and doubted her credibility as a boxing expert), Brothers enjoyed the most enduring fame and media success among anyone who became famous thanks to
The $64,000 Question. Her championship as a boxing expert led to an invitation to become a commentator for CBS' telecast of a championship boxing match between
Sugar Ray Robinson and
Carmen Basilio. In August 1958, shortly after she earned her license to practice psychology in New York, Brothers was given her own television program, first locally in New York and then in national syndication. Making numerous television and radio appearances as a psychologist, not to mention numerous television comedy roles, Brothers also wrote for a long-running syndicated advice column in newspapers and magazines, which was used as a source for some questions on the 1998–2004 revival of
Hollywood Squares. She is still considered, arguably, the first media psychologist. She died from respiratory failure on May 13, 2013, at age 85. •
Ralph Story – He became the host of ''Ralph Story's Los Angeles
(1964–1970), still considered the highest-rated local show in Los Angeles television history. Story has also hosted A.M. Los Angeles
and was the narrator for the ABC series Alias Smith and Jones'' in 1972–1973. He died on September 26, 2006, at the age of 86. ==Revivals==