The $60 Million Question

Are the quiz shows rigged? The question, worth far more than $64,000 in an industry that is plunging $60 million a year on such programs, has tickled the curiosity of millions of TV watchers. It seemed more pertinent than ever last week when ten-year-old Robert Strom pushed his winnings to $160,000 on CBS's $64,000 Question, and a $10-a-week Government clerk, Theodore Nadler, hit $152,000 on $64,000 Challenge.

The answer: the producers of many shows control the outcome as closely as they dare--without collusion with contestants, yet far more effectively than most viewers suspect.

From the heyday of radio's first spectacular giveaways, quiz producers have stacked the cards to make the game as entertaining as possible. Stop the Music telephoned listeners, apparently at random, to give them a chance to name the "mystery tune" and win a growing jackpot, but by the time the broadcast started, the calls were stacked up on the switchboard and auditioned by a program staffer, who put them on the air in the most dramatic order. Just in case enough listeners might not know the mystery tune, tips on its name were planted regularly in Walter Winchell's gossip column--by Stop the Music itself.

Ad-Lib Writers. In that tradition, producers try to leave so little to chance that TV has spawned a group of craftsmen who call themselves "audience participation comedy writers.'' Not only do they interview prospective participants and write the ad-lib banter between contestants and M.C.s on such shows as Two for the Money and Edgar Bergen's recently ended Do You Trust Your Wife?, but their lines are carefully rehearsed.

Even the chitchat between contestant and quizmaster on Twenty One and $64,000 Question is composed and drilled in advance. On What's My Line?, the panel does not know the guest's occupation it is supposed to guess, but its members are prompted before air time with questions calculated to produce the funny double entendre. When Trust your Wife used celebrities as contestants, they were guaranteed a fee regardless of whether they won. "Of course," says a Hollywood agent who gets requests from quiz shows for celebrities, "they don't ask anything that will make a big name look stupid." Strike It Rich insures itself on that score by rehearsing some questions with its guests.

The big-money shows are subtler. With huge audiences at stake, they go to extremes to appear beyond reproach. They know that they cannot afford to risk collusion with contestants. Yet, estimates one veteran of such shows, "you have 70% or 80% control of what happens." The technique is simple: "To keep a contestant winning, all you have to do is figure out how not to hit a question he doesn't know. That's the basis of all quiz shows." The producers hand-pick their contestants for personality, occupation and geographical spread as well as specialized knowledge, then arm themselves with a shrewd, thorough insight into the contestant's strength and weakness, and have full control of the questions he will be asked.

"Who Has the Key?" The show takes pains to create an illusion that the questions have been hatched in an ivory vault. Sponsor Revlon's bank, the Manufacturers Trust Co., performs a weekly ritual on Sixty-Four (as the trade calls $64,000 Question) by supplying an escort for the questions: two armed guards and two bank officials, including one who won a vice-presidency at the bank a month after the show went on the air. "There is all this rigmarole about locked vaults," says one important insider, "but who has the key to the locked vault? The producer, of course." When a contest reaches big-money levels, the producer deposits questions each week specially earmarked for the contestant. If a contestant is unpleasant, or if the show's Trendex rating has not been peaking properly during his ascent to the higher plateaus of prize money, a question may be devised to knock him off the show. Sometimes a loser is needed to give the program psychological--and economic--balance.

The art of writing quiz questions can make lethal ones seem no tougher than easy ones. "If a producer knows that contestant's favorite opera is Lucia di Lammermoor, and that he knows more about this opera than any other," explains one old hand, "a very difficult, multi-part question on Lucia would be apple pie to the contestant, but a multi-part question involving difficult details in several different operas could be calculated to defeat the contestant while seeming no tougher to the casual viewer."

When a contestant has reached all but the biggest payoff on $64,000 Question, audience psychology virtually demands his victory. In its 22 months on the air, only two of the players who elected a $64,000 question have failed to win. (The system of control is not foolproof; it was not proof, for example, against the mental block that stumped Randolph Churchill at the $128 level.) But most big winners have been blessed by crucial questions right up their alleys. Marine Captain Richard S. McCutchen, the cooking expert, whose particular specialty is French cuisine, got his $64,000 question in French cuisine, not in Cantonese or Neapolitan fare. Shoemaker Gino Prato, the opera expert, whose knowledge of German or French repertory is not up to his Italian specialty, got his tough questions on Italian opera. Jockey Billy Pearson, a $64,000 winner whose art expertise does not extend to Chinese art, says: "I studied like hell on Chinese art. But I never got a question on it."

How to Groom Winners. How do the producers determine where each contestant is weak or strong? On Twenty One, candidates cannot qualify for the show without taking a four-hour, 363-question test that ranges across the spectrum of subjects used on the show. Co-Producer Dan Enright began burning the test papers several weeks ago to avert any suspicion that they were being used to study the contestants' knowledge patterns. But before the test papers are burned, somebody at the Twenty One office must still look at them to grade them. Charles Van Doren. the show's most famed alumnus, who won an even bigger prize last week (see PEOPLE) feels certain that no questions were being form-fitted-- to his phenomenal mind. Certainly nobody in the quiz business suggests that his defeat on an easy question (Who is King of the Belgians?) could have been desired, let alone designed, by the show's producers.

At Entertainment Productions Inc., which produces $64,000 Question and $64,000 Challenge, Executive Producer Steve Carlin, who insists that all stories of stacked questions "are ridiculous," says that there is no written examination. He explains that applicants merely get a brief, informal screening. But former contestants make it sound more rigorous. Captain McCutchen: "I think they establish pretty well your limits." Music Professor Richard Gore: "The questioning was comparable to an oral exam for a Ph.D." Baseball Expert Patrick J. Keough: "About six fellows with baseball record books questioned me about 75 minutes. They must have asked me about 150 questions."

In the case of 14-year-old Susan Sandler, the horse-racing expert, the show employed one of the most effective techniques for grooming winners: she was sent back home to Oak Park, Mich, after her Manhattan interview and told that the show would not be ready for her for several more weeks. During the interval, she naturally concentrated on studying her speciality--just as other contestants have done in such fields as Sherlock Holmes stories and Dickens novels. The show sets a high premium on odd matches of contestant and specialty. One applicant. Psychologist Joyce Brothers, a 28-year-old blonde, was encouraged by the producers to apply her photographic mind to boning up on boxing. By the time she was called to appear, Dr. Brothers had mastered the subject well enough to win $64,000.

Plotting the Show. The packagers of both $64,000 shows also produced NBC's The Big Surprise, which folded fortnight o ago. One of its planners offers this insight into the big-money show : "We always used a plot, an ideal way we would like the half -hour to go. If one contestant wasn't getting a good audience reaction, we would say that ideally it would be good if he got the answers for $500 and $1,000 and then missed $2,000. It develops a little audience antagonism if anyone loses right away. In a high percentage of cases, the program went in accordance with the plot. There was a big discussion on how long we should go before somebody would be allowed to win $100,000. We teased first with a few $50,000 winners. In terms of showmanship, we had to work out the ideal timing and the ideal winner." The producers chose 70-year-old Mrs. Ethel Richardson of Los Angeles, a folk-song buff. For a switch, they decided the next big winner should be a young schoolboy. They settled on 14-year-old George L. Wright III of Manhattan.

Only rarely do quiz producers get caught in indiscretions. The Big Surprise is being sued by Showgirl Dale Logue, who complains that she was deliberately fed a question that defeated her for $10,000. It was the same question, she says, that she muffed during a "warmup session" before the show. In their growing desperation to check falling ratings that have knocked six quiz-panel shows off the air since October, the programs may be taking greater risks, especially in trying to woo celebrities as contestants. Showman Nils T. Granlund, who won $10,000 from The Big Surprise on "extremely easy" questions, admits that some of the questions he answered during his screening interviews may have turned up on the show itself. One baseball star who was approached to appear on $64,000 Question says that he was asked for a commitment that he would go for the top prize but was assured that his questions would be batting-practice pitches. Connecticut's Vivien Kellems, who was billed as expert on taxes, laid down the condition that her questions be limited to U.S. income tax. The producers obliged. One noncelebrity candidate for the $64,000 Challenge says that in her screening interview she was assured that "we tailor questions to the kind of mind we are working with."

For all their mastery of the situation, the quiz producers seem helpless before the major ailment afflicting their shows. The sum of $64.000 no longer inspires audience awe. Viewers have become so blase that the producers arbitrarily changed their rules to enable Schoolboy Strom to win as much as $256,000, and devised new rules to let Clerk Nadler keep winning too. More important, a kind of inflation has also hit the contestants: instead of the kind of ordinary people who struck a responsive chord in viewers, they now run to narrow specialists and photographic minds--"freaks," as the trade calls them. Given a margin of error for the contestants' human foibles, the producers seem to be able to control virtually everything--except their own fears of losing their audience.

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