Quiz Show Scandals
QUIZ SHOW SCANDALS
QUIZ SHOW SCANDALS. A quiz show craze swept the United States in the 1950s. Television programs, such as CBS's The $64,000 Question, turned contestants into instant celebrities. One contestant, Charles Van Doren, reigned for fifteen weeks as champion of
NBC's Twenty-One. The handsome, bright college instructor created a national sensation, winning $129,000, and even landing the cover of Time magazine.
Quiz show ratings skyrocketed under the guise of honest competition, but two whistleblowers—Edward Hilgemeier and former Twenty-One champion Herb Stempel—revealed that the shows were rigged. Champions, such as Van Doren, were chosen for their dashing looks and personality, and were fed the answers beforehand. Contestants were even instructed when to pause for greatest dramatic effect.
Quiz show fraud tainted the television industry. Van Doren initially denied being coached, only later confessing under pressure from a congressional inquiry in 1959. Critics pointed to quiz shows as confirming the decline of American morals. As a result, television networks added more news and documentary programs during the 1960s. Robert Redford brought the quiz show scandal to life in the 1994 motion picture Quiz Show, starring Ralph Fiennes as Van Doren. Van Doren did not cooperate with Redford on the film version and has never spoken publicly about the scandals.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, Kent. Television Fraud: The History and Implications of the Quiz Show Scandals. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1978.
DeLong, Thomas A. Quiz Craze: America's Infatuation with Game Shows. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1991.
Bob Batchelor
See also Scandals ; Television: Programming and Influence .
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U-Va.'s Larry Sabato is a high-tech political junkie in a home that still feels like Thomas Jefferson's scholarly village
Newspaper article from: The Washington Post; 10/31/2009; ; 700+ words
; ...s not precisely what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he...fences. Intended by Jefferson to house 10 branches...might have been during Jefferson's era. "We stayed...collection," says Brian Hogg, senior historic preservation...
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U-Va. to Renovate Jefferson's Masterpiece; Rotunda May Be More Accessible
Newspaper article from: The Washington Post; 11/8/2007; ; 700+ words
; ...authentically renovate Thomas Jefferson's masterpiece...said Brian Hogg, senior preservation...much is left of Jefferson's building...White's?" Hogg said. "How...accurate to Jefferson." Tourists...clashing of Thomas Jefferson...
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 "St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)")
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OBITUARIES.(St. Charles)(Obituary\Judy K. Hogg\Virginia L. Kershaw\Leah "Jackie" Jacqueline Borgesen {Headline}Obituaries {Lead}Judy K. Hogg)(Obituary)
Newspaper article from: St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO); 8/6/1993; 700+ words
; Judy K. Hogg Judy K. Hogg, 50, of St. Charles, died Wednesday...Saturday at the Baue Funeral Home, 620 Jefferson Street, St. Charles. Burial will...home. Among survivors are one son, Thomas Hogg of St. Charles; three daughters...
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Books: Well red at Oxford Inside an old trunk destined for a car boot sale, a thrilling cache of letters has emerged to shed light on the student days of the revolutionary firebrand and poet, P B Shelley. Suzi Feay is transported by a brilliant philosophical prank
Newspaper article from: The Independent on Sunday; 4/24/2005; ; 700+ words
; ...Blake-crazed serial killer of Thomas Harris's novel Red Dragon, going...almost equally interesting friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, go on sale at Christie's on...which got both Shelley and Hogg expelled from Oxford. This was...
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'This city is the best'
Newspaper article from: The Sunday Herald; 1/26/2003; ; 700+ words
; ...Scott, Galt and Hogg died and Thomas Carlyle left for London. It is...Letters To His Kinfolk as well as Thomas Carlyle's Reminiscences. Not...I did not know that a friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, joined them for six weeks and...
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Love among the Romantics. (Essay).(male eroticism in the 19th century)(Critical Essay)
Magazine article from: The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide; 9/1/2002; ; 700+ words
; ...Trelawny's letters also were burned. Two volumes of Hogg's Life of Shelley disappeared, probably through...Shelley legend"--Medwin and Trelawny (as well as Thomas Jefferson Hogg and Thomas Love Peacock in England)-were attacked for having...
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Shelley the Atheist.(Percy Bysshe Shelley)
Magazine article from: American Atheist Magazine; 9/22/2003; ; 700+ words
; ...have," he confided to his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg, "sunk into a premature old age...University, from which he and Hogg, his collaborator, were expelled...from all communication with Mr. Hogg," and place himself under the...
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 "The Evening Standard (London, England)")
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in brief.
Newspaper article from: The Evening Standard (London, England); 2/24/2005; 583 words
; ...letters, by Shelley and friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg, were discovered in a trunk in...letters by Shelley and four by Hogg date from the poet's days at...Oxford, in 1810-11. He and Hogg were expelled for writing a pamphlet...
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The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley.(Review)
Magazine article from: Studies in Romanticism; 6/22/2001; ; 700+ words
; ...edition nearly a century old. Thomas Hutchinson's Complete Poetical...Hope") were sent by Percy to Thomas Jefferson Hogg as Elizabeth's as part of an...wrote those poems that he had told Hogg were by his sister," but on page...
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"The child of a fierce hour": Shelley and Napoleon Bonaparte.(Percy Shelley)
Magazine article from: Studies in Romanticism; 9/22/2004; ; 700+ words
; ...August 1815 letter from Percy Shelley to his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg. (1) Holmes finds this letter "difficult" because...correspondence, the other being a December 1812 letter to Hogg (Letters 1: 345-54; Holmes 292). This is not...
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Thomas Jefferson Hogg
Book article from: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition
Thomas Jefferson Hogg 1792-1862, friend and biographer of...Shelley to write a life of her husband, Hogg issued (1858) the first two volumes...inaccurate, and overly devoted to incidents in Hogg's own life; the family eventually withdrew...
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Hogg, Thomas Jefferson
Book article from: The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature
Hogg, Thomas Jefferson (1792–1862), educated at Oxford with Shelley and sent down with his friend on...in 1858. Peacock , in his Memorials of Shelley , felt obliged to question and revise many of Hogg's observations.
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Percy Bysshe Shelley
Encyclopedia entry from: Encyclopedia of World Biography
...year at Oxford (1810-1811), Shelley and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg issued a pamphlet provocatively entitled The Necessity...Harriet Westbrook, and he tried to set up, with her and Hogg, one of those triangular relationships that were to...
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Shelley, Percy
Encyclopedia entry from: U*X*L Encyclopedia of World Biography
...course of his first and only year at Oxford University, in England (1810 – 1811), Shelley and a friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg issued a pamphlet provocatively entitled "The Necessity of Atheism (the belief that there is no God)." Both...
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