“I built a giant death trap.”
On October 7th, 2023
Mr. Beast posted this video with the contestant
traveling through a series of obstacles.
It was a video sponsored by a mobile game
called Stumble Guys.
Along with CGI
the pivotal moments in the trap...
included obvious cuts.
The second trap ends with contestant Zack diving under a door.
See how his leg is here at this point.
When it switches to an alternate angle...
his leg is here.
See the shoes and no bag.
Now here's a bag and no shoes.
The video has more than 150 million views.
[overlapping Mr. Beast intros]
Around half of Mr. Beast's videos are now game shows.
“$111,500.”
Their questionable reality is part of a history
that goes back to a national scandal...
in the 1950s.
It includes congressional hearings...
“The dramatic climax of the probe of fixed and rigged quiz shows.”
...castaways in Borneo...
“And the tribe has spoken.”
...and a brief era when cheating on a game show...
was a federal crime.
“...wins $100,000...”
In the 1940s, television had begun advances across the nation.
And by 1955, a game show called “The $64,000 Question”
debuted on CBS.
“Yes, the $64,000 question.”
A contestant in an isolation booth
was asked increasingly difficult questions.
The design implied security and integrity.
Questions were delivered straight from a bank vault to the set.
It was sponsored by Revlon...
and was a fabulously successful TV show...
topping ratings with 16 million viewers.
Almost half of all houses that owned TVs were watching it.
It started a quiz show boom.
These shows included Dotto...
a game where contestants answered trivia questions
to unlock a connect-the-dots puzzle.
The less said the better...
And Twenty One...
“Welcome back to Twenty One.”
...a show where two contestants appeared in isolation booths.
Each answered questions for points, hoping to reach 21.
It was sponsored by Geritol, a supplement that claimed to help with...
“Tired blood.”
The show and trend peaked in 1957...
when Time magazine put long-running quiz champ
Charles Van Doren on the cover.
His streak began with the defeat of...
“Herbert Stempel, our 29 year old GI College student.”
“You win $20,000!”
“Congratulations!”
Van Doren became a family friendly celebrity.
TV's own health restoring antidote to Elvis Presley
as part of the literary Van Doren clan.
A family well known in New York intellectual circles.
After his $129,000 streak ended
an amount worth 1.3 million today....
Van Doren became the Today Show's cultural correspondent.
Just two months later
the shows were so popular...
that Time magazine was asking: Are quiz shows rigged?
“There's all this rigamarole about locked vaults.”
One insider said.
“But who has the key to the locked vault?”
“The producer, of course.”
Soon everyone would be asking the same question.
In summer of ‘58, Dotto went blotto.
The show was canceled after a contestant
found an answer filled notebook backstage.
A slew of shows were implicated in “quiz guilt”
over the next few years, including Twenty One.
Herbert Stempel...
the Twenty One contestant who had lost to Van Doren...
made claims that Twenty One was rigged
with producers providing him questions and thorough stage direction.
“Your time is up, for example, for five points
which would give you a 21.”
“What motion picture won the Academy Award for 1955?”
I don't remember anything about that.
The producers claimed Stempel was blackmailing them.
The US House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight...
began hearings on the quiz shows.
The report began:
“It is one thing to arouse and hold the attention
of the viewing public by programs which are openly...
and avowedly pure fiction.”
“And should be known as such to any reasonable person.”
“It is quite another thing....
however, when the airwaves belonging to the people...
whose free use has been licensed
by the Federal Communications Commission are used deceitfully...
to exploit for private profit
the interests of the viewing public.”
Stempel unloaded details of the coaching...
in addition to questions and answers.
Like that hey refused to turn on the air conditioning in his booth...
“Thereby causing me to perspire profusely.”
“Van Doren arrives to apologize and attempt to explain
to the millions whose friendship and respect he had won.”
Van Doren eventually admitted in testimony...
“He instructed me how to answer the questions.”
“To pause before certain of the answers.”
[mumbling lines]
“On this first occasion and on several subsequent ones...
he gave me a script to memorize.”
“And before the program he took back the script...
and rehearsed me in my part.”
“But his statement is a rueful and moving
realization that for his wealth and fame...
he paid a bitterly high price.”
The investigations resulted in Van Doren
losing his job as a Today Show correspondent...
and in the cancellation of other quiz shows.
Though he and others pled guilty of perjury in earlier testimony...
he was freed.
But more importantly, the Communications Act of 1934 was amended...
to include prohibited practices
in case of contests of intellectual knowledge...
intellectual skill or chance...
making it unlawful with intent to deceive the listening or viewing public...
with up to a year of imprisonment.
The FCC was in charge...
and rigging the game show was a federal crime.
So what happened?
Well, I was actually a huge Survivor fan
and I found the whole Stacey Stillman
Mark Burnett controversy to be super interesting.
After the 1950s, a combination of falling ratings and public distrust...
kept game shows lower profile.
Until a renaissance.
“The first person who refuses to eat a bug loses immunity for their tribe.”
The long running show Survivor made its debut in 2000.
Contestants competed in challenges, but crucially...
elimination occurred via vote at Tribal Council.
In 2001...
an original Survivor cast member claimed the show was rigged.
Essentially, Stacy alleged that in the first season
in order to save a more ratings-friendly contestant...
“He's fat, but he's good.”
Mark Burnett, the executive producer on the series
approached two other contestants on the beach and essentially said...
to vote for Stacey instead of that other contestant
that they were planning on voting for.
Years later, Attorney George Brietigam started to wonder...
did the old quiz show laws apply in that case?
I filed a Freedom of Information Act request from 2000 to 2017.
But the lawsuit entered into a private settlement
before any FCC investigation commenced.
This followed a pattern in the 2000s of a weakened quiz show law.
The truth is, they're actually not really fighting
these reality shows using that statute.
The closest thing that I found was
there was a planned Fox gameshow called Our Little Genius.
“He also happens to be one of the smartest people in America.”
The planned 2009 show cast kids...
as quiz competitors to adults.
One complainant to the FCC said their child
had been registered as a calculus expert...
but was suddenly switched to music theory.
It says a producer passed them note names...
like the hemidemisemiquaver...
as the British name for the 64th note.
The complainant ended saying...
“I urge you to conduct in investigation.”
That investigation was ultimately
abandoned by the FCC because what the production did was
it essentially said, “Hey, we're not going to broadcast this.”
We don't broadcast this
you guys don't even have jurisdiction.
And it's true: The FCC only has jurisdiction for broadcast.
Cable?
Do whatever you want.
Internet?
Nobody cares.
You can shoot something for broadcast
but as long as it doesn't actually air, you're not in violation.
And the time line of game show investigations overlaps
with a change in consumption options.
Game shows being real was possibly...
just a window in time.
[slowly] “Three... two... one.”
But does it matter though?
“That was so—I’m speechless!”
Everyone assumes that because I wrote this paper
I am in support of stronger regulations
stronger FCC enforcement...
I really am not.
I think we're at the point
everyone knows that what's on TV is often fake.
Everyone knows what's on the internet is usually not real.
Mr. Beast has just one FCC license...
to help coordinate radio communication for his productions.
The Mr. Beast team did not respond to our multiple requests for comment.
And in 1959, Geritol and Sominex sales soared...
while Van Doren sweated.
Stumble Guys is currently number six in action
on the App Store.
“I want to tell you about Stumble Guys.”
Hey, everybody.
My name's Phil Edwards.
I'm the producer of this episode.
If you're anything like me, you might be a little worried now
that you have tired blood.
“Tired blood, tired blood.”
If you're a fan of Vox
whether you've been watching us for years
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I think that our mission is still pretty clear...
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Now, most newsrooms
they’ll make money through either advertising or subscriptions
but there are a couple big issues with those models...
especially for a channel like ours.
First, advertising goes up and down with the economy.
We often only know a few months out
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Help us get to 95,000 gifts by the end of the year...
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