Ah, game shows. Time to sit back, play along, and root for the contestants as
they try to win big money for answering some questions - or maybe just guessing right.
But some game shows make critical mistakes - or get played by unscrupulous contestants.
Here are the ten biggest game show scandals of all time.
#10. A Costly Second Chance
It was 2001, and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was one of the hottest shows in America.
The Regis Philbin-hosted quiz show aired multiple nights a week and spawned spin-offs
around the world. And now it was time for Austin’s Ed Toutant to sit in the hot seat.
The contestant answered his first eight questions correctly, but on his second,
he was asked which vegetable had been genetically engineered to glow by English scientists.
He guessed tomato, the answer was potato, and his run was over with a measly $1000 in his pocket.
But there was a wrinkle to come in this story.
Ed did some research after the show, and found that the potato experiment was done in Scotland,
not England - and there were tomato experiments going on in England! The show had screwed up,
and they decided to bring him back to continue his run seven months later. Because the show’s
prize grew for every episode without a million dollar winner, he was playing for more money
this time - and Toutant proceeded to breeze through the next six questions, winning the
grand prize on a question about the first use of commercial aerosol cans. Ed Toutant won 1,860,000,
and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire escaped with their reputation intact - if not their pocketbook.
It wouldn’t be the only time a popular game show made a controversial call.
#9. Southern Screwup!
Wheel of Fortune has been on the air since 1975, and the wheel-spinning,
word-guessing game of chance is a popular low-stakes game show. But for Renee Durette,
one puzzle would kick off a major controversy. The Florida woman was doing well, and she was
ready to guess a Christmas themed puzzle. She proudly blurted out “Seven Swans a Swimmin’”
to answer - and was told she was wrong! Another contestant quickly guessed
“Seven Swans a Swimming”, got the money, and Durette went on to lose the game.
To say Southerners were mad was putting it lightly.
The rules of Wheel of Fortune say the puzzle answer has to be repeated exactly, and other
contestants have lost on minor errors like accidentally adding or omitting the word “and”.
But while Durette accepted her loss gracefully, others said that it was actually discrimination.
They argued that her answer didn’t deliberately omit the G, but it was an involuntary product
of her southern accent. The show stuck by its rules, nothing came of the controversy, and
the wheel continues to give away its prizes - but they’re probably happy they don’t film down south.
But few game show screwups involved this much money - literally.
#8. Down the Tubes
The success of Millionaire meant every network wanted their own quiz
show hit - and some added bizarre twists. That was the case with Million Dollar Money Drop,
a Fox show where you literally started holding the million dollars in your hands.
You had to bet on every answer by putting money on what you thought was the right
answer - and anything on a wrong answer would be dropped down a massive chute,
never to be seen again. Contestants kept anything they had left at the end of the game.
But for one couple, a bad question saw their fortune flushed away.
Gabe and Brittany were faced with a tricky question about what was sold first - Walkman
or Post-It Notes. They argued, and Gabe insisted it was Post-It Notes. They put
$800,000 on the Post-It Notes - and watched as it disappeared down the tubes. But after the show,
research indicated that Post-It Notes were briefly sold first in limited cities. Gabe
was right! At first the producers tried to claim that the fine print meant they were in the clear
and that the couple lost all their remaining money on the next question anyway, but public
outrage forced them to invite the couple back on the show for another chance. But that wouldn’t
happen - because the show was quickly canceled. And with such a great research team, too.
This next controversy was so big - you never even got to see it.
#7. Child’s Play
Mark Burnett is the king of reality TV, the man behind hits like Survivor and The Apprentice.
He wanted to get in on the quiz show game, but his version had a twist - it would star
kids. “Our Little Genius” would have kids answering questions with their parents
deciding whether they would continue or walk away with the money they had.
It was scheduled to premiere in January 2010 - but less than a week before it aired,
the show was pulled from the schedule and would never be seen again. Why?
A tidal wave of controversy was about to follow.
It turned out Burnett had pulled the plug himself, after many reports about the integrity
of the series. Contestants were reportedly getting advance information on the answers before taping,
and production was stopped when contestants didn’t seem to know the answers. There were even reports
that contestants were guaranteed a certain amount of money. Amid the controversy, the FCC briefly
planned to investigate the series - the first time this would happen to a game show since the 1950s.
But when the show was pulled, the controversy faded away and the investigation with it.
But it’s not always the show that causes the controversy. Sometimes it’s the contestant.
#6. The Opposite of Laying Low
The game show Super Password was a revival of the popular 1960s show,
where contestants were paired with celebrities and had to try to guess a word using only
one-word clues. And the record-setter on the new version was a man named Patrick Quinn,
who had stunned audiences by winning a massive $58,000 during his two days on the show.
But he was about to make the news in a very different way. When Quinn showed up
at the studio to collect his prize money, he was greeted by law enforcement there to arrest him.
It turned out that Patrick Quinn wasn’t Patrick Quinn at all.
He was actually Kerry Dee Ketchum, a notorious con artist with outstanding
fraud warrants in Alaska and Indiana. His most notorious crime? An elaborate
scheme to fake his wife’s death to collect a $100,000 insurance policy.
He was a wanted man, which makes his decision to appear on a nationally broadcast game show
all the more puzzling. In the end, Ketchum was sentenced to five years in prison and
ordered to pay restitution to the insurance company - and to add insult to injury,
his prize money was rescinded because he deceived the show about his eligibility.
But he wasn’t the most notorious criminal to appear on a game show.
#5. Target Acquired
It was 1989, and one of the most popular game shows on ITV in Britain was Bullseye. Combining
a quiz game with a dart game, it was known for its large bull mascot and its comic gameplay.
A contestant named John Cooper appeared on the show, and largely escaped attention - and at
the same time, a horrible streak of crimes were terrorizing Wales. Robberies, violent assaults,
arson, burglaries, and murders. All the police had to go on was witness descriptions and a sketch.
But they also had footage of the killer - they just didn’t know it yet.
When Peter and Gwenda Dixon were brutally murdered only a month after Cooper’s stint
on the game show, police were able to use the sketch and the footage of Cooper’s appearance to
tie him to the crimes. They arrested him, and he was eventually sentenced to life in prison. While
the TV show Bullseye would always have a dark mark on its history for having a serial killer
as a contestant, it was also now one of the only game shows in history to help end a crime spree.
Few scandals get more attention than when a contestant figures out how to beat the system.
#4. The Price Is...Actually Right?
Most kids have fond memories of watching The Price Is Right when home sick from school,
and the price-guessing game has been a part of American life for decades. Contestants take a
stab at the price of items for sale, and the closest gets the chance to win big prizes.
It’s pretty rare to get an exact sum even in the preliminary game, and everyone was
surprised when Terry Kneiss nailed the price of a smoker/grill combo. But it shocked everyone
even more when he guessed the price of the grand-prize showcase to the dollar - $23,743.
Did Terry Kneiss cheat The Price Is Right?
Host Drew Carey assumed the episode would never air because Kneiss had obviously cheated, but it
turned out that Kneiss and his wife were superfans of the show. Many prizes repeated themselves over
the course of the show, and Terry and Linda had kept track of them and memorized them. They even
had the help of Ted Slauson, another superfan who tried to use the same system. A combination
of memory and some signals from Linda in the audience helped Terry remember the right answer.
Is this cheating? No one can say for sure, but Terry insisted he was just well-prepared.
But he wasn’t the only game show contestant with a lot of prep time.
#3. No Whammy!
Press Your Luck, a hit game show of the 1980s, had a quiz show element - but it was most known
for its Big Board, a quick-moving board where contestants pressed a button to lock in on money
and prizes - while trying to avoid the Whammy, a cartoon critter that took away all your money. It
had a lot of fans, but few bigger than Michael Larson, who watched the show faithfully. When
he got to appear on it in 1984, he proceeded to put that knowledge to use - and won a staggering
$110,236 - the biggest one day total ever won on a game show at that point.
But there was a secret to Larson’s success.
How did Larson do so well and avoid hitting whammies while racking up the money?
Producers started panicking while it was ongoing and looked for how he could be cheating,
but it turned out that Larson had simply memorized the board’s patterns. In a
system similar to counting cards, he had observed the board and knew when to press the button.
He was so confident, he would even celebrate a split second before the prize was revealed.
At first, the producers refused to pay him, claiming he had defrauded them,
but their lawyers told them Larson hadn’t broken any rules. The show quickly fixed
the board to eliminate these patterns, and Larson went on to become a celebrity.
But there’s a fine line between smart gameplay - and a serious crime.
#2. *Cough Cough*
Have you ever been behind someone in a movie or show and they won’t stop coughing?
Imagine having to deal with that while trying to watch someone’s stunning million-pound run
on the British version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire! Major Charles Ingram
won it all in 2001, but producers soon picked up that something was unusual.
Ingram’s wife in the audience, as well as another contestant,
Tecwen Whittock, seemed to cough at unusual times - right before Ingram would answer questions.
It wasn’t long before the police got involved.
All three were accused of cheating, and soon they were indicted and convicted
of procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception. They were all given
suspended sentences and fined, and Ingram was ordered to resign his commission as a Major.
While their convictions were upheld - despite Whittock claiming to have a chronic cough - it
hasn’t hurt Ingram’s career. He went on to write two novels, and appeared on other game
shows. But as for the million pounds, it was quickly rescinded by the show.
But one scandal nearly took down an entire genre of entertainment.
#1. Twenty-One and Done
Twenty-One was one of the most popular game shows in America in the 1950s, featuring two contestants
in isolation booths competing against each other to earn points. It was dominated by Herb Stempel,
but the show was struggling in the ratings. The producers wanted to jazz it up, and they got what
they wanted when Stempel was dethroned by Charles Van Doren, a charming contestant who quickly
became one of the first game show superstars and got people talking about Twenty-One.
But it was all a lie.
A year after Stempel’s defeat, he told a reporter that he had often been given the correct answers,
and he was later told to let Van Doren defeat him and take over as champion. While Stempel was
initially assumed to be a sore loser, reports soon came out that other shows like The Big Surprise
and Dotto were fixed as well. Congress convened an investigation, Van Doren was summoned to testify,
and admitted that the show was rigged. This led to Congress amending the Communications
Act to prohibit the fixing of quiz shows, but the damage was done and it would be a long time
before the American game show regained its reputation. The scandal was so big,
it even became an Oscar-nominated movie named Quiz Show in the 1990s.
For one of the largest scams in history, check out “The Man Who Stole
$65 Billion - The Largest Ponzi Scheme in History (Bernie Madoff), or watch “How Man
Won Crazy Money By Hacking a Game Show” for an in-depth look at Michael Larson’s run.