History Main / GameShow

In 1998, ''Series/WhoWantsToBeAMillionaire'' gave the genre a shot in the arm and brought a new age of FollowTheLeader [[WhoWantsToBeWhoWantsToBeAMillionaire games]] that use the editing room to manufacture drama legally. However, in the mid-2010's this started to fall out of favor, especially after Creator/{{ABC}} began ordering revivals of more traditional games (such as ''Series/MatchGame'' and ''Series/{{Pyramid}}'') with formats that were more faithful to their classic formats, yet still modern in execution.

As the game show genre slowly rebuilt its old reputation, the 1970s-80s brought [[SceneryPorn flashy sets]] and catchy music, with 1975, 1985, and 1987 being particularly good years for the genre.

The 1990s brought with it a sense that ideas were running out, as networks and cable stations dropped games left and right (the last Big Three victim being ''Series/CaesarsChallenge'' in January 1994). Only ''Series/ThePriceIsRight'', ''Series/WheelOfFortune'', and ''Series/{{Jeopardy}}'' remained through the entire decade, with a few other games briefly popping up here and there. More discerning contestants opted to appear on [[https://time2play.com/blog/game-shows-youre-most-likely-to-win/ game shows you're most likely to win]] in order to up their chances at a big prize. [[Creator/{{GSN}} Game Show Network]] launched in December 1994, giving fans a constant home for classic games and new formats; prior to that, they'd had to rely on other cable nets, including Creator/{{Nickelodeon}}, Creator/USANetwork, and [[Creator/{{Freeform}} CBN/The Family Channel]] for their fix. 2015 would bring the launch of a new classic game channel, Buzzr, owned by [[Creator/FremantleMedia Fremantle]] and serving as vault channel for their classic game show library.

The fallout from the scandals resulted in the amendment of the Federal Communications Act that declared "fixing of televised contests of intellectual knowledge or skill" illegal. Many cooperating contestants ended up with their lives ruined and their public reputation tarnished: Charles van Doren was kicked from his old tenure at Columbia University, and barely managed to secure a low-profile job as an ''Encyclopedia Britannica'' editor where he was paid peanuts; and Teddy Nadler, who made $264,000 on ''Series/The64000Question'' (about $2.5 million in 2020 dollars), [[HumiliationConga ended up applying for a simple job as a census taker and absolutely failed a simple map-reading quiz]]. Throughout the [=60s=], the prizes were not allowed to stretch beyond four digits; big-ticket game shows (especially quizzes) fell out of favor until 1973 with ''[[Series/{{Pyramid}} The $10,000 Pyramid]]''. The British had an identical scandal in 1958 (''Twenty One'' on Granada) and this resulted in a limit of £1,000 on cash prizes until the mid-1990s; [[LoopholeAbuse more frequently the top prize would be a car or, in one case, a speedboat]].

Game show rigging began in 1954, when an indictment of the FCC against ABC that accused the latter's quiz shows of legally counting as gambling was ruled by the Supreme Court of the United States as not counting as such, and dismissed the case as motivated by prejudice against lottery, [[TheNewRockAndRoll which was a moral panic at the moment]]. Since game shows were not legally lotteries, that meant the laws that governed authorized lotteries didn't apply, and this included the laws that prevented rigging; the producers knew that damn well, and thus they immediately proceeded to rig the hell out of their game shows, sometimes even going as far as decrying honest game shows like the pilot broadcast of ''Series/TwentyOne'' as complete failures[[note]]in the producers' words, it turned out to be a mockery of the format and all it did was showing off how completely ignorant your average Joe was[[/note]]. In one particular instance, the producers of ''Series/The64000Question'' actively tried as hard as possible to block a contestant from winning the top prize, with a side serving of sexism due to said contestant being a woman blessed with extreme photographic memory and thus having a fair share of knowledge about "manly" pop culture topics such as boxing and horse racing. And then, to top it off, many producers proceeded to cover everything up as hard as possible; ''Series/{{Dotto}}'' was abruptly cancelled as soon as the producers found out that a contestant blew the whistle to the FCC about having seen a notebook in the backstage with all the answers his rival said, and when 150 producers and staff members were summoned to a state grand jury to explain, 100 of them ended up lying to the jury.

Game shows were enormously popular in America during the 1950s when TV became a progressively more viable purchase, until several of the most popular ones[[note]]''Series/TwentyOne'' (the most infamous), ''Series/TicTacDough'' (~75% of the nighttime run), ''[[Series/The64000Question The $64,000 Question]]'' (some contestants were set up to win or lose depending on whether the head of sponsor Revlon liked them), ''The $64,000 Challenge'' ('''children!'''), and ''Series/{{Dotto}}'' (the smoking gun)[[/note]] turned out to be [[ExecutiveMeddling rigged]].

* ''Winning Combination''

* ''Series/{{Child's Play|1982}}''

* ''Series/ChildsPlay''

* ''Series/TheWall''

* ''Beat The Odds''

* ''Knockout''

* ''Series/AreYouSmarterThanAFifthGrader''

* ''[[UsefulNotes/{{Dendy}} Dendy: The New Reality]]''

* ''Series/{{Exit}}''

* ''WebOriginal/NoxcrewGameshow''

* ''Series/WinningStreak''