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Will Giveaway Shows Continue To Spread?
with the prize-winner getting a mink coat, a trip to Europe for two, a convertible car and a diamond ring.
Then there’s Edgar Bergen’s Do You Trust Your Wife?, which debuts on CBS Tuesday. Contestants on this one can win up to $100,000 in the form of a weekly income of $100 for 20 years.
Even fairly low-budgeted shows are off on a new jackpot kick. Name That Tune this season added $25,000 for winners who answer a series of questions over a five-week span. Love Story, successor to Welcome Travelers, offers a trip for two to Paris, a car and $500. A husband-wife team recently cracked the “bonus stunt” on Beat the Clock for $3100. Viewers of Chance of a Lifetime can win $500 each week by picking the winner of the two competing acts on the show. Contestants on Feather Your Nest get a crack at winning a completely furnished house.
Groucho Marx perhaps best summed up the headlong trend to bigger and better jackpots when he announced recently on his You Bet Your Life that he won’t take a back seat to any giveaway show. Groucho boosted the prize for any contestant mentioning the “secret word” from $100 to $101 (which is split at $50.50 each for the lucky contestant and his partner). Networks and sponsors, despite these telltale signs, insist they are not trying to “buy” an audience for their shows at the expense of more creative and more literate programming. But most sponsors nonetheless are beating at the doors of their ad agencies and networks to “find me a show like $64,000 Question.” At least 100 new giveaway programs have been submitted, with prizes ranging from another $100,000 in cash, to a $200 per month
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Emcee Jan Murray, Evelyn Patrick
annuity for the rest of the winner’s life, to a producing oil gusher in Texas.
But there already are signs that the stampede may be checked.
Remembering how the giveaway craze knocked several fine radio shows off the air, network executives are leery about giving jackpot programs a chance to crowd creative shows off TV. “This whole idea of buying an audience is a sickness,” one network vice president averred. “I don’t think TV will be discharging its obligation if it pursues that course. But I also don’t believe there will be many more new giveaway shows. Actually, I doubt whether there’s room for even one successful giveaway program on each of the three networks.”
The failure of The Big Surprise to create the same excitement and Page 1 publicity that greets The $64,000 Question has also alerted the networks to the possibility that the mere size of the jackpot won’t insure a good rating. When New York police sergeant Barney Arluck tried (and failed) to win that $100,000 on Surprise, the show drew a rating of only 15.3, compared to the 50’s and 60’s gained consistently by Question.
Networks are convinced that even