Speaker 1: Hi everybody, it's Chuck here, your curator of the week
Speaker 1: for our Saturday Selects episode. This is a live one.
Speaker 1: We don't release too many live episodes for our Selects,
Speaker 1: but I loved this episode. This was s y s
Speaker 1: K live how game shows worked. We toured this same topic.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how many times, but it was one
Speaker 1: of my favorite ones. Uh. This episode is from September.
Speaker 1: Did I already say that? I'm not sure, but anyway,
Speaker 1: check it out. It's Josh and Chuck Live. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Speaker 1: Charles W Chuck Bryant. Jerry's not with us, but these
Speaker 1: beautiful people are at the Gothic Theater in Denver, Colorado. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was easily double last night's reception. That was That
Speaker 1: was a good start is what they call that. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if you noticed, but there's a lovely
Speaker 1: lady with a Josh sent Me shirt. Oh yes, I
Speaker 1: thank you very much. Thank you for loving that. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: so tonight, you guys, you're probably gonna feel like you
Speaker 1: just wasted your applause because we're going to be talking
Speaker 1: about game shows. Yes, oh good, you guys are into here.
Speaker 1: That's good because it was a it's a coin toss. Frankly,
Speaker 1: about half the people are like, I wonder what the
Speaker 1: real topic is, right, he's just kidding. We Actually we
Speaker 1: once did a show and I think Portland and came
Speaker 1: out and said it, um, it was the anniversary of
Speaker 1: the How the Sun Works show, so we were gonna
Speaker 1: redo it, and like all the people are like, wow,
Speaker 1: we want to like you guys, but we're really mad,
Speaker 1: right now, are you kidding? Like, yes, we're just we're
Speaker 1: all super high, so we really don't care, right, They're like,
Speaker 1: that's why we cheered game shows. So we we wanted
Speaker 1: to do game shows in part because Fourth of July
Speaker 1: is coming up. You guys can't have fireworks because it's
Speaker 1: too dry here to set off a firework. It's the
Speaker 1: most wildly irresponsible thing you could do. Something tells me
Speaker 1: that some of your militia members are going to shoot
Speaker 1: off fireworks anyway, but even still, Fourth of July is coming,
Speaker 1: so we wanted to do something American, and nothing is
Speaker 1: more American than game shows. They're like leisure suit level American, right,
Speaker 1: but as yeah, right, you get a free beer as
Speaker 1: America and his game shows are. However, it turns out
Speaker 1: that the first game show on television was actually British.
Speaker 1: It was a British investor. Now we like the bacause
Speaker 1: because they live in another country. Right, yeah, And remember this, buddy,
Speaker 1: if you shoot into the air, bullets come back down, right,
Speaker 1: So just don't shoot into the air. Maybe blanks are okay.
Speaker 1: So this first game show in Great Britain, it launched
Speaker 1: a night is called Spelling Bee and it was exactly
Speaker 1: what it sounds like, that's right. Freddie Gryswood was the host,
Speaker 1: and he dressed as a school teacher. He kind of
Speaker 1: played it up a bit, which was nice, and he
Speaker 1: would say spell this and they spelled it. And if
Speaker 1: it sounds boring, it was because even though there was
Speaker 1: nothing on TV, it still was not met with warm receptions.
Speaker 1: Advertisers liked it. But there was a columnist in The
Speaker 1: Independent in two thousand, just eighteen years ago, such a
Speaker 1: snarky British thing to say. He said this one of
Speaker 1: the few happy consequences of the Second World War was
Speaker 1: it took spelling be off air burn yea, like a
Speaker 1: good World War two burn. Right, So spelling B, even
Speaker 1: though it was boring, it kicked off this huge craze
Speaker 1: just immediately. Everyone saw like, okay, if spelling B can
Speaker 1: be popular with the advertisers, we can do better than that.
Speaker 1: We're America, right, So we took it the ball and
Speaker 1: ran with it. We were already familiar with game shows.
Speaker 1: We had him on the radio, like we had shows
Speaker 1: like Um, you Bet Your Life with Grout show Marks
Speaker 1: was a big one. Um there was what is it?
Speaker 1: What's my line? What's my line? That's where you tried
Speaker 1: to guess someone's profession by asking them questions. It's like
Speaker 1: maybe a step up from spelling B. Right. Then things
Speaker 1: start to get cool with True Their Consequences, which started
Speaker 1: out as a radio show and then very quickly moved
Speaker 1: on to TV. Truth or Consequences was this show where
Speaker 1: you had to you were asked a question and you
Speaker 1: had to answer before Bulah the buzzer sounded, and name
Speaker 1: their buzzer Beulah yeah, which is kind of neat. It's
Speaker 1: just a nice little touch, right, And if you didn't
Speaker 1: answer before Bulah went off, um, you had to face
Speaker 1: the consequences. Which is like something wacky, like a mock
Speaker 1: execution or something like that. Right. Uh. The coolest thing
Speaker 1: about that show though, was that they have you ever
Speaker 1: been to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico or driven very
Speaker 1: fast through there? Yeah? Are you from there? Okay? Pretty close?
Speaker 1: I think it's in the same state. All right, I'm
Speaker 1: a lost Crucis guy myself. But whatever, name dropper, you're
Speaker 1: a name dropping uh. Host Ralph Edwards said that they
Speaker 1: would broadcast a lot from the first town that would
Speaker 1: name their city after Truth or Consequences. This is not
Speaker 1: a joke, and that's where that town name came from.
Speaker 1: Before that, it was the lovely Hot Springs, New Mexico,
Speaker 1: and they named it Truth or Consequences. They're like, our
Speaker 1: town's name is basically just like a caution sign. We
Speaker 1: can we can lose this. We'll still keep the sign
Speaker 1: up that says Hot Springs because it's useful, but we're
Speaker 1: going to change our name. And they did. I think
Speaker 1: they cheaped out personally. Okay, don't tell them that back
Speaker 1: in New Mexico that Chucks said that. Okay, So this
Speaker 1: is I think nine was when the game shows started
Speaker 1: coming on TV in the US. And by the fifties
Speaker 1: they were like some of the top rated shows on
Speaker 1: television game shows where they call them quid shows back
Speaker 1: then even they did, and that was pretty much the format.
Speaker 1: Like they were. There was actually like thought and like
Speaker 1: skill to this um like masteries, yeah, smarts right, there
Speaker 1: was like um sixty thousand dollar question, which in today's
Speaker 1: dollars to be the five D five question. That's correct,
Speaker 1: thank you. Although you wrote this a couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: I thought, I'm really sad that you brought that up.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna not mention. All right, well, Jerry
Speaker 1: in the future cut that part out. I don't want
Speaker 1: to make Josh uncomfortable. Thank you. Jerry's all around us
Speaker 1: right now. We live on a hard drive in Jerry's
Speaker 1: computer in the future. This is all a simulation. So
Speaker 1: the pressure was on to make these quiz shows as
Speaker 1: dramatic as possible, and so producers of these quiz shows realized, hey,
Speaker 1: we can maybe manipulate these things, i e. Cheat and
Speaker 1: build up people who people love to love and people
Speaker 1: who love to hate, and America will never know the
Speaker 1: difference and they'll think it's great, right, And that's what
Speaker 1: they did. There was this one show called one. You
Speaker 1: guys might have seen the movie Quiz Show with John
Speaker 1: Treturo and Ray finds I guess not, so we're seeing
Speaker 1: worth seeing, right, Um. But it's about this actual scandal
Speaker 1: that happened in the US with this one show called
Speaker 1: twenty one, and the whole thing started where there was
Speaker 1: this producer for twenty one who approached this blue blood
Speaker 1: lip professor named Charles Van Doren and just appealed to
Speaker 1: his ego. He said, there's this guy on this show
Speaker 1: that I produced. His name is Herb Stemple. He's like
Speaker 1: the worst stain of a human being anyone's ever seen.
Speaker 1: But you can't stop winning. And America hates him and Revalon,
Speaker 1: our sponsor, is gonna leave. We're starting to lose ratings.
Speaker 1: You gotta help us, van Doren. Van Dorn's like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll see what I can do. Just feed me the
Speaker 1: lines and we'll cheat together and I will help you
Speaker 1: with that was that was okay? So he gets locked
Speaker 1: into this, right, But what Van Doren didn't know is
Speaker 1: that he was actually being scammed. It was a scam
Speaker 1: within a scam because Herb Stemple was a plant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a plant. They made him wear an ill
Speaker 1: fitting suit, they gave him a bad haircut, and they
Speaker 1: tried to make him as unlikable as possible so they
Speaker 1: would have a villain on their hands. And Herb Stemple
Speaker 1: doesn't like this, of course, because you would think like,
Speaker 1: all right, well, then go to the press and expose
Speaker 1: this thing. And he did and the press said, you're
Speaker 1: just a sore loser. Yeah, they wouldn't. The New York
Speaker 1: Times said, nah, you're just a sore loser. Uh. There
Speaker 1: was another guy who was the other dude, Stony Jackson. Yes,
Speaker 1: Stony Jackson was another. I think he was on the
Speaker 1: sixty four thousand dollar question. He went to the New
Speaker 1: York Times and Time magazine and said these are all rigged,
Speaker 1: none of these game shows are real, and they went, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just a sore loser. So finally there was hard evidence.
Speaker 1: There was another question named Otto, and somebody found a
Speaker 1: contestants notebook that had the questions and the answers in
Speaker 1: it and took it to the press. And that was that.
Speaker 1: And America's reaction was profound, you could say, they had
Speaker 1: congressional hearings on it. They amended the Nine Communications Act
Speaker 1: to expressly outlaw dishonest quiz shows. Right, this is like
Speaker 1: a very naive time in our country's history. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of a time when, uh, game show quality
Speaker 1: was one of the more important things on the docket.
Speaker 1: Right now, I'm depressed, Alicia, Hippies, I don't have to
Speaker 1: think Van Doren. By the way, he was actually indicted
Speaker 1: for perjury. He was because he had lied to Congress. No,
Speaker 1: he told the truth Congress. He lied to a court. Right,
Speaker 1: But I don't think you ever did a hard time
Speaker 1: because I said he was a blue blood. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: face it, it was still it was still America. He didn't,
Speaker 1: he didn't serve any hard time. So those quiz show
Speaker 1: scandals gave us one of the weird quirks of Jeopardy.
Speaker 1: At one point, Mervy, Yes, I still love Jeopardy. Uh. Merv.
Speaker 1: Griffin's wife suggested at one time that he do a
Speaker 1: quiz show, and he was like, shut up, nobody wants
Speaker 1: to come near a quiz show. Haven't you been paying attention?
Speaker 1: And she would you shut up? Why don't you just
Speaker 1: make the questions the answers and the answers the questions.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're very lovely people. Actually, that's just how
Speaker 1: he picture it in my head. Is there all drunk
Speaker 1: and smoking, Skelly Bangally bracelets on his wife. Julian actually
Speaker 1: suggested that, and that's where that interesting quirk of Jeopardy
Speaker 1: came from. And by the time the executives figured out
Speaker 1: it was actually the same thing, you could still feed
Speaker 1: someone the questions or answers, right, so um the scandal again.
Speaker 1: America's response was profound and it almost killed off which
Speaker 1: shows were it not for one of maybe our country's
Speaker 1: greatest geniuses ever, manned by the name of Mark Goodson,
Speaker 1: who created the greatest game show ever The price is right, Yes,
Speaker 1: Mark Goodson and Bill Toddman his partner. I don't recognize him,
Speaker 1: just Mark Goodson. So all right, well, you're weird longstanding
Speaker 1: grudge against Bill Toddmen's it's not so much that it's
Speaker 1: more an idolization of Mark Goodson. Okay, that's fine. So
Speaker 1: what Mark Goodson did he said, Okay, everybody, wait, we
Speaker 1: don't have to give up quiz shows. What we're gonna
Speaker 1: do is take quiz shows and make them dumber and
Speaker 1: then we have game shows. And that's what he did.
Speaker 1: They did away with the game. They did away with
Speaker 1: quiz anything, they did away with um having to know
Speaker 1: stuff can actually compete on the game. And that's when
Speaker 1: they got really good. Yeah, that is when they got
Speaker 1: really good. Brother, you can say that again they did.
Speaker 1: That's when it got really good because this was the
Speaker 1: era that we all know and love if anyone watches
Speaker 1: the Game show Network, when you could just trot out
Speaker 1: drunk celebrities to spew racist and homophobic jokes left and right. Well,
Speaker 1: hey make America great again? Right? Uh oh god, it's
Speaker 1: like crowded sea. Just someone big shreds legal. We don't
Speaker 1: tread on me, and let's just back away from this
Speaker 1: chuck all right, Jerry cut all that out. Uh here,
Speaker 1: celebrities get ain't drunk, which shows like the match game
Speaker 1: in Hollywood Squares, and they like flat out got drunk
Speaker 1: on the match game. If you've ever seen like behind
Speaker 1: the scene stories, it's pretty great. They just swelled vodka
Speaker 1: basically from like a noon on and you would The
Speaker 1: only smart you had to have as a contestant was
Speaker 1: to be able to all in the blanks. You had
Speaker 1: to be able to speak. That's it. Like this Frank
Speaker 1: was embarrassed because his blank squeaked like, that's as smart
Speaker 1: as you needed to be. Let's name a body part
Speaker 1: like you, you basically couldn't get it wrong. And if
Speaker 1: you got it wrong is because you just guessed wrong.
Speaker 1: You had just is is as much of a chance
Speaker 1: of guessing right as you had to get right. But
Speaker 1: there was always a chance that Nipsey Russell would be
Speaker 1: thinking the same body part. And then you're You're the winner.
Speaker 1: It's pretty great. They would carry you out on their
Speaker 1: shoulders and give you a bunch of mushrooms because they
Speaker 1: were all on mushrooms themselves. Uh. And then there was
Speaker 1: of course a newly wed game, the legendary newly Weed game,
Speaker 1: where they would trot out married couples and ask they
Speaker 1: would put one of them backstage, ask a question of
Speaker 1: the other spouse and say, you know, how would your
Speaker 1: would your husband or wife answer this? Are we doing this? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think we have to because it's one of the
Speaker 1: biggest moments in game show history. Was whole Go from
Speaker 1: the newly Wed game. We're doing Have you guys ever
Speaker 1: heard of Holga from the newly Web game? A few
Speaker 1: of you have, Well, the rest of you buckle in.
Speaker 1: So there was a woman competing with her husband on
Speaker 1: the newly Wed game. Her name is Holga. I think
Speaker 1: its name four for for argument's sake. Sure, So Holga
Speaker 1: was asked among her fellow competitors on the game, UM,
Speaker 1: tell me, girls, where is the weirdest place specifically that
Speaker 1: you personally have ever gotten the urge to make whoopie?
Speaker 1: And Holga answered in the ass you can. You can
Speaker 1: watch it online when you get home. And poor Holga's like,
Speaker 1: why does everyone laugh? I guess it's funny? And then
Speaker 1: when they brought her husband back and all the other
Speaker 1: husband as they said what do you think your wife
Speaker 1: would say? And her husband guests in the car. So
Speaker 1: they didn't win, but they definitely went down in history,
Speaker 1: and Holga was still going, why is everybody laughing at me?
Speaker 1: Then there was a show called Queen for a Day.
Speaker 1: This is an interesting show because it was a big,
Speaker 1: big hit with audiences even though it was decidedly strange,
Speaker 1: and that they would bring out women who had genuine
Speaker 1: troubles in their life and uh spill their guts about
Speaker 1: what was going on in hopes that they would be
Speaker 1: voted up via applause meter. To solve those problems with money.
Speaker 1: So you literally had ladies on TV talking about not
Speaker 1: being able to afford surgery for their sick child, and
Speaker 1: an applause meter is going up while people are going
Speaker 1: crazy and rooting them on. It sounds very strange, and
Speaker 1: it was, but it was a It was a big,
Speaker 1: big hit. It was, and in fact, they even stretched
Speaker 1: it from thirty minute show to an hour hunk show
Speaker 1: because advertisers loved it so much. Queen for a Day,
Speaker 1: Queen for a Day. So there was another big thing
Speaker 1: that happened, um when game shows started to make a comeback.
Speaker 1: They moved from prime time the daytime and the way
Speaker 1: that we think of game shows today, which is like
Speaker 1: back to back starting in the morning going well into
Speaker 1: the afternoon. You don't even have to turn the channel once.
Speaker 1: That started in the seventies when there was this sudden
Speaker 1: spasm of game shows that came on daytime TV out
Speaker 1: of nowhere and just said get out of the way,
Speaker 1: soap operas, move over, love American style reruns. Uh. It
Speaker 1: just took over and like what we think of his,
Speaker 1: game shows came out of the mid seventies and it
Speaker 1: was They made a pretty big splash. Yeah, that was.
Speaker 1: In fact, there was an article in the New York Times.
Speaker 1: It said you could watch nine straight game shows between
Speaker 1: and two pm on NBC every weekday. Nine straight game shows. Right,
Speaker 1: It's amazing And this is the world I grew up in.
Speaker 1: So I was pretty happy. Kid, say, this is how
Speaker 1: I watched Prices, right, that's how I watched and still
Speaker 1: watch Pyramid to me, one of the greatest all time
Speaker 1: game shows. I love Pyramid. It's no Prices, right, but
Speaker 1: it's good. I love Prices, right. I was on the Prices, well,
Speaker 1: I was not on which the taping of the Prices right.
Speaker 1: It's a big difference. And I will tell that story later, Okay,
Speaker 1: put a pin in it. Yeah. So the reason, all right,
Speaker 1: the reason Um asked Josh's permission everything I say so.
Speaker 1: The reason that game shows made like such a big
Speaker 1: comeback after they were almost dead it was pretty simple. Money.
Speaker 1: They're actually really really cheap to make. Um. They came
Speaker 1: back in part again because of Mark Goodson, but they
Speaker 1: also came back because there were risk averse executives when
Speaker 1: they actually pop up a lot in this show. You'll
Speaker 1: find but in the sixties and seventies, Um variety shows
Speaker 1: were huge. They kind of came in and filled the
Speaker 1: void after quiz shows went away. But they're really expensive
Speaker 1: to make. Game shows are not expensive to make. They
Speaker 1: used to be even less expensive than they are today.
Speaker 1: Like today you have what's called a prize budget and
Speaker 1: it's part of your show budget. Did anybody see The
Speaker 1: Power of Ten? It was on for like a season
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven? Yeah, no one did, right, that's
Speaker 1: why I was on for a season. That the response,
Speaker 1: by the way, But it was like this kind of
Speaker 1: slick new game show, complicated rules and everything. Um. But
Speaker 1: they had a prize budget for the season of three
Speaker 1: million dollars, but they had a top prize of ten
Speaker 1: million dollars, and the producers just kind of hoped, knowing
Speaker 1: would ever get to the ten million dollar question. They
Speaker 1: basically said, this show is so hard, no one, it's
Speaker 1: virtually impossible to get to that ten million dollar question.
Speaker 1: Ipso facto. We're fine. Right, the first contestant got to
Speaker 1: the ten million dollar question. I was like, surely that's
Speaker 1: is that true? And I looked it up again in
Speaker 1: the green rooms, like it is still true? Are you
Speaker 1: still fact checking? Yeah? I love it. That's the kind
Speaker 1: of quality you can expect from stuff you should not.
Speaker 1: So producers have other levers they can pull if things
Speaker 1: are going badly for them, which is to say going
Speaker 1: great for a contestant, like on the Prices right, if
Speaker 1: if people are winning a lot, they can bring out
Speaker 1: you know, those games are all on wheels. They can
Speaker 1: bring out whatever they want. They just bring out the
Speaker 1: harder games to play, like a Penny Annie super easy game.
Speaker 1: Penny Anny is is is everyone's winning a lot of money? Uh, Barker,
Speaker 1: Because Barker runs the show, everyone knows that. Yeah, Barker
Speaker 1: might say, well, no, let's bring up plink Oh, because
Speaker 1: we're on a run here and we're going broke and
Speaker 1: I need there's a lot of pets that need to
Speaker 1: be space neutered, so it needs my money. Wandering around
Speaker 1: his bedroom waiting for the return and surgery. Then he
Speaker 1: might try out Cliffhanger, the very tough Cliffhanger with the yodler,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite games, and then the Kuda Gras
Speaker 1: at the end. If everyone is winning, they will bring
Speaker 1: out the only game on the Prices right where you
Speaker 1: actually need physical skills? Can anyone name it? Holding one
Speaker 1: who said it that's where he had. You're giving a
Speaker 1: lot of beer. It's not. It's there that comes out
Speaker 1: of our cut. What So Holding one is the one
Speaker 1: where you have to put from like different distances depending
Speaker 1: on whatever you've guessed for the price. And that's like
Speaker 1: I remember being a kid and seeing like an eight
Speaker 1: year old woman handed a golf butter for nine ft
Speaker 1: away and just just like sink it ropping out. That'd
Speaker 1: be so great. Barker always showed off and put it. Well,
Speaker 1: that's why that was even on there was so he
Speaker 1: could get a little golf in at work. Uh. Here's
Speaker 1: the other thing that they do. They also inflate the
Speaker 1: prizes of the of the value of the prizes so
Speaker 1: they can write it off on their income taxes as
Speaker 1: a production company. That's really true. They take out life
Speaker 1: or not life insurance. They probably should take out life insurance.
Speaker 1: They take out insurance policies in case someone wins the
Speaker 1: big prize in themnity insurance. It's amazing they have all
Speaker 1: their bases covered. And then if none of that works
Speaker 1: and somebody wins. I didn't realize this until we research
Speaker 1: this this show. Um, they do lot of style payouts
Speaker 1: to where they come to you and say, hey, congratulations,
Speaker 1: you can have like a tenth of this now, where
Speaker 1: you can have the whole thing over like fifty years. Again,
Speaker 1: congratulations for winning. You can have this new car now,
Speaker 1: or how about this segue or the dashboard today chair
Speaker 1: next year, the car chair. They know what they're calling
Speaker 1: the second the driver's chair, passenger chair, the segue. The
Speaker 1: invention that revolutionize standing, That was gonna change the city
Speaker 1: because we're all in segways. We were there so much
Speaker 1: room on any given sidewalk for thousands of segways. Well,
Speaker 1: they were gonna do away with cars. We wrote a segway.
Speaker 1: Remember that they're hard. Have you guys ever written on
Speaker 1: a segway? They're tough? Head Cracker that was the original
Speaker 1: name for him. I was about to say, Jerry cut
Speaker 1: that out, but you saved it. Thanks. Nice work. All right,
Speaker 1: Where are we so the other thing? Okay, No, I
Speaker 1: know where we are, all right. I'm glad you said
Speaker 1: that got us back on track. So um Prize budgets
Speaker 1: are kind of a new thing as far as game
Speaker 1: shows go. Back in the day, back in the seventies,
Speaker 1: spasm of game shows on daytime. If you did this right,
Speaker 1: you could basically pay for the production costs for your
Speaker 1: show and AD revenue would be just acent profit. Right.
Speaker 1: And they did this because you could trade stuff for
Speaker 1: plugs on the game show. And we didn't realize this
Speaker 1: until well, I guess you realized it years before. I
Speaker 1: was like in my twenties when I realized the Prices
Speaker 1: right was a sixty minute TV commercial. Okay, I was
Speaker 1: researching this show when I realized that, because again, this
Speaker 1: is how I watched Prices Right. It's taken on face value.
Speaker 1: It's just it's in show plug after in show plug,
Speaker 1: whether it's Rice Errony the San Francisco treat or Bush's
Speaker 1: baked beans with more fat than ever before, or the
Speaker 1: new Ford Pinto less uh fiery than it was a
Speaker 1: year ago. Right, So depending on whether it was like
Speaker 1: Rice Erroney, Rice Rooney would go to Bob Barker and say,
Speaker 1: here's a sect of money, a lifetime supply of Rice Roni,
Speaker 1: and um, you just go plug Rice Erroney on your show. Uh.
Speaker 1: Ford would go to Bob Barker and say, here's a
Speaker 1: fiery death trap Pinto and we'll give you this an
Speaker 1: exchange for like six plugs on the show, and Barker
Speaker 1: would lean back in his reclinery and go, let me
Speaker 1: think about it. Let me ask you, is your dog
Speaker 1: Spader and you're Before we go any further in this
Speaker 1: business deal, I need to know what's on the table.
Speaker 1: Take him out back and teach him a lesson here.
Speaker 1: That was the real Barker, everybody, that's not true, No,
Speaker 1: it's not. He's a sweetheart of him. Man. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I keep getting lost because I'm halfway drunk.
Speaker 1: Uh halfway. Oh. So it ends up sounding kind of
Speaker 1: like a pyramid scam when you really look at how
Speaker 1: they do these things, because they're getting all this free
Speaker 1: product and then they're charging them for ad revenue for
Speaker 1: the product. So it's just it's all gravy basically, right,
Speaker 1: because then you can take that money your host, but
Speaker 1: also like use it for cash prizes. If there's somebody
Speaker 1: who won't trade you their thing in in exchange for plugs,
Speaker 1: you can actually buy it and the whole thing just
Speaker 1: wash it out and it's free. Um. So they're very
Speaker 1: cheap to make. And there's one other thing that you
Speaker 1: need to know about game shows. Their production wise, they
Speaker 1: would film like five or six of them in a
Speaker 1: single day, so you get the whole week done, just
Speaker 1: knocked out in a single day. Yeah, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: one of the big reasons are so cheap is because
Speaker 1: you save on studio cost, on crew cost because they
Speaker 1: just knock them out from like nine to five every day.
Speaker 1: Then Barker goes home to his recliner, smokes a cigar,
Speaker 1: and Space and neuterus a bunch of dogs. So, guys,
Speaker 1: I don't know about you all, but I'm feeling pretty
Speaker 1: good about the show that was. Actually that wasn't a
Speaker 1: prompt for applause. That's as me softening the blow, becau,
Speaker 1: why did you sit there and wait? And that is
Speaker 1: that we have to put an ad break in. That's right,
Speaker 1: So if you quiet, so, if you'll bear with us,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back after these messages. We're right back, ma'am.
Speaker 1: Magic of ented. Yes, that's how that works. So, well,
Speaker 1: pay for this show, not commercial, and pay for a commercial.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell my fellow militia members. So with the
Speaker 1: seventies blood of game shows, UH comes some of the
Speaker 1: most popular TV shows of all time in American history.
Speaker 1: UH shows like Well Fortune and Jeopardy Prices right. Long
Speaker 1: long running shows We Look Fortune debut nineteen and became
Speaker 1: the longest running syndicated game showing American television history, making
Speaker 1: Mr say Jack and Ms Van white household names. Of course,
Speaker 1: and say Jack would have held on to his spot
Speaker 1: as the longest running host had he not made the
Speaker 1: very poor decision to stop and have his own late
Speaker 1: night talk show. Did you remember that? Oh man, it's
Speaker 1: so bad Pat say Jack show. It was like like
Speaker 1: watching a valium, not like taking a value. It's like
Speaker 1: watching a volume you're not allowed to take. That's how
Speaker 1: boring it is. I have to sit there and look
Speaker 1: at sad. Yeah. Say Jack is in a three way
Speaker 1: race for worst late night talk show between Magic Johnson
Speaker 1: and Chevy Chase, and I can't decide which one is worse.
Speaker 1: So Chevy, that was bad. It was really bad. They're
Speaker 1: raised me to despise Check and I will still tell
Speaker 1: you this, Pat say Jack Show was worse than the others.
Speaker 1: It was the worst of all. It's pretty bad. I
Speaker 1: would tell that to Pat say Jack's face. And of course,
Speaker 1: who took over as the longest running host because of
Speaker 1: say Jack's mistake treback, but little known fact, Vannah White
Speaker 1: actually pre dates pass Jack on Will Fortune. Do you
Speaker 1: guys know that she started back in the day when
Speaker 1: Chuck Woolery still hosted. And the first letter Vanna White
Speaker 1: ever turned on the board was a T So if
Speaker 1: you were listening to the radio and there's like free
Speaker 1: tickets at stake, that's the answer. That's an arcane trivia question.
Speaker 1: And I got one more about Vannah if you guys
Speaker 1: are okay with yeah, let's hear it. She holds the
Speaker 1: Guinness World Record for television's most frequent clapper, with about
Speaker 1: seven and twenty claps per episode of Wheel of four
Speaker 1: Chune and they filmed six of those in a day.
Speaker 1: That means she's at home the rest of the week,
Speaker 1: just recouping. It's like, don't touch my mommy's hands. Don't
Speaker 1: touch mommy's hands, says these giant aloe plants. She just
Speaker 1: sticks her hands inside. They're like food. Move we not
Speaker 1: expecting a little shop for a friends, I guess. So
Speaker 1: then we move into uh, well, it's actually I forgot.
Speaker 1: We need to get Bob Barker his duo because he
Speaker 1: actually worked from nineteen seventy two on the Prices right
Speaker 1: only until his grand old age of eighty three, But
Speaker 1: he actually hosted a show before that, right, Truth or Consequences. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what year did that start? He started hosting in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four. He stopped in nineteen seventy. Sorry, he started
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty six. He stopped hosting that in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four. He started hosting the prices right nine two,
Speaker 1: and stopped hosting the prizes right in two thousand seven.
Speaker 1: So for fifties, Bob Barker was a game show host
Speaker 1: every day, well, actually one day a week, but you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. The rest of the time, cigars
Speaker 1: and whiskey and spaying and neutering. I don't like this picture.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna lie you had a veterinarian on hand,
Speaker 1: say that one. I don't like what I see out
Speaker 1: of that guy. He's getting humpy. Actually that would be
Speaker 1: a neuter technically, don't email me. I know my dog parts.
Speaker 1: So sorry, I'm so sorry. Well, you know the comedy
Speaker 1: rule of free threes. We we're gonna have to say
Speaker 1: that a third time. All right, keeping your for I
Speaker 1: there's a nine chance we'll forget right, And at the
Speaker 1: very end, we'll just go good night and then say it,
Speaker 1: but I won't say it again because that would count.
Speaker 1: I don't want it to count. I'm gonna see if
Speaker 1: I can work it in here, so I want to
Speaker 1: see it all right, So sorry. Game shows started in
Speaker 1: their heyday. Everybody bear with me. Game shows started in
Speaker 1: their heyday and rolled right into the eighties, and one
Speaker 1: of the quintessential game shows of the nine was something
Speaker 1: called Wind Loser Draw. Do you remember that? It was
Speaker 1: nothing more than a game of pictionary played by celebrities.
Speaker 1: That was it in a fake living room set. That
Speaker 1: was how great it was. Lots of pestels, lots of
Speaker 1: pop callers. If you look closely at every episode, they
Speaker 1: have a magazine turned upside down that is clearly tinting.
Speaker 1: Lines of cocaine that they're doing in between, like commercial
Speaker 1: breaks of Super eight, lots of Bert's. I think, didn't
Speaker 1: Burt Conbie host that? He did? Or do I just
Speaker 1: want him to have hosted that? He did host it?
Speaker 1: And then Burt Reynolds was a guest on Burton Money.
Speaker 1: They were all over that show, and poor Burt um
Speaker 1: Convy was known as Little Burt, which he was even
Speaker 1: I think taller than Burt Reynolds was just but that
Speaker 1: was per Bert Reynolds contract. Yeah, I'm sure it's called
Speaker 1: him Little Burt uh. And then Betty White. Betty White
Speaker 1: had an interesting show called Just Men exclamation point with
Speaker 1: an actual exclamation point, and it featured nothing but women
Speaker 1: as contestants. But they would ask celebrity men a question
Speaker 1: and then guess whether or not they would answer yes
Speaker 1: or no, and they could win keys, potentially to start
Speaker 1: a new car. So it was a game show where
Speaker 1: you literally they could have called it coin flip and
Speaker 1: just had people flipping a coin. But it worked out
Speaker 1: because Miss Betty White was the first woman to ever
Speaker 1: win the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Game Show Host. So
Speaker 1: cently people like it. She's just America's sweetheart, you know,
Speaker 1: people like Betty one's great. So by the time the
Speaker 1: eighties are like in their heyday, their own heyday. Um,
Speaker 1: if you look back, a lot of the shows that
Speaker 1: were big in the eighties had actually started in the sixties.
Speaker 1: And the reason why is because, again, Risk Averse TV
Speaker 1: executives were like, I think of anything new, I'll just
Speaker 1: bring out tic tech, dough and concentration. You know, Paula
Speaker 1: shutt up, dusted off and put it out there again.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of game shows like that,
Speaker 1: and they were pretty successful. But one of the other
Speaker 1: things that they did in the eighties was experiment with
Speaker 1: game shows, right, so you had things like Double There. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that's okay, we owe it to you, Double There.
Speaker 1: If you guys haven't seen this, it is a thing
Speaker 1: to behold. It's the weirdest game show maybe ever. There's
Speaker 1: an obstacle course, but there's also quizzes and then teams
Speaker 1: are our boy girl tweens working together, and there was slie.
Speaker 1: So Double There was pretty much great on every level.
Speaker 1: Was never saw you never saw Double There. Now I'm
Speaker 1: a little sadly, I'm a little too old for doubled hair.
Speaker 1: I was someone just boom me for being old. I
Speaker 1: think they booed you for not watching Double There. I
Speaker 1: was like sixteen. Boo Actually, it's like tad old for
Speaker 1: Double There. Well, here's what I was watching. I was
Speaker 1: watching Remote Control on TV, very very good game show.
Speaker 1: It was. If you don't remember, it was what now
Speaker 1: you would call him meta game show. Back then you
Speaker 1: would call it a spoof of game shows because host
Speaker 1: Kinober was hosting a game show in his parents basement.
Speaker 1: That was the set. People sat on recliners and we
Speaker 1: get launched back through the wall if they got a
Speaker 1: question wrong at the end. And it was a really legit,
Speaker 1: funny game show. They had categories like Brady Brady, Bunch
Speaker 1: of Physics, or dead or Canadian one of my favorite categories.
Speaker 1: And it is well known for one thing in particular,
Speaker 1: which was launching the careers of some now very famous people.
Speaker 1: It the very first time that Adam Sandler was on
Speaker 1: TV was on remote control. Same with Colin Quinn and
Speaker 1: Dennis Leary. They all got their start on remote control. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's right. So there's a couple of tenants of game
Speaker 1: shows that you have to know, and the first one
Speaker 1: is that America's interest in game shows tends to Wax
Speaker 1: and Wayne, and by the late eighties early nineties, America
Speaker 1: was like, we're sick of game shows. And again, one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why is because those executives didn't try
Speaker 1: a lot of new stuff. They instead trotted out tic
Speaker 1: Tacto and concentration. So America got bored with game shows
Speaker 1: and kind of moved on, and game shows just went
Speaker 1: away almost magically. By there were two game shows, The
Speaker 1: Prices Right and Family Feud still filming during the day.
Speaker 1: Even Wheel of Fortunes daytime show got the ax. Wheel
Speaker 1: of Fortune got the ax. That's how close to extinction
Speaker 1: game shows came um and instead, the same lazy executives
Speaker 1: gave us softcore news like Inside Edition and Extra and
Speaker 1: daytime talk like Jenny Jones and Maury Povich, and we
Speaker 1: have them to thank for that. I have another theory, actually,
Speaker 1: that grunge killed game shows in the early nineties, right,
Speaker 1: because there's a quote here from the great Mark Goodson.
Speaker 1: Apparently you're idle. He's great at quotes too. He said,
Speaker 1: it's like a hurricane came and wiped them all away,
Speaker 1: and that hurricane smelled like teen Spirit. I made up
Speaker 1: that second part. They did say hurricane. Yes, it was
Speaker 1: sort of antithetical though that early nineties time. I'm joking
Speaker 1: about grunge. But it just it didn't It didn't work together,
Speaker 1: you know, Generation next Douglas Copeland slacking grunge. They didn't
Speaker 1: like do away with game shows. They came in because
Speaker 1: game shows went away. Yeah, America got sad. So the
Speaker 1: other tenant of game shows. Is this. You can't keep
Speaker 1: game shows down for longer than a decade. You just can't.
Speaker 1: They're gonna come back. They're gonna jump on your back
Speaker 1: like beetle Juice or something. Right, So, by the late
Speaker 1: nineties early two thousand's they started to come back, and
Speaker 1: those risk averse executives started to innovate a little more,
Speaker 1: meaning that they started stealing good game shows from other
Speaker 1: countries which somebody hadn't been to to see. So they
Speaker 1: brought in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that show came from England if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: as did The Weakest Link that she was perfect. She
Speaker 1: scared me. Uh, these had much bigger prizes. They were
Speaker 1: a little more complicated. Did you had things like phoning
Speaker 1: a friend and stuff like that. Then he had shows
Speaker 1: like Deal or No Deal, which Josh put in he wrote,
Speaker 1: this is pretty great, which brought America back into the
Speaker 1: clutches of Auie Mandel. We came so close to getting
Speaker 1: away from him forever. And then, uh, it was like
Speaker 1: that time Uggs came back. You remember that, Like Uggs
Speaker 1: were around and then they naturally just went off and died,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, everybody started wearing oggs again.
Speaker 1: It was like what happened? Same with Howie Mandel. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then eventually game shows would co opt reality shows,
Speaker 1: obviously with big, big shows like Survivor, uh, The Apprentice,
Speaker 1: The Bachelor, Um Shark, Tanka show that I actually really love,
Speaker 1: and then a great great show called American Ninja Warrior. Okay,
Speaker 1: you guys like American Ninja Warrior, let me direct you
Speaker 1: to the predecessor and frankly better, American Gladiator. That's right,
Speaker 1: I love that too, and this is why American Gladiators
Speaker 1: is just superior to American Injin Warrior. American Injin Warrior,
Speaker 1: it's fine, it's great, but they kind of dilute the
Speaker 1: action a little bit. I think you could say, like
Speaker 1: they have like b footage where like the production crew
Speaker 1: went to the contestants hometown and talked to like their
Speaker 1: peewee baseball coach about they used to be afraid of
Speaker 1: the ball, but you know they really like got over
Speaker 1: it and look at him now, and the coach that
Speaker 1: kind of chokes up a little bit, you know. On
Speaker 1: American Gladiator it's more like, so Kim is out there
Speaker 1: and she's running around getting the crapp eat out of her,
Speaker 1: and the commentators just have this throwaway like, well, no,
Speaker 1: in fact about Kim. She traded her house for a
Speaker 1: car to drive herself here to compete today, She's not
Speaker 1: sure who's back home watching her child. Look at her,
Speaker 1: go look at lace. She just knocked her flat unconscious
Speaker 1: with her jousting stick. That's American Gladiators. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. It was great. That's what makes it superior.
Speaker 1: Here's what I liked about American Gladiator is those courses
Speaker 1: or whatever you call him. More hard enough. Like I
Speaker 1: remember the bicycle thing that you would have to hang from,
Speaker 1: and that's hard enough. There's no way I could even
Speaker 1: hang from that much less propel myself. And you get
Speaker 1: halfway across, and then a broided out bodybuilder would leap
Speaker 1: on you and and try and get you off, and
Speaker 1: it's like, are you kidding me? Like the best you
Speaker 1: could hope for is that he put on too much
Speaker 1: like peck lube and would slide off Eventchil couldn't get
Speaker 1: a good grip. Peck Lube just got applause. Is your
Speaker 1: only only hope? That pig shout out to the Original
Speaker 1: six on American Gladiator Nitro Malibu, Malibu, Lace, Lace a
Speaker 1: little Baptist, Chuck. Lace was like and to know what
Speaker 1: was going on in my body when I saw Lace,
Speaker 1: JC Chuck like sitting in front of his TV with
Speaker 1: his knees pulled up to his chest, is rocking back
Speaker 1: and forth, like singing hymnals. Things are happening. I like Lace.
Speaker 1: You know who Lace was married to in real life?
Speaker 1: Uh Michael Parrey actor Michael Parrey from Eddie and the Cruisers.
Speaker 1: Uh Michael Trivia. Michael Pray is not here tonight, right,
Speaker 1: he might be Jim and I Zapp and Sunny the
Speaker 1: Original six. I had us off to you, Michael Douglas,
Speaker 1: just show up. And I think it also inspired the
Speaker 1: movie The Running Man pretty clearly, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1: I don't remember if it prestages Running Man or The
Speaker 1: Running Man came out right before. No, I think Running Man.
Speaker 1: I think it came after American Lady Here. Really, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stand by that. He said, No, all right, where
Speaker 1: al right? We in the two thousand's we are, So
Speaker 1: we're in like another a bit of a game show
Speaker 1: revival right now too. And you can tell because they're
Speaker 1: trotting out old game shows again, like Snoop Dogg hosted
Speaker 1: Joker's Wild, which, by the way, I have no problem
Speaker 1: with that whatsoever. I think that was actually a pretty
Speaker 1: short move. Um Anthony and Anderson's uh to tell the truth,
Speaker 1: I think is what he hosts. Yea love connection? Oh
Speaker 1: is that out? Yeah? I didn't know that they need
Speaker 1: to bring back what was the one? The dating one
Speaker 1: not singled out? Yeah, I forgot about singled out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a good one. That was a good one,
Speaker 1: and the what was the one on the what was
Speaker 1: the one on the bus? Oh? I loved cash cab.
Speaker 1: Can we talk about cash cab for a minute or
Speaker 1: can we go off script for a moment? Cash Cab
Speaker 1: unfortunately came around when I and Josh we we worked
Speaker 1: for Discovery Channel, so we couldn't be on cash cab.
Speaker 1: So I would go to New York City and walk
Speaker 1: around looking for the cash cab just to tease yourself,
Speaker 1: knowing that I would have to disclose that I was
Speaker 1: actually an employee of Discovery Channel and could not be
Speaker 1: on cash Guy, I'm contractually prohibited from getting in your
Speaker 1: cash cab. Sorry, what are you talking about dude, just
Speaker 1: get in. It is a good show still now I
Speaker 1: still watch reruns. I think it's Are they not still
Speaker 1: making it? No? No? No? Is it back? All right? Well,
Speaker 1: that lady says it's back, and she looks like she knows.
Speaker 1: She's like, I know, I like that guy. He's funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a good guy. But it's still not the dating
Speaker 1: shows thinking of were you thinking of the dating game now?
Speaker 1: The wonder they had the stupid pop up bubbles about
Speaker 1: what they were thinking. No, it's not pop up video,
Speaker 1: blind date, blind date? I think it might be blind date?
Speaker 1: What is next? Man? This show is so people are showing.
Speaker 1: All right, I will say this, it had to have
Speaker 1: been blind date because I've never heard of next. I
Speaker 1: don't know what that is. Blind Date was good. I
Speaker 1: don't really remember the premise. I'm assuming it was a
Speaker 1: blind date. But it was a good show. I remember
Speaker 1: that much. All right. Let me get us back on
Speaker 1: track here. People are murmuring like you guys are figuring
Speaker 1: out whether to vote for a referendument of town hall
Speaker 1: or something. He quiet, we letsa legalize it? Uh? And then,
Speaker 1: of course, some game shows never went away to begin with,
Speaker 1: like our beloved prices. Right, they just changed hosts the
Speaker 1: great great family Feud. Right. Uh. We lost Richard Dawson
Speaker 1: while he retired, then he died, No, he retired, Ray
Speaker 1: Comes came, then Richard, then he came back, then he died, right, okay, uh.
Speaker 1: And then the great Loui Anderson hosted for a little while.
Speaker 1: Then a guy named Richard carn who I don't know
Speaker 1: excuse from Home Improvement. I never saw that show. It's
Speaker 1: the most controversial thing I've said all night. And then
Speaker 1: I don't know who John O. Hurley is, j Peterman Seinfeld,
Speaker 1: I love that guy. And then the great Steve Harvey
Speaker 1: with his eight button suits. America has embraced Steve, even
Speaker 1: though he messed up the was it miss America? That
Speaker 1: just made him that much more than Frankly, nobody else
Speaker 1: could have gotten away with it like he did. Agreed
Speaker 1: so um as we said, game shows are very very
Speaker 1: cheap to produce, which means you can find game shows
Speaker 1: in every country around the world, and some countries like
Speaker 1: just steal game shows from other countries. America does it,
Speaker 1: everybody does it. Really. There's a game show in France
Speaker 1: called Live Big Deal and it's let's make a deal,
Speaker 1: but it's hosted by an animated alien for some reason. Um.
Speaker 1: Some are franchise, like The Price Is Right is a
Speaker 1: huge hit in UK they're crazy for the president right
Speaker 1: appropriately um. And then there's some countries that just make
Speaker 1: up their own, like there's one in Russia. We consider
Speaker 1: ourselves pretty good researchers and we are almost a positive
Speaker 1: that this is actually a real show. We've really tried
Speaker 1: to find out, like, no, this is a joke. I
Speaker 1: think this is real. Intercept is what it's called. And
Speaker 1: an intercept, you were contestant and they give you a
Speaker 1: car and you drive off in the car they call
Speaker 1: the car and stolen in real I r L and
Speaker 1: you are supposed to evade the police in real life
Speaker 1: for thirty five minutes, and if you do that successfully,
Speaker 1: you keep the car right And as far as we
Speaker 1: can tell, it's real, and it always it's like, I
Speaker 1: guess that's Russia. That's what they do in Russia. I
Speaker 1: guess if you get killed, your next of kim gets
Speaker 1: the car. I don't know. Maybe surely there's a winner.
Speaker 1: I think the cops get to keep it. Maybe, But Russia, aside,
Speaker 1: there was one country that stands alone when it comes
Speaker 1: to game shows, Japan. Correct. We love Japan and their
Speaker 1: dedication to making game shows as crazy as possible. Which
Speaker 1: I don't know if it started with this one, but
Speaker 1: there was an eighties staple it started with it, did it?
Speaker 1: Called Takeshi's Castle. This is in the eighties in Japan,
Speaker 1: and there are fans of the show in America in
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen. Yeah, that shows how great the show is. Well,
Speaker 1: it changed everything right, Like Takeshi's Castle was, it was
Speaker 1: just not it was a melee. There would be like
Speaker 1: a hundred contestants all competing and everybody's trying to get
Speaker 1: into Takeshi's Castle. But this is harder than you would
Speaker 1: think because they make you dress up as a hand
Speaker 1: and slap somebody else who's also dressed as another hand.
Speaker 1: And then at the same time, while you're doing this,
Speaker 1: there's some other poor schmos, like being spun around on
Speaker 1: a wheel like twenty ft above a pond. I was
Speaker 1: flying off. There's other people making a run for it,
Speaker 1: and there's like like people dressed as Ninja throwing like
Speaker 1: rubber throwing stars at him. It's just chaos, and um,
Speaker 1: it just changed everything. It gave us the first concept
Speaker 1: of the wacky Japanese game show. Yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: best part about Takeshi's Castle was they played up the
Speaker 1: not true fact that they were forced to be there
Speaker 1: as contestants, which just added this extra something. I don't
Speaker 1: know why they were they were like, yeah, this is great.
Speaker 1: They were like, no, they got my family and they
Speaker 1: made me come on the show. That just really put
Speaker 1: the cherry on top of me. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: Then there was another one after Takeshi's Castle. It came
Speaker 1: on in the nineties and it was called Downtown Nogaki
Speaker 1: no Sky and they which means, um, Downtown's not an
Speaker 1: errand boy, which is no more sense of bold in
Speaker 1: the Japanese so it doesn't help at all. It translations
Speaker 1: Downtown is not an errand boy, and even if you
Speaker 1: say okay, Downtown as a person still doesn't make any
Speaker 1: damp to make any sense. It's really strange. But this
Speaker 1: one really cemented like because this is when the Internet
Speaker 1: came around. On YouTube was around, you could watch this
Speaker 1: all over the world and it really really really called
Speaker 1: on And they had punishment games, um like the Ask
Speaker 1: game where if you've got something wrong. They would have
Speaker 1: these big, sweaty sumo wrestlers rub their butt in your face,
Speaker 1: or one called Penis Machine. And Josh did this research
Speaker 1: and I was like, what is that all about? Don't
Speaker 1: do that because whatever immage search you come up with
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the game show at all.
Speaker 1: But Penis Machine was where you'd have to recite a
Speaker 1: tongue twister. Uh, and if you got it wrong then
Speaker 1: they would kick you in the goet on everybody. I
Speaker 1: was about to go backstage as a joke, but I
Speaker 1: might have just stayed there, so so uh. Based on
Speaker 1: that alone, I think this deserves a second ad break. Okay,
Speaker 1: because this show is going really really well. Does everybody
Speaker 1: bear with us? We will be right back. All right,
Speaker 1: We're back everybody. Here's a little segment called what's it
Speaker 1: like to be on a game show? Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: expect sweaty man's ass in your face if you lose.
Speaker 1: You know, that's just japan Um. If you're in a
Speaker 1: game show, like as a kid as a young show,
Speaker 1: I was like, I want to be in a game
Speaker 1: so that sounds awesome, And then I researched this. I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't want to go anywhere near game shows.
Speaker 1: I just want to watch them on TV. First of all,
Speaker 1: it's tough. Like three thousand people try out for Wheel
Speaker 1: of Fortune every year and only like five hundred make
Speaker 1: the cut. That's it's Wheel of Fortune, right, It's just imagined.
Speaker 1: There must be like ten people that make it on
Speaker 1: the Jeopardy a year out of a million or something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, Jeopardy stuff. I've known a few people
Speaker 1: who have been on that, and uh, you can be
Speaker 1: super super smart. You can pass the written tests, you
Speaker 1: can pass the simulated games. But when you get out
Speaker 1: there on stage and the lights are on and the
Speaker 1: cameras are rolling, we've all felt very bad for the
Speaker 1: people who don't make it the final Jeopardy because they
Speaker 1: have zero dollars. That person is smarter than everyone in
Speaker 1: this room. That's what's so sad. It is really hard.
Speaker 1: And in fact, Kim Jennings is on our network now
Speaker 1: with his great show Omnibus All Time Jeopardy Champion with
Speaker 1: his insane record of like seventy something Jeopardy wins in
Speaker 1: a row, which is just nuts. And you know, I'm
Speaker 1: real good friends with Kim now, and it took me
Speaker 1: like three dinners out before I was finally like, tell
Speaker 1: me all about it? What's it like? And he was like, man,
Speaker 1: you gotta he got through that first part, so he
Speaker 1: had a real big advantage for those newbies coming on
Speaker 1: every day. But he's like, you have to have all
Speaker 1: this knowledge at your fingertips, and then it literally comes
Speaker 1: down to like how good you are with a buzzer
Speaker 1: and how like Steely you can keep yourself calm and
Speaker 1: ignore the audience and ignore everything else and kind of
Speaker 1: lock in. It's a really, really tough game show. But
Speaker 1: in order to try out for something like The Price
Speaker 1: is Right, it's a much different experience. You don't have
Speaker 1: to be super smart. You get to have a lot
Speaker 1: of personality. You just have to like go in front
Speaker 1: of a panel of people and like turn around slowly right,
Speaker 1: well yeah, and went to well now you don't do that,
Speaker 1: although I could have worked in a fourth reference there. Uh.
Speaker 1: I went to a Price is Right taping with my
Speaker 1: sister in the in the mid nineties and they there's
Speaker 1: a table like this with three producers sitting behind it
Speaker 1: as you walk into the studio and they sit there
Speaker 1: with a clipboard as you introduce yourself and take notes,
Speaker 1: and it's very intimidating because I don't know if you
Speaker 1: all know this. When you go on the prices right
Speaker 1: in the audience, you really don't know, like that's all real.
Speaker 1: You don't know your name is gonna get called. I
Speaker 1: always thought that they set you up and said, by
Speaker 1: the way, at minute thirty or whatever, in round two,
Speaker 1: we're gonna call you down there. You need to do
Speaker 1: this and act like this. It's all for real, like
Speaker 1: you have no idea you're gonna get called. So when
Speaker 1: people freak out and run down there because they had
Speaker 1: no idea they were going to get called down on stage.
Speaker 1: But I did not get called. I didn't have what
Speaker 1: it takes. But you sat behind like the people who
Speaker 1: have been contestants, right, yeah, we were. We were positioned
Speaker 1: up where they had two empty rows. And when you
Speaker 1: were finished playing the games, they don't you don't go
Speaker 1: back to your seat. You go to this little area
Speaker 1: and this, uh, this Harley Davidson biker guy won a
Speaker 1: car and came down and sat next to us and
Speaker 1: started crying. And I was like, sir, I was like,
Speaker 1: what's it like, tell me what's going on? And he
Speaker 1: said that he lost his job because he didn't have
Speaker 1: a car to get him to work, and that this
Speaker 1: changed his life. And I look over and he's crying,
Speaker 1: and my sister's crying, and I'm crying, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: new to a dog. It sounds like a punishment now
Speaker 1: it is for the dog. Highly recommended, though, if you
Speaker 1: ever have a chance, go to go to the prices
Speaker 1: right taping. It's a lot of fun. It's a good story.
Speaker 1: By the way, Well that's all right, It would have
Speaker 1: been better if I would have, you know, won a
Speaker 1: jet ski. So as thrilling as you think it might
Speaker 1: be to be on a game show, it's actually, supposedly,
Speaker 1: from what we can tell, super boring. Oh yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of waiting around. Remember they film five or
Speaker 1: six episodes in a day, so if you're scheduled to
Speaker 1: be on the fifth or sixth episode, you're just sitting there.
Speaker 1: But it's not like you can wander around and bug
Speaker 1: like Alex Trebeka or anything. Because remember Congress got involved
Speaker 1: after the quiz show scandals, and the FCC still regulates
Speaker 1: game shows like a hawk, Like if you go to
Speaker 1: the bathroom, you have an escort, and there's like FCC
Speaker 1: compliance officers. Can you imagine standing around for ten hours
Speaker 1: without a cell phone? Not just now take it away,
Speaker 1: they break it under the heel and they're like federal law.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of sitting around. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of compliance that you have to do. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of rules you have to learn. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why, um they watch you like a hawkers because
Speaker 1: people have been known to um collude with people in
Speaker 1: the audience. Like there was this guy in the UK
Speaker 1: who won a million pounds on who Wants to Be
Speaker 1: a Millionaire? It is it's way more than the million
Speaker 1: dollar prize, Like I don't know how much, but a lot,
Speaker 1: just trust me. And he won. His name was Charles Ingram,
Speaker 1: and he won because he was talking to his wife
Speaker 1: and his wife was going and talking to somebody in
Speaker 1: the audience. And this is the scheme they came up with.
Speaker 1: Charles Ingram, you know, who wants to be a Millionaire's
Speaker 1: basically multiple choice. There's like four possible answers. He would
Speaker 1: read them out loud to himself, but when he read
Speaker 1: the correct one, the guy in the audience would go right.
Speaker 1: Very sophisticated system. They got away with it. Like they want.
Speaker 1: They like. The producers were like, your congratulations, and they
Speaker 1: made it home. And finally, because he apparently was acting
Speaker 1: KG in the in the green room afterward, they went
Speaker 1: back and looked at the tape and discovered the fraud
Speaker 1: and they actually went to court in the UK. They
Speaker 1: went to court. He and his wife did uh, and
Speaker 1: we're find a hundred and fifteen thousand pounds and didn't
Speaker 1: get a dime of the million pound prize. Some kind
Speaker 1: of wig said a hundred and fifteen thousand pounds right,
Speaker 1: And you would think, okay, justice was justice was served? Right, No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't because Charles Ingram and his wife went on
Speaker 1: to write a book about the whole thing and it
Speaker 1: grows two and a half million pounds. Yep. And we
Speaker 1: have a couple of new sayings. Now if you remember
Speaker 1: from dB Cooper, never trust family and now cheating always pays.
Speaker 1: So those are the two tenants of stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: One across these knuckles and one across the other knuckles. Uh,
Speaker 1: you want to bring it home? Yeah, let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about a guy named Michael Larson. Yes, Michael Larson. There's
Speaker 1: a couple of knowing nods out there anyone know the
Speaker 1: game show Press Your Luck. No Wammies. That was the
Speaker 1: point of pressure luck, not to get away emmy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So who was Michael Larson? So Michael Larson was this guy.
Speaker 1: He was a contestant eventually on Pressure Luck, but he
Speaker 1: started out as a semi employed ice cream truck driver.
Speaker 1: Let that sink him for a Yeah, you're really really
Speaker 1: reaching for the stars. You're like, no, I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that full time, but keep my option open.
Speaker 1: His the time when he wasn't running the ice cream
Speaker 1: truck was allotted instead to staring at his wall of
Speaker 1: TVs in his house, um running off of his VCR.
Speaker 1: Because he would take game shows and watch them up
Speaker 1: to eighteen hours a day in the hopes of finding
Speaker 1: some weakness that he could exploit. Go onto the game
Speaker 1: show and crack it and win a million dollars, right,
Speaker 1: And he figured out pretty quick the price is right,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no flaw to it. Same with Wheel
Speaker 1: of Fortune. It's just kind of luck. Right. And then
Speaker 1: in CBS, Yes, CBS aired a brand new game show
Speaker 1: build is the most technologically advanced game show ever and
Speaker 1: it was called Press Your Luck and Michael Larson's said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get you game show. He said about getting
Speaker 1: pressurer luck. Yeah, so here's the deal with pressure luck.
Speaker 1: It had three just regular contestants who would answer questions
Speaker 1: and then at the end of each round, whoever was
Speaker 1: in the lead, we get to press their luck. And
Speaker 1: there was a big board with a bunch of individual
Speaker 1: squares that would light up like that's a good pressure luck.
Speaker 1: You would press your luck and say stop. We didn't
Speaker 1: have to say stopped, but most people did, and it
Speaker 1: would stop on whatever square and you might win five dollars,
Speaker 1: or you might win a little prize, or you might
Speaker 1: get a whammy, which is really bad because that means
Speaker 1: you lose everything that you had one up into that point.
Speaker 1: Or you might get a free spin plus cash. So
Speaker 1: if you get like two or three spins in a row,
Speaker 1: it was a really big deal. And you could press
Speaker 1: your luck and then get that whammy. And it was
Speaker 1: this little jerk annoid looking thing, this little cartoon character
Speaker 1: with a cape that would go and you lose everything
Speaker 1: that you had made. So you're really if you press
Speaker 1: your luck, you were risking a lot by moving forward, right,
Speaker 1: And it was very tough because not only did the
Speaker 1: light flash around the board, the squares themselves changed, So
Speaker 1: it was just like chaos, your brains going haywire, and
Speaker 1: you go stop and just hope for the best. Well,
Speaker 1: Michael Larson would take pressure Luck and again watch individual
Speaker 1: episodes eighteen hours straight, just looking trying to find something
Speaker 1: sitting around and just as whitey tidies like an ice
Speaker 1: cream sandwich melted on his chest and finally one day
Speaker 1: he saw it and he must have stood up, chest
Speaker 1: hair matted, sticky, and he probably went got it, got
Speaker 1: a chocout taco on his chest. And what he figured
Speaker 1: out was that that light and those boards they weren't
Speaker 1: random at all. There were five patterns. And not only
Speaker 1: were they five, were there five patterns they repeated in order.
Speaker 1: All he had to do was hone is timing and
Speaker 1: getting the light to stop, memorize where the boxes were,
Speaker 1: and he would crack pressure luck and that is exactly
Speaker 1: what he did. I'm trying to think of that moment
Speaker 1: at for a um in his bark a lounger when
Speaker 1: he realizes that it's a pattern, Like what that must
Speaker 1: have been like, Like he's like, my life is vindicated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone said, I was a loser, but I'm not so
Speaker 1: just disregard the chockout taco on my chest. I'm no loser.
Speaker 1: He bought a bus ticket from Cincinnata to l A
Speaker 1: and I bought a suit from a vintage thrift store
Speaker 1: and actually managed to become a contestant on Pressure Luck
Speaker 1: on Mane. He came in last in the question round,
Speaker 1: but he's still because you know, he was Michael Larson.
Speaker 1: But he still gets to press his luck. And the
Speaker 1: very first thing that happens is he gets a whammy
Speaker 1: because you can practice all you want on the arm
Speaker 1: of your recliner, but on the day, as they say
Speaker 1: in the in the industry, that little buzzer may not
Speaker 1: match up quite right. So he had to he had
Speaker 1: to get synchronized. He did, and boy did he he did,
Speaker 1: because after that, on his next spin, he locked into
Speaker 1: thirty one consecutive spins. This had never happened before, nothing
Speaker 1: even remotely close. Two or three in a row is amazing.
Speaker 1: Before you were on fire, this guy got thirty one
Speaker 1: consecutive spins. Overall, he got forty seven in the half
Speaker 1: hour show that he was on. The other two contested
Speaker 1: to sat back and one guy pulled out like a
Speaker 1: corn cob pipe and read the paper. I mean like
Speaker 1: it was the Larcen Show, right, And just a little
Speaker 1: by little he starts building his money, a few hundred
Speaker 1: bucks here and another spin there, and he just kept
Speaker 1: hitting him. Yeah, and keep in mind, at any point
Speaker 1: he could have lost it all. And so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of real tension building in the saying as he
Speaker 1: gets more and more money because he has to say
Speaker 1: I want to press my luck. Everyone's like, you're crazy, dude,
Speaker 1: You've got fifty dollars. But he worked it all the
Speaker 1: way up into a record at the time hundred and
Speaker 1: ten thousand, two hundred thirty seven dollars, which is more
Speaker 1: money than had ever been won on an American game show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the previous record was forty dollars. This guy just crushed
Speaker 1: that record. And you can actually see this. There's somebody
Speaker 1: went to the trouble of making a compilation. It's like
Speaker 1: eleven minutes long. It's the best thing you can watch.
Speaker 1: It's quite thrilling. It's on YouTube. I think it's just
Speaker 1: Michael Larson. Press your luck should be the first thing
Speaker 1: that comes up. And when you watch it, you see
Speaker 1: Michael Larson really pressed his luck and he won. He
Speaker 1: won the game, and the CBS executives are just standing
Speaker 1: there watching this, like having heart attacks left and right,
Speaker 1: getting fired, firing each other, firing themselves, just having a
Speaker 1: terrible time of it. But in the end they paid Larson.
Speaker 1: They said he didn't cheat. He was smarter than CBS think.
Speaker 1: One of the executives said these air quotes though, So
Speaker 1: we paid him. So he one, press your luck. But
Speaker 1: it's not the end of the Michael Larson story. No,
Speaker 1: So he's sitting at home a few months later eating
Speaker 1: his push up and a local radio station was running
Speaker 1: a contest. Those only two ice cream truck things I
Speaker 1: can think of, chock out tacos and butch ups. Those
Speaker 1: are good enough. Yeah, you know what the worst was
Speaker 1: was that rainbow popsicle things? Those are the worst. What's
Speaker 1: wrong with you? You like those? Yes? Really? The bomb Pop,
Speaker 1: the red, white and Blue pop or the rocket Pop
Speaker 1: to Patriot Country, those are great. It had no ice creaming,
Speaker 1: and I was all about the ice okay, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't like a bomb pop all that's what they
Speaker 1: were called. Or rocket pops one of the two popper
Speaker 1: Rocket Pop you've got a strong reaction, so I guess
Speaker 1: I'm the dummy. Some people recoiled in horror. All right,
Speaker 1: So Michael Larson sitting at home eating his rocket pop
Speaker 1: and a radio station DJ comes on and says, we
Speaker 1: have a new contest and we're going to read out
Speaker 1: serial numbers on dollar bills and if you have that
Speaker 1: dollar bill, you in fifty thousand dollars. I'm sorry, And
Speaker 1: Michael Larson said, I got a lot of dollar bills.
Speaker 1: So he went to the bank and withdrew nine thousand,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, fifty tho dollar bills from the bank bills.
Speaker 1: So he was the joy of the bank that day.
Speaker 1: But but wait, wait, let's think about this for a second.
Speaker 1: You can withdraw those all day long. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: know the serial number unless you sit there and start
Speaker 1: memorizing them. And that's what he did, yep. Instead of
Speaker 1: watching games shows, he sat around and memorized the serial
Speaker 1: numbers for the dollar bills that he had in his house.
Speaker 1: And a few months went by, the contest was ended
Speaker 1: and he didn't win. But that's still not the end
Speaker 1: of the Michael Larson's story. Now, that's right, because he
Speaker 1: never took that money back to the bank because he's
Speaker 1: Michael Larson. I can only imagine if this guy would
Speaker 1: have worked for a living right, we would have a
Speaker 1: cure for cancer today, we'd all be living tod and
Speaker 1: fifty things. That would be great. But no, he left
Speaker 1: that fifty grand at home and on Christmas he went
Speaker 1: to a party with his girlfriend, to a Christmas party,
Speaker 1: came home and found his door kicked in and the
Speaker 1: money was gone. Merry Christmas, yep. And they never found
Speaker 1: the money, they never found the person who stole it,
Speaker 1: and Michael Larson eventually died of cancer in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: while on the lamb from the FBI and the i
Speaker 1: R S for his part in a foreign lottery scam.
Speaker 1: To the bitter end, still trying to make that easy money.
Speaker 1: Uh and finally, uh, just about eight or nine years ago,
Speaker 1: plans to make a movie of his life story starring
Speaker 1: Bill Murray. Dude, that would have been so good. We're
Speaker 1: finally scrapped. I'm no very sad, but his story lives
Speaker 1: on tonight here in Denver, Colorado. That is game shows.
Speaker 1: That's a history of game shows. Everybody good, that's right,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you very much. Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.