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The Big Surprise
''The Big Surprise'' is a television quiz show broadcast in the United States by NBC from October 8, 1955, to June 9, 1956, and from September 18, 1956, to April 2, 1957. It was hastily created by NBC in response to the ratings success of '' The $64,000 Question'', which had premiered on CBS in summer 1955 and almost instantly became a hit. ''The Big Surprise'' offered a grand prize of $100,000. The series was originally hosted by Jack Barry through March 3, 1956, after which he was replaced by Mike Wallace for the rest of the run. Barry would return to NBC a few months after leaving ''The Big Surprise'' with his own co-creations ''Tic-Tac-Dough'' and '' Twenty One''. In late 1959, ''The Big Surprise'' was one of the shows admitted to have been controlled by its producers and staff, under the umbrella of the 1950s quiz show scandals. Gameplay Contestants who had performed an act of heroism or generosity were accompanied by "reporters" who explained why that contestant should ...
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Game Show
A game show is a genre of broadcast viewing entertainment (radio, television, internet, stage or other) where contestants compete for a reward. These programs can either be participatory or demonstrative and are typically directed by a host, sharing the rules of the program as well as commentating and narrating where necessary. The history of game shows dates back to the invention of television as a medium. On most game shows, contestants either have to answer questions or solve puzzles, typically to win either money or prizes. Game shows often reward players with prizes such as cash, trips and goods and services provided by the show's sponsor. History 1930s–1950s Game shows began to appear on radio and television in the late 1930s. The first television game show, '' Spelling Bee'', as well as the first radio game show, '' Information Please'', were both broadcast in 1938; the first major success in the game show genre was ''Dr. I.Q.'', a radio quiz show that began in 193 ...
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Quiz Show Scandal
The 1950s quiz show scandals were a series of scandals involving the producers and contestants of several popular American television quiz shows. These shows' producers secretly gave assistance to certain contestants in order to prearrange the shows’ outcomes while still attempting to deceive the public into believing that these shows were objective and fair competitions. Producers fixed the shows sometimes with the free consent of contestants and out of various motives: improving ratings, greed, and the lack of regulations prohibiting such conspiracy in game show productions. The scandals took place at a time when television was still emerging as a medium and had yet to become the established cultural force in American society that it is today. When the behavior of the producers and contestants was exposed, the public reacted with shock. Many expressed concern about the potential for the young medium of television to influence society in negative ways. In response to the sca ...
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English-language Television Shows
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic ( Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th ...
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Black-and-white American Television Shows
Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. However, there are exceptions to this rule, including black-and-white fine art photography, as well as many film motion pictures and art film(s). Photography Contemporary use Since the late 1960s, few mainstream films have been shot in black-and-white. The reasons are frequently commercial, as it is difficult to sell a film for television broadcasting if the film is not in color. 1961 was the last year in which the majority of Hollywood films were released in black and white. Computing In computing terminology, ''black-and-white'' is sometimes used to refer to a binary image consisting solely of pure black pixels and pure white ones; what would normally be called a black-and-white image, that is, an image containing shades of ...
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1950s American Game Shows
Year 195 ( CXCV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Scrapula and Clemens (or, less frequently, year 948 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 195 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire * Emperor Septimius Severus has the Roman Senate deify the previous emperor Commodus, in an attempt to gain favor with the family of Marcus Aurelius. * King Vologases V and other eastern princes support the claims of Pescennius Niger. The Roman province of Mesopotamia rises in revolt with Parthian support. Severus marches to Mesopotamia to battle the Parthians. * The Roman province of Syria is divided and the role of Antioch is diminished. The Romans annexed the Syrian cities of Edessa and Nisibis. Severus re-establish his head ...
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1957 American Television Series Endings
1957 ( MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1957th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 957th year of the 2nd millennium, the 57th year of the 20th century, and the 8th year of the 1950s decade. Events January * January 1 – The Saarland joins West Germany. * January 3 – Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch. * January 5 – South African player Russell Endean becomes the first batsman to be dismissed for having '' handled the ball'', in Test cricket. * January 9 – British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigns. * January 10 – Harold Macmillan becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. * January 11 – The African Convention is founded in Dakar. * January 14 – Kripalu Maharaj is named fifth Jagadguru (world teacher), after giving seven days of speeches before 500 Hindu scholars. * January 15 – The film ''Throne of Blood'', Akira Kurosawa's reworking of '' Ma ...
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1955 American Television Series Debuts
Events January * January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama. * January 17 – , the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut. * January 18– 20 – Battle of Yijiangshan Islands: The Chinese Communist People's Liberation Army seizes the islands from the Republic of China (Taiwan). * January 22 – In the United States, The Pentagon announces a plan to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), armed with nuclear weapons. * January 23 – The Sutton Coldfield rail crash kills 17, near Birmingham, England. * January 25 – The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union announces the end of the war between the USSR and Germany, which began during World War II in 1941. * January 28 – The United States Congress authorizes President Dwight D. Eisenhower to use force to protect Formosa from the People's Republic of China. February * February 10 – The United States Seventh ...
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The Complete Directory To Prime Time Network And Cable TV Shows
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of pronoun ''thee'') when followed by a ...
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Lost Television Broadcast
Lost television broadcasts are mostly those early television programs which cannot be accounted for in studio archives (or in personal archives) usually because of deliberate destruction or neglect. Common reasons for loss A significant proportion of early television programming was never recorded in the first place. Early broadcasting in all genres was live and sometimes performed repeatedly. Due to there being no means to record the broadcast or, later, because the content itself was thought to have little monetary or historical value it was not deemed necessary to save it. In the United Kingdom, early programming was lost due to contractual demands by the actors' union to limit the rescreening of performances. Apart from Phonovision experiments by John Logie Baird, and some 280 rolls of 35mm film containing some of Paul Nipkow television station broadcasts, no recordings of transmissions from 1939 or earlier are known to exist. In 1947, Kinescopes (preserving the image o ...
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Errol Flynn
Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn (20 June 1909 – 14 October 1959) was an Australian-American actor who achieved worldwide fame during the Golden Age of Hollywood. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles, frequent partnerships with Olivia de Havilland, and reputation for his womanising and hedonistic personal life. His most notable roles include the eponymous hero in ''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' (1938), which was later named by the American Film Institute as the 18th greatest hero in American film history, the lead role in ''Captain Blood'' (1935), Major Geoffrey Vickers in ''The Charge of the Light Brigade'' (1936), and the hero in a number of Westerns such as ''Dodge City'' (1939), ''Santa Fe Trail'' (1940), and ''San Antonio'' (1945). Early life Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn was born on 20 June 1909 in Battery Point, Tasmania. His father, Theodore Thomson Flynn, was a lecturer (1909) and later professor (1911) of biology at the University of Tasmania. His m ...
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Leonard Ross
Leonard "Lenny" M. Ross, (July 7, 1945 – May 1, 1985) was an American teacher, lawyer, and government official who was famous for his celebrity as a child prodigy and television game show contestant. Ross's game show winnings, totaling $164,000 (), were for two months in the spring of 1957 the highest ever earned on a United States television game show. Early years Ross was born to Pauline Ross on July 7, 1945. Ross was known as a prodigy and a genius. At age seven, he gained national attention by passing a federal examination for a ham radio operator's license. At ten, he became known as the ''whiz kid'' who won $100,000 on ''The Big Surprise'', a television quiz show. Many of the questions he correctly answered concerned the stock market. As a prize, he became the first guest to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. At eleven, on February 10, 1957, Ross won $64,000 on '' The $64,000 Challenge.'' This total made Ross the highest winner of game show prize money ...
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Jack Barry (game Show Host)
Jack Barry (born Jack Barasch; March 20, 1918 – May 2, 1984) was an American game show host, television personality and executive who made a name for himself in the game show field. Barry served as host of several game shows in his career, many of which he developed along with Dan Enright as part of their joint operation Barry & Enright Productions. Barry's reputation became tarnished due to his involvement in the 1950s quiz show scandals and the ensuing fallout affected his career for over a decade. Early life and career Barry was born and raised in Lindenhurst, New York, on Long Island. His family was Jewish. He graduated from Lindenhurst Senior High School and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, in Philadelphia. In the 1940s, he began hosting programs on radio, including AM 710 WOR. Through his radio work, he met his eventual business partner Dan Enright. After the scandal In the fall of 1961, Barry moved to Hollywood, Florida, where he and Dan Enright s ...
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