Ask A Genius 1003: The Game Show History
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/07/06
Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org
Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com
Rick Rosner: This is my history with game shows. Go back to 1961–62. I was one or two years old, and my newly divorced mom was teaching school, so she left me with my grandma. This was in Albuquerque, and in the afternoons, we would watch Password. I taught myself the alphabet, with some help from her, from them putting the words up on Password, the secret word.
I was on the quiz team for a semester in high school, in 1976 or 77. As with everything I did in high school, I hoped it would get me some recognition, leading to a girl liking me. Like everything I did, it did not do that.
In the early ’80s, still interested in getting a girl, I started giving myself scars Rambo-style. You might want to Google a picture of Rambo. He had some prominent keloid scars across his chest. I gave myself, but this was before Rambo. This was my idea before the producers of Rambo had a similar idea. So yes, I would because I had plenty of scars, but they were in places that would not impress girls. In my asshole from hemorrhoid surgery or in my groin from hernia surgery along one of my legs from getting varicose veins stripped. So I wanted some scars in good places, and I kind of just liked the slicing. But my family was a little depressed; I was a little depressed. Maybe this was even before I lost my virginity, which would have put it before February of 1980. So it could have been 1979.
My mom was up watching the Newlywed Game. Now, this was back in the time of only three channels, and the channels would run crap after Johnny Carson, who in Colorado was on from 10:35 to 11:35. Then after that, it was crap, including the Newlywed Game, which is just not a very good game show. It’s OK if you decide that game shows are fine, but at the time, they were crap. I tried to get my mom to change the channel to something less crappy, and she wouldn’t. We’re just white trash. I would not say I liked this. I went into the bathroom and gave myself some more chest scars. So I slashed myself because of the Newlywed Game.
In 1980, I went to LA to see if I could sell my book about returning to high school. It lasted three weeks, which included trying out for a quiz show like Tic-Tac-Dough or something. At the time, you probably tried out for multiple shows; you were evaluated for various shows simultaneously. So it could have been Joker’s Wild, Tic-Tac-Dough, and some other crappy game show. You stood up, and you said some shit about yourself. That was about it. As a squirrely 20-year-old, I didn’t make it past the first cut.
I returned to high school for the last time, graduating in 1987. A few months later, I went around all the colleges in Manhattan, and quite a few were looking for work as an art model. At Fordham University, they had a flyer saying they were looking for teenagers to play this game in development for MTV. This was one more chance to be the person I had been until I graduated in June of ’87. This is October of ’87. I loved being that guy. So I went and was a trial contestant for people developing what turned into Remote Control, an entertainment-based quiz show, mostly TV questions. I really liked the people. They were all funny. I’d never been around professionally funny people before. They called me back.
I acted like an idiot teen. I probably wore my fake letter jacket. I was charmingly clueless the way I should be. I got a callback to play the game for the execs. This would be the final run-through before the execs greenlit the show. They did. I’d been around these people twice, and they seemed fun. So I wrote them a letter, as you did back then, or maybe I called them and said, “I want to work for you.” I must have called them. “You don’t have to pay me.” They said, “Fine. All we need is a letter on your college letterhead saying you were earning college credit for interning.” I didn’t know it, but all of MTV and Viacom, which eventually included (I don’t think VH1 existed yet), but all their shows ran on interns, so they got much free labour.
MTV got most of its stuff for free. The videos were free. The bands provided videos. So this is ’87. MTV had started in ’81. So, all its content was free for its first few years: music videos. They were starting to be afraid of losing their demographic because, six years in, the novelty had worn off. So, they began to develop their programming, including remote control. But they were used to not paying jack shit for production, so they needed interns.
I’d been modelling at the Fashion Institute of Technology. I’d get checks from them in envelopes with the FIT logo on them. By then, I was a fairly competent forger. So I just took the logo off an envelope or a modelling invoice and turned it into letterhead. I typed a fake letter saying I was getting class credit, and they didn’t look at it too hard at Remote Control. I started off as a fact-checker.
Along with another fact-checking intern who was beautiful. She was an attractive young woman. We checked the questions to make sure they were factually accurate. When you’re a fact-checker, you run into additional facts that can be turned into questions. So Emily and I would write questions. Nobody told us to. We weren’t trying to get ahead. We were trying to help the show. We were doing free work anyway, so here are some free questions from us.
After one season, the head writer started hanging out with Emily, really liked her, and made her a writer. Since the quality of our written work was equivalent, we had each just been writing questions when we could. He made us both writers. That’s how I became a TV writer. So, I started at zero dollars a week. Then, after a season or two, I got bumped up. When I became a writer, I started writing for $200 a week, $40 a day. I was with them for five seasons. A season was 18–20 weeks, 65 episodes overall, and a show budget of a million dollars. So they were making these shows for 15,000 bucks apiece.
Eventually, I got another raise to 300 bucks a week, and by my last season there, 600 bucks a week as a fact-checker. I must’ve been a fact-checker for more than one season out of my five seasons there because, in my second season as a fact-checker, I don’t fucking know. But it doesn’t fucking matter. But what matters is that I fucked up a fact check, which led to a kid losing a game. He should have won. By doing this, it makes me a massive hypocrite. Because if we’ll get through my history with game shows tonight, but in the next episode of this, I had a crazy shit fit about the same thing happening, about me getting screwed over by a quiz show I wasn’t contesting on. But anyway, the question was, “What is the Incredible Hulk’s name when he’s not the Incredible Hulk?”
The answer, as submitted by the writer, was David Banner. I knew everybody knew that because there was a TV show with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno as the two halves of the Hulk. His name was fucking David Banner. So, I only fact-checked it a little, and it went through. But that question gets to the show, and the kid says Bruce Banner, and he gets marked wrong. That affects the outcome of the game. I’d forgotten that in the comics, the Incredible Hulk’s name was Bruce Banner, and in the ’70s, Bruce was thought to be an effeminate, gayish name, so for TV, they changed Bruce to David. So this kid was right.
In the comics, the guy’s name was Bruce Banner. TV or comics. So they had to throw out that entire episode. Now the producers told me because I felt terrible, but they said there was other shit wrong with the show, but they may have just been trying to make me feel better about my fuck-up. But I fucked over that kid with my shitty research.
Let’s call that the end of segment one of this.
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