Inside the Guide: 70 years ago, "The $64,000 Question" was the hottest thing on TV (August 20-26, 1955)

This week we'll go back in time and look at the TV Guide Pittsburgh edition from August 20-26, 1955--70 years ago!. Here's a look at the front cover:

You will notice the cover subject is Hal March, emcee of The $64,000 Question. That quiz show had premiered just about two months earlier but was the talk of the medium, breaking summertime viewership records and capturing the public's collective attention. Newspapers, street corners, water coolers...all were abuzz with discussions about the smash program.

Yes, this was one of the shows implicated in the quiz show scandals that would soon take down the genre and help lead to network, rather than sponsor, control over TV programming. $64,000 Question was not the first quiz show exposed, nor the most egregious, but it was believed sponsor Revson did influence the direction of the series in multiple ways. At least one contestant on the spinoff 64,000 Challenge (a head-to-head format, unlike the escalating-questions-solo format of its predecessor) claimed he was given answers in advance. Producer Louis Cowan became president of CBS TV after this show took off, but he was booted out in the wake of the scandals.

All this makes the issue in question (Ha!) a fascinating read. Ah, to be innocent and read this as it played out in Summer 1955, 3 years before the scandals broke. The cover story talks about how producers select contestants, not directly mentioning how sponsors might manipulate the gameplay or try to juke ratings.  One amusing note mentions how producers verified that potential participants weren't "misrepresenting themselves": "Cowan checks with their, ministers, priests, or rabbis, with their banks and their place of work." Note: Lack of semicolons and Oxford commas is from the original text.

The article mentions that people write the mag all the time asking how the show can afford to give away the big cash prizes. Actually, the program is much cheaper to produce than most primetime entertainment shows, as a helpful list indicates. The Jackie Gleason Show cost over $72K per week last season, but even with cash winnings averaged in. Question is estimated at a little over $25K.

The "TV Teletype" feature at the front of the mag has an item on the show, saying that American Research Bureau figures reveal it draws 47 million viewers each week. "That's unprecedented for summertime TV. 

This is my favorite reference in the issue, though, an item from the "Letters to the Editor" page:

Knowing what would happen a few years later, this is quite a thing to read here!