Entertainment Weekly
10 of the biggest game show scandals in TV history
By Will Harris November 5, 2026 6:30 a.m. ET
When a scandal is so significant that it almost takes down an entire genre of TV — as was the case in the 1950s, when several game shows were revealed to be fixed — one might reasonably think it’s the sort of thing that wouldn’t happen again.
But in fact, game show scandals have continued to make headlines right up to the present decade. Granted, most recent scandals have revolved less around the shows themselves than the contestants, but a scandal is a scandal, particularly once it hits the headlines.
From the 1950s to the 2020s, Entertainment Weekly takes a look back at 10 of the biggest scandals in the history of TV game shows.
01
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Twenty-One (1957)
The nutshell version of the Twenty-One scandal might lead one to believe the whole thing started when producers realized viewers were growing tired of Herbert Stempel, a contestant who’d been winning week after week for nearly two months. In fact, the popular quiz show was literally rigged from its second episode onward. The reason? Because the first episode featured two contestants who struggled to answer any questions.
The “solution,” as it were, is that subsequent contestants weren’t picked so much as cast. They were then given instructions on how to dress, which questions to answer right or wrong, and even when to wipe the sweat off their brows. But once producers decided that Stempel’s run on the show had reached a plateau, they ordered him to lose to newcomer Charles Van Doren.
In turn, Van Doren — who was embraced by viewers for longer than Stempel had been — became not only the show’s biggest celebrity but a national sensation.
When a disgruntled Stempel decided to blow the whistle on Twenty-One’s illicit practices behind the scenes, his efforts were initially dismissed as an act of jealousy. In 1958, however, another game show, Dotto, was caught up in a rigging scandal, at which point Stempel’s accusations against Twenty-One suddenly became a whole lot more credible. From there, more former contestants came forward and admitted to their participation. By October 1958, Twenty-One had been canceled.
02
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Dotto (1958)
Falling somewhere between a general knowledge quiz and a game of connect-the-dots, Dotto premiered in January 1958. It was the highest-rated daytime game show on television when it was abruptly canceled in August of that year. When it was initially yanked, there was no explanation. But it wasn’t long before the reason for its sudden disappearance became public knowledge.
In May, one of the show’s standby contestants, Edward Hilgemeier, Jr., found a notebook backstage that contained the answers to the day’s questions. After the broadcast, Hilgemeier told the losing contestant about what he’d found, resulting in the producers paying him $1,500 to keep quiet and the losing contestant $4,000.
When Dotto continued to soldier on, however, Hilgemeier eventually revealed to the show’s sponsor, Colgate-Palmolive, what he knew. The company went to CBS, which — after investigating the claim — confronted the show’s executive producer, Frank Cooper, who admitted the show was fixed. That’s when Dotto officially got canceled, but it took a little longer for the real story to make its way to the media, at which point it became a true scandal.
03
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The $64,000 Challenge (1958)
No, that’s not a typo: There was an offshoot of The $64,000 Question called The $64,000 Challenge, which initially took contestants from the former series — those who had won at least $8,000 — and pitted them against challengers. Eventually, Challenge ended up expanding its contestant base to include celebrities on occasion. One such celeb was child star Patty Duke, who was all of 11 years old when she appeared on the show.
The following year, in the wake of the aforementioned quiz show scandals, Duke appeared before the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee’s Legislative Oversight Subcommittee and revealed that she’d been drawn into the scandal as well. The young actress had been coached by an assistant producer of Challenge, who told her what to study and then quizzed her.
“She said you better study these things because they might be on the show. We are not sure. But they always were,” Duke testified.
If viewers were outraged by the adults who had been part of the scandal, they were furious about a child being dragged into it. A Washington Post columnist wrote at the time: “What they did to Patty Duke — quite apart from the fraud they perpetrated on the public — amounted, in the real sense of the phrase, to a corruption of innocence.”
04
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Press Your Luck (1984)
Hosted by Peter Tomarken, Press Your Luck only ran for three years during its original run in the ‘80s. It had been on the air for less than a year when Michael Larson figured out a way to beat the system.
The game’s premise involved a series of multiple-choice questions that, when answered correctly, earned contestants spins on the show’s “Big Board.” The board featured 18 squares that lit up in a seemingly random sequence; the contestant would hit a button to stop the light, at which point they’d see what they’d won.
What Larson discovered through taping and repeatedly watching the show was that the sequence wasn’t actually random. There were only five patterns — and certain squares always had cash and an extra spin.
When Larson took his knowledge and secured a spot on the show, he made the most of it, walking away with $110,237 in cash and prizes. Unsurprisingly, this infuriated the producers, who realized what he was doing during the taping — but, realizing he wasn’t actually breaking any rules, they had little choice but to sit and stew while he continued to win big.
CBS’s Standards and Practices department tried to argue that Larson had cheated, but in the end, the network paid him his winnings. In doing so, former CBS Daytime programming executive Bob Boden explained that they were effectively conceding “that he hadn’t cheated, that he was just smarter than CBS.”
05
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Manhunt (2001)
Arguably more of a reality competition series than a proper game show, UPN’s Manhunt — which featured contestants trying to escape faux bounty hunters (one of whom was played by John Cena) — nonetheless deserves mention on this list.
Early in its run in 2001, Steve Beverly, a pop culture professor from Union University in Jackson, Tenn., wrote a letter to the FCC accusing the show of violating federal rules put in place after the quiz show scandals of the 1950s. Per Beverly, the producers “engaged in deception of viewers in both locale and game mechanics and in manipulation of viewers.”
His argument was supported by reporting from journalist Peter Lance, who revealed that the show — which was supposed to have been filmed in Hawaii — actually had additional scenes filmed at Griffith Park in Los Angeles because producers weren’t completely satisfied with the Hawaii footage.
In addition, Bob Jaffe, former co-executive producer of Manhunt, and Hash Shaalan, a former Navy SEAL who also served as a judge and event producer, alleged that Paramount executives had sought to manipulate the competition in order to favor a contestant they’d deemed to be “very charismatic.” UPN and Paramount denied manipulating the competition’s outcome. The series completed its six-episode run in September 2001 and never returned for a second season.
06
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Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (2001)
It’s well-established that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is one of the most popular and durable game show formats in the world, having been adapted from the original U.K. version for dozens upon dozens of countries. Perhaps the most profound indicator of its bulletproof nature, however, came when the U.K. version managed to survive the cheating scandal surrounding British Army Major Charles Ingram after he appeared to win £1,000,000 in 2001.
After his victory, the production team went back and reviewed the episode. They noticed that after Ingram successfully answered the £32,000 question — during which he changed his answer at the last second — something wasn’t quite right. They began paying greater attention to the coughing heard throughout the episode, at which point they noted 19 coughs that were deemed “significant” to Ingram’s answers.
Investigators determined that Ingram had teamed with a “Fastest Finger First” contestant named Tecwen Whittock, who was allegedly doing the majority of the illicit coughing, while Ingram’s wife Diana was also implicated in the scheme. All three were found guilty of deception in 2003, with the Ingrams receiving 18-month suspended prison sentences and Whittock getting a 12-month suspended sentence. They have each maintained their innocence despite their convictions. Ingram himself got the worst of it: He was forced to resign his commission from the British Army.
07
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BrainTeaser (2007)
This British word puzzle game show, which premiered in August 2002 and was broadcast live, may well have lasted beyond its five-year run if it hadn’t been caught up in the British premium-rate phone-in scandal of 2007.
In addition to in-studio contestants, BrainTeaser also regularly offered phone-in viewer puzzles. To participate, viewers had to call a premium-rate number (better known in North America as a 1-900 number). Where things got controversial for BrainTeaser, however, was when it couldn’t find a winner in time. The producers had a color-coded system in place: “Blue” callers got the puzzle right, “red” callers got the puzzle wrong, and “green” callers… well, that meant a production staff member was posing as a contestant, allowing the show to announce a fake winner.
As a result of an investigation by Ofcom, Cheetah Productions admitted some of the show’s contestants were fake. The company explained that the intention was to select a genuine winner after the show, a claim that held very little water once it was determined that this only actually happened once. BrainTeaser was suspended in March 2007 and ultimately canceled, while Channel 5 found itself on the receiving end of a £300,000 fine that June.
08
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The Price Is Right (2008)
Given its family-friendly nature, it’s hard to imagine someone being banned from The Price Is Right, but Ted Slauson reportedly managed to achieve it. A die-hard fan of the show, Slauson regularly attended tapings beginning in the late 1980s. He spent years upon years studying and memorizing the retail prices of the various items highlighted on the air.
If he wasn’t picked from the audience to be a contestant, he could nonetheless be heard yelling out from the crowd, trying to help other contestants with the information he’d accrued.
The problem arose in 2008, when one of those other contestants — a gentleman by the name of Terry Kniess — managed to deliver a perfect bid for the final Showcase, which was virtually unheard of. Kniess claimed he came up with the bid on his own and that Slauson had nothing to do with it, but Slauson seemed pretty convinced that Kniess couldn’t have pulled it off without his coaching.
Whichever version is true, the end result was a lot of headlines — as well as a documentary, Perfect Bid: The Contestant Who Knew Too Much. The Price Is Right subsequently decided to mix things up in terms of the prizes offered in order to avoid having it happen again.
09
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Our Little Genius (2010)
It’s one thing for a show’s reputation to be derailed as a result of a controversy during its run. But in the case of Fox’s Our Little Genius, the controversy — or the potential for it, anyway — got the show pulled from the primetime schedule before it ever aired.
Originally scheduled to premiere on Jan. 13, 2010, the Kevin Pollak-hosted program featured kids answering questions in order to win money for their parents, and the parents were able to consult experts for assistance.
A week before its intended premiere, however, executive producer Mark Burnett issued a statement: “I recently discovered that there was an issue with how some information was relayed to contestants during the pre-production of Our Little Genius. As a result, I am not comfortable delivering the episodes without re-shooting them. I believe my series must always be beyond reproach, so I have requested that FOX not air these episodes.”
Even before Burnett’s statement, a story in The New York Times described how producers shot alternate endings with families because children were taking their losses really hard. A month after the series was pulled, the FCC began looking into Our Little Genius following a complaint filed by one of the parents.
In the end, the FCC took no enforcement action against the show. The fact that the episodes never aired raised questions about whether the agency’s rules against rigging televised contests even applied. Meanwhile, Fox and the producers decided to waive a provision in contestants’ contracts declaring that their winnings were only due upon the airing of their episodes, and paid the winnings anyway.
10
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Jeopardy (2021)
For the producers of Jeopardy, it was always going to be a struggle to find a replacement for Alex Trebek, who hosted the answers-and-questions game show for nearly 37 seasons before his 2020 death from pancreatic cancer.
For the first several months after Trebek’s passing, hosting duties were handled by a variety of guests, including legendary contestant Ken Jennings, Big Bang Theory star Mayim Bialik, and the show’s executive producer, Mike Richards. Finally, on Aug. 11, 2021, it was announced that the new permanent host of the syndicated series would be Richards, while Bialik would host primetime specials and spinoffs.
The position didn’t last long, however. Even when the announcement was made, there were rumblings about allegations concerning Richards’ treatment of female employees during his time on The Price Is Right, including those detailed in a 2010 discrimination lawsuit brought by Brandi Cochran against CBS and Fremantle Media. Richards denied the allegations.
On August 18, 2021, The Ringer published a story examining Richards’ past, including comments he made on his podcast, The Randumb Show, repeatedly using offensive language and disparaging women’s bodies.
As a result, he stepped down as host after taping only a week’s worth of episodes, ceding his position to Jennings and Bialik, who shared hosting duties. Later that month, Richards was fired as executive producer of both Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.
