Interesting that Don Webster is mentioned both here and in the Cleveland Plain Dealer article. He had also either hosted or co-hosted the original half-hour Ohio Lottery's TV game shows when they first started in 1975.
They were a lot different from the Ohio Lottery's current Cash Explosion Double Play show. There were no "instant tickets" in those days and no picking of your own numbers as with the lottery's current "Pick 3/Pick 4/Buckeye 5/Super Lotto" games. The tickets were pre-printed and you had to take whatever numbers you got on them.
The lottery's first TV game show was called Buckeye 300, and getting on it was a little complicated: You bought tickets that had five three-digit numbers printed on them as "Your Numbers" (three of which would appear in blue boxes on the ticket and two in green boxes) and on the "Drawing Date" that was printed on the ticket, three three-digit numbers would be drawn -- a "Single Number" (such as "684") and two more that would be paired as the "Double Numbers" (such as "987-002"). You won $20 and an entry in the game's million-dollar drawing if the "Single Number" matched any of the five numbers on your ticket, but it was the "Double Number" that got you on the show.
You had to match both of those numbers to get on the show, and both of the matched numbers also had to be in the green boxes, though they could be in either order. (Getting both of the "Double Numbers" in blue boxes won you a consolation prize of $1,000, and getting one of the "Double Numbers" in a blue box and the other one in a green box won you a consolation prize of $500. However, you won nothing if you matched only one of the "Double Numbers.") Once on the show, though, you were guaranteed at least $15,000, and the weekly winner got a whopping $300,000 (though there were no "returning champions" as there are now on Cash Explosion Double Play).
Later on, they went to a ticket game with simpler qualification requirements called Buckeye 1000 and the top prize was changed to $1,000 a month for life, with $400,000 guaranteed. Then that one was later succeded by one called Pot O' Gold ($250,000 weekly top prize), and then they had a generic half-hour Ohio Lottery Show connected with their "Weekly 50¢ Game" (still with pre-printed tickets) for a while before production of this show ended in 1979. However, Don Webster did continue to draw the numbers on the "one-minute" Ohio Lottery drawing shows for a while longer into the early 1980s
Michael Brandenburg
(under the watchful eyes of a representative from the state auditor's office, of course!)
