From Van Doren to KenJen

[DrBear]

An interesting post in Mark Evanier's fine blog, "News From Me," looks at Jennings, goes back to Charles Van Doren, and gives a brief history of how networks were afraid of big winners. I don't necessarily agree with him that Michael Larsen "helped open the door' to raising win limits past the $25,000 mark, but it's an interesting post anyway.

[aaron sica]

[quote name=\'DrBear\' date=\'Dec 6 2004, 08:21 AM\']An interesting post in Mark Evanier's fine blog, "News From Me," looks at Jennings, goes back to Charles Van Doren, and gives a brief history of how networks were afraid of big winners. I don't necessarily agree with him that Michael Larsen "helped open the door' to raising win limits past the $25,000 mark, but it's an interesting post anyway.

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Interesting read. Yeah, the comment he made about the networks raising win limits past the $25,000 mark raises an interesting question, which may have been answered befoe, but I'll ask again - how did/does TPiR (daytime) get around that?

[zachhoran]

[quote name=\'aaron sica\' date=\'Dec 6 2004, 08:36 AM\']
Interesting read. Yeah, the comment he made about the networks raising win limits past the $25,000 mark raises an interesting question, which may have been answered befoe, but I'll ask again - how did/does TPiR (daytime) get around that?

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I believe it was mentioned fairly recently, about two or so years ago, that Daytime TPIR still has a $125K limit on winnings. There have been daytime shows with top potential winnings of over $125K, particularly on shows featuring Golden Road or Triple Play. I don't recall anyone exceeding the CBS-imposed limit in winnings on TPIR. How far into the TPIR's CBS run did someone top $25K? Starting in Fall 1978(when MG7x added the STar WHeel and TPIR added the Bonus SPin to the SCSD), players on shows with returning champs retired at $25K, but could keep up to $35K By the time of CBS $25K Pyramid's debut, players still retired at $25K could keep up to $50K. The biggest winner TPIR had had as of Fall 1982 was around $35K, right? I remember a $39K+ Golden ROad/SHowcase win in early 1984 which was a record at the time, for example.