The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: carlisle96 on August 07, 2023, 01:18:01 PM
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Maybe this has been brought up before here, but if a show is preempted or taped and never aired, like the last weeks of CBS Match Game '79, do the contestants get their prizes?
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It is often in the contestant release that the show doesn't have to pay the contestants if their show doesn't air. That doesn't necessarily mean they won't however. After all, not paying them runs the risk of a PR nightmare.
Without being able to cite any examples, I believe there are cases on both sides.
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I believe there was a Deal or No Deal contestant who received their money even though the show never aired.
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It is often in the contestant release that the show doesn't have to pay the contestants if their show doesn't air. That doesn't necessarily mean they won't however. After all, not paying them runs the risk of a PR nightmare.
Without being able to cite any examples, I believe there are cases on both sides.
You bring this up:
considering all the forms one has to sign when they appear on a show, if for whatever reason someone doesn’t make air and won something, are they still bound by whatever non-disclosure agreements they had to sign? So they wouldn’t be able to raise such a stink if they were so inclined to?
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You bring this up:
considering all the forms one has to sign when they appear on a show, if for whatever reason someone doesn’t make air and won something, are they still bound by whatever non-disclosure agreements they had to sign? So they wouldn’t be able to raise such a stink if they were so inclined to?
If I found myself in that position, I'd honestly consult with a lawyer first, especially as the NDAs appear to be getting more draconian. Rather than the penalty being "you forfeit your prize money," sometimes the penalty is "you will be fined and sued for $x00,000." That's something I would never want to be on the wrong side of.
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I know Survivor and The Mole have NDA riders in the multiple millions.
Talking to a 49er who “won” a grand on the lost episode of Winning Lines, he seemed unconcerned and happy to share. There was also the issue of slow as gluey molasses payment of prize money, but I’m not sure what could be done there.
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It is often in the contestant release that the show doesn't have to pay the contestants if their show doesn't air. That doesn't necessarily mean they won't however. After all, not paying them runs the risk of a PR nightmare.
Without being able to cite any examples, I believe there are cases on both sides.
But with the game show channels re-running old and "lost" shows, someone's unaired episode may turn up sooner or later
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It is often in the contestant release that the show doesn't have to pay the contestants if their show doesn't air. That doesn't necessarily mean they won't however. After all, not paying them runs the risk of a PR nightmare.
Without being able to cite any examples, I believe there are cases on both sides.
But with the game show channels re-running old and "lost" shows, someone's unaired episode may turn up sooner or later
I have learned that this is actually an important consideration for Buzzr's Lost & Found marathons. Apparently, they have to make a good faith effort to see if contestants were paid or not at the time. If, for some reason, they chose to air an episode that never aired, and the contestants were never paid, Buzzr/Fremantle WOULD be obligated to pay them whatever they were credited with at the time.
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It is often in the contestant release that the show doesn't have to pay the contestants if their show doesn't air. That doesn't necessarily mean they won't however. After all, not paying them runs the risk of a PR nightmare.
Without being able to cite any examples, I believe there are cases on both sides.
I can think of examples on both sides, and both on Fox:
The Rich List - okay, this is second-half information, but The Version I Heard Was, the reason the show started with existing "current champions" is, Fox wanted to see what the ratings would be like before committing to air episodes with contestants that went on to win hundreds of thousands of dollars; the show was canceled after one episode, and reportedly the "big winners" got nothing (and the producers pointed to a clause in their contract where it said that (a) if the episode didn't air, they didn't have to pay, and (b) the contestants agreed not to appeal this).
Our Little Genius - despite the fact that some rigging was going on, I'm pretty sure Mark Burnett said that the contestants on the episodes already recorded would be paid.
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You bring this up:
considering all the forms one has to sign when they appear on a show, if for whatever reason someone doesn’t make air and won something, are they still bound by whatever non-disclosure agreements they had to sign? So they wouldn’t be able to raise such a stink if they were so inclined to?
If I found myself in that position, I'd honestly consult with a lawyer first, especially as the NDAs appear to be getting more draconian. Rather than the penalty being "you forfeit your prize money," sometimes the penalty is "you will be fined and sued for $x00,000." That's something I would never want to be on the wrong side of.
For not just the legal ramifications but for the financial ones as well. Say bye bye to your credit worthiness.
Was talking with one of my coworkers the other day about how the inner workings of these kinds of shows work and he asked me how you could keep that kind of thing under wraps. I told him of the pains they take to make sure everything is on the up and up and he was surprised. I even told him about the quiz scandals from the 50s and how that all got started.
Unrelatedly, I also told him about how much of a pain in the ass it could be to arrange travel and such if you’re going to wherever the show is taping, like if I was to go to California or when some of us came east for when Millionaire or the various others that were taping in Manhattan or Connecticut.
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It is often in the contestant release that the show doesn't have to pay the contestants if their show doesn't air. That doesn't necessarily mean they won't however. After all, not paying them runs the risk of a PR nightmare.
Without being able to cite any examples, I believe there are cases on both sides.
But with the game show channels re-running old and "lost" shows, someone's unaired episode may turn up sooner or later
I have learned that this is actually an important consideration for Buzzr's Lost & Found marathons. Apparently, they have to make a good faith effort to see if contestants were paid or not at the time. If, for some reason, they chose to air an episode that never aired, and the contestants were never paid, Buzzr/Fremantle WOULD be obligated to pay them whatever they were credited with at the time.
I guess I would look at this from the opposite perspective, at least from a PR angle. “Next on Buzzr: A never-before seen episode of Match Game ‘79!”. Cut the check on Skype to the winner or their heirs. That’s worth $5000 in publicity and a brief mention on GMA…at least in my opinion.
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Brad Bianucci's appearance on the last November 1999 episode of Millionaire was cut for time, but he was still paid.
https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2001/october/first-person-how-regis-philbin-changed-my-life/ (https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2001/october/first-person-how-regis-philbin-changed-my-life/)
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It is often in the contestant release that the show doesn't have to pay the contestants if their show doesn't air. That doesn't necessarily mean they won't however. After all, not paying them runs the risk of a PR nightmare.
Without being able to cite any examples, I believe there are cases on both sides.
But with the game show channels re-running old and "lost" shows, someone's unaired episode may turn up sooner or later
I have learned that this is actually an important consideration for Buzzr's Lost & Found marathons. Apparently, they have to make a good faith effort to see if contestants were paid or not at the time. If, for some reason, they chose to air an episode that never aired, and the contestants were never paid, Buzzr/Fremantle WOULD be obligated to pay them whatever they were credited with at the time.
My understanding is GSN at some point had a similar check.
Back to OP's original example, my understanding is that Goodson/Todman paid the contestants appearing in the unaired episodes of MG'79.
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Suppose a show is budgeted for $120,000 per week (1980's dollars), of which $40,000 is designated as prize money. If a contestant wins $5,000 on a show which doesn't air, the network is still paying $40,000 for the week's prize budget. That money doesn't go back to the network, so the packager can either keep it or pay the contestant. Either way, the money comes from the network.
The main reason everything is kept on the up-and-up in the wake of the quiz scandal is as follows. All four major networks own TV stations and hold broadcast licenses issued by the FCC. The networks control game shows so tightly to avoid challenges to those licenses at renewal time or a cash forfeiture, due to hanky-panky on a game show such as almost happened with Our Little Genius.
In modern times, the FCC levied a forfeiture against a station which didn't disclose that handout video provided by a car manufacturer and used in a news story was provided by the car manufacturer. The FCC felt the station had received a "thing of value" and that the handout video was too much like a commercial, so the station should have disclosed it just like prize suppliers are identified on a game show. The FCC has also levied forfeitures for airing a commercial which contained the EAS sounds as an attention getter. The FCC was on the warpath over that one. At my station our VP of Engineering circulated memos about these things.
In the case of our unaired George Peppard show, I don't recall that anyone won anything.
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In the case of our unaired George Peppard show, I don't recall that anyone won anything.
In the case of our unaired George Peppard show, I don't recall that anyone won anything.
I pulled up the tape quickly, and Alphabetics was won off the top of the show. So, does this mean GSN would have done the same due diligence test back in the day before the ran it (Was anybody even talking back then that this was a never-before-seen episode?) or was G-T generally likely to pay in the event of a withheld broadcast regardless?
And what I've never understood is why was the entire episode thrown out when the "rant" could simply have just been edited out of the program? It was divided into its own segment, and that's pretty friendly from an editing perspective. You skip over it and come back with the $200 puzzle (I suppose Peppard made some snide remarks elsewhere in the show about how he wanted to vent, but even if you didn't edit those out and just made it appear you ignored him, it wouldn't have been the sloppiest thing that ever got on television). Allen's rebuttal was diplomatic and factually correct, so it didn't make for bad TV per se (except for Peppard making himself look like an idiot for, quite frankly, having no idea about what he was talking). I'm guessing Howard or Bobby judged it acceptable to leave in and NBC said no too late to shoot more tape to fill the gap? If that was the case, I'm just wondering why they didn't just decide to throw out the segment right away and fill the gap as it nothing to do with the game, and I'm sure nobody in the viewing audience really card about what Peppard thought about network oversight on the integrity of game show productions.
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In the case of our unaired George Peppard show, I don't recall that anyone won anything.
I pulled up the tape quickly, and Alphabetics was won off the top of the show. So, does this mean GSN would have done the same due diligence test back in the day before the ran it (Was anybody even talking back then that this was a never-before-seen episode?) or was G-T generally likely to pay in the event of a withheld broadcast regardless?
The contestant who won the Alphabetics on the unaired episode was back for the next episode (and in continuing to be a dick, Peppard says "hot dog" in the day 2 Alphabetics, loses time asking to stop during the round, and then complains that it wasn't fair) so I doubt they would deny him $5,000 especially since on the aired episodes Allen would keep saying to him "you have $5,xxx+ in winnings."
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I have nothing factual to add to this discussion, other than to say that every time I see the subject line, I hear synthesizers crackling and Johnny O enthusiastically announcing, "From Hollywood...it's the game of preemptions and prizes...CONSTERNATION!"
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I doubt they would deny him $5,000 especially since on the aired episodes Allen would keep saying to him "you have $5,xxx+ in winnings."
Well, they could have if the episode in question never aired and they wanted to play on the escape clause that allowed them to skip on paying. While I don't expect to get the answer all these years later, it would be interesting to know when the decision was made to shelve the episode. They had an awkward voiceover by Gene at the start of the following episode saying that, "The program originally scheduled for air at this time will not be seen" (which was immediately followed by Allen saying, "If you weren't with us yesterday, you... you should have been").
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It always struck me (maybe an opinion colored by those who told it first) that it was a think-skinned Fred Silverman that just said yank the episode. It could have been edited creatively just to keep the worst of the rant out of it, and maybe have Gene Wood vamp a long ticket plug the next time they are in the studio. Since there was no puzzle played between breaks, maybe shoot an "audience alphabetics" for a reduced payout with Alan wearing the same suit at a later date (at NBC's expense). Likely, though, there wasn't time to do that.
NBC could have very rightly stuck to the contestant agreement, but I would guess $5,200 even then was a small price to pay for the contestant's silence on the matter (plus $200 to the other contestant who was ethered for decades). It would have also kept the FCC at bay from poking around and maybe determining it was a very arbitrary reason to preempt, ironically touching on the very topic that was being censored.
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Guess all you want.
The decision not to air that show came from Mr. Goodson a few days after we taped it.
All Allen had to do was say "let's play Password" to get Peppard off his rant. I was sitting in the booth waiting for him to say it but he didn't.
I don't know if the contestant received their alphabetics money. That was NBC's worry, not ours.
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OK, there it is. That's why I put in the caveat, as I sensed this was a case I had a misleading first impression of the story. Thanks for clearing that up.
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Guess all you want.
The decision not to air that show came from Mr. Goodson a few days after we taped it.
Surprising to hear. How would he have even been aware, I wonder?
All Allen had to do was say "let's play Password" to get Peppard off his rant. I was sitting in the booth waiting for him to say it but he didn't.
Makes me wonder why he didn't, but I suppose we could keep digging and digging into the wondering of any long-since-passed event.
Thanks for the added information.
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How would he have even been aware, I wonder?
Somebody told him. He was in NY at the time.