Word: quiz
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THEY BEGAN, IN A SENSE, AS A way to fill the TV void left by the quiz-show scandals of the late 1950s. How could the networks re-create those dramatic question-and-answer confrontations that had been so popular with the viewers? Finally, two years after the $64,000 Question was yanked off the air, the format resurfaced in 1960 in a new high-minded incarnation featuring the grandest prize of all -- a four-year lease on a pretentiously formal 18th century residence in Washington...
...first contestants were two articulate World War II veterans named Jack and Dick, who had primed for their moment in the spotlight as if going into combat. Instead of being cloistered in isolation booths like the early quiz- show participants, the two men stood behind individual lecterns, as solitary as Hemingway heroes. The questions -- posed by a distinguished panel of journalists to reassure viewers that nothing was rigged -- demanded both a detailed knowledge of government programs (farm subsidies and the Tennessee Valley Authority) and a travel writer's mastery of obscure foreign locales (Ghana, Laos and Formosa...
...Like quiz contestants nervously blurting out wrong answers, some incumbent Presidents have lost debates because of pressure-of-the-moment gaffes. Jerry Ford made his bizarre 1976 declaration that Poland was not a communist country and foolishly stuck to it for five days because he misremembered a briefing on the Helsinki Accords, which implied recognition of Soviet control of Eastern Europe. Did it really make substantive -- as opposed to political -- difference that in 1980 Jimmy Carter blurted out that he had been discussing arms control with his precocious 13-year-old daughter...
...form of gamesmanship" this new political medium required. "No matter how narrow or broad the question," Cater wrote, "each of them extracted his last second of allotted image projection in making his response." If anything, the candidates have grown more adroit over the years. That is why these political quiz shows have come to resemble that other icon of the TV age -- the Super Bowl: overhyped, overcoached and ultimately underwhelming...
...Tonight, we get the vice presidential editionof a national quiz show," Rather said, noting thatunder this year's system, the three candidatestend to answer questions with more questions, justlike on "Jeopardy...