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Game Show Winnings Cap: Difference between revisions
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Way back in the earlier days of television in [[The Fifties]], a man named Herb Stempel competed on the [[Game Show]] ''[[Twenty One]]''. After it was discovered that he intentionally lost to Charles van Doren upon instruction by producer Dan Enright, the entire game show industry was [[Genre Killer|nearly brought down]]. Although the genre regained popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, many shows from that point onward had to endure a series of standards and practices to prove that they were on the up-and-up. Among these limitations was the [[Game Show Winnings Cap]], which is [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin]]: a limit to the amount of money that a game show contestant can win and/or how long he or she can stay as returning champion.
In response to the seven figures available on big-money shows such as ''[[Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?]]'', many other game shows have offered seven-figure winnings. With the 1950s rigging far in the genre's past, and multiple $1,000,000 game show winnings in the 2000s, winnings caps are pretty much a [[Forgotten Trope]].
Returning champion caps, however, are still present, as most remaining game shows are one-and-done while ''[[Family Feud]]'' continues to hold onto the same five-game limit it had since 2002. Further, contestants may not participate on more than one game show within a one-year period, or three in ten years.
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* The Big Three networks imposed winnings caps on all network game shows, all in answer to the quiz show scandals:
** [[CBS]] imposed a cap on game show winnings. Initially, contestants on CBS-affiliated game shows were retired after winning $25,000, and could not keep any winnings over that limit (although sometime in the mid-to-late 1970s, a contestant could keep up to $10,000 more than the limit, for a $35,000 maximum payout). The cap increased to $50,000 in 1984, $75,000 by 1986, then $125,000 sometime in the 1990s. Come 2006, with ''[[The Price Is Right]]'' having long since been the only CBS original game show, the winnings cap was done away with entirely.
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