"Quiz Show"

This was the first time that I had watched Quiz Show the entire way through. My aunt and I watched it together and it was really interesting to talk to her about it. Because it was a true story, she was able to attest to events that took place after the incident in the movie occurred. She mentioned to me that at that time, broadcasting companies took all of the quiz shows off of the air. There was a stigma around the validity of the shows, and it took a long time for the American public to trust the idea of the show itself. Ironically, as mentioned in the movie the American people did not have a problem trusting the television companies themselves. I guess these people could be considered the conglomerates. NBC controlled everything in this movie, including the pharmaceutical companies and the contestants. As we talked about in class it was evident that the pharmaceutical companies controlled the production of the shows. One call could get a contestant off the air and replaced immediately. Everything was done for money. Van Duran was expected to keep winning because the conglomerates were making tons of money off of him. Their ratings were going up because of the viewers. With more viewers, more money was being put into the drug companies. In the end the contestants were the ones hurt. NBC is still a huge business, but the contestants lives were practically ruined. Everyone covered up the lies for the companies. This was hard to understand. It seemed as though if one person would have just told the truth than the companies would have been hit hard. It makes me wonder how often things like this happen. How often we, as the American audience, are fooled into believing thing that television wants us to believe. Reality television can be twisted into a staged production, where everything turns out the way the production companies want. In this way the viewers are constantly tuning in, and the ratings are constantly going up. I know that my life is not as dramatic or exciting as the lives of those on the bachelor or the real world, therefore I have to believe that these people may be in some way provoked to act the way they do or “fed the answers.” Why do we so willingly trust the people that make television? Television is definitely better now than in the time of the quiz show. Monopolies do not exist as they did but conglomerates are still able to protect themselves or cover up for things like what happened in this movie. Talking about these issues in class, as well as watching the movie gave me a clearer understanding of what happened with television and posed a lot of questions for me as a viewer.