Excerpt
Let the Games Begin! The Early Days of TV Game Shows

It should come as no surprise to note that many of television’s first game shows were extensions of those that had originated on radio. Many broadcasting historians acknowledge that the first radio quiz show (referred to as an “audience participation program”) was broadcast in October of 1936, as CBS offered Professor Quiz. Featuring the affable and highly intelligent Dr. Craig Earl, contestants would ask Earl the questions and, if they could stump him, they collected $25. The popularity of these quiz shows grew rapidly, with programs like Doctor IQ, Pot O’Gold, and the highly successful Information, Please. A 1940 program known as Take It or Leave It established the “$64 question” as an icon for an important challenge (later to become TV’s $64,000 Question.)

Before World War II temporarily halted television’s development, broadcast networks were hard-pressed to provide any semblance of a programming schedule. In Jeff Kisselhoff’s marvelous book on TV history, The Box, CBS producer Gil Fates states that fifteen hours a week were tough to fill. Staffers talked about doing some sort of quiz show, coming up with the CBS Television Quiz in July of 1941 – making it network TV’s very first game show. Fates hosted the one-hour weekly show that lasted for a year.

By the late 1940s, a mustachioed, cigar-smoking movie comedian named Groucho Marx had turned his rapier wit into the basis of a radio quiz show called You Bet Your Life. Marx would chat with contestants (getting huge laughs at their expense) then ask questions in exchange for prize money. With the advent of video, You Bet Your Life made an easy transition to the NBC television network in 1950. The popular quiz show would stay in the Top 20 of the Nielsen ratings for most of the 1950s.