When ITV, the UK’s first commercial TV station, launched in 1955, it was subject to rulings by the Independent Television Authority. Following a host of TV quiz show prize scandals in 1950s America (including Twenty-One as documented in 1994 feature film Quiz Show, The $64,000 Question and Dotto), the ITA set a £1,000 limit (still a significant amount of money in those days – and now on BBC game shows, which are regulated differently) on the amount of cash that could be won on a commercial channel game show.
That amount gradually increased over the years, as the ITA was replaced in 1972 by the UK’s commercial radio-and-TV governing Independent Broadcasting Authority. Between 1989 and 1992, the IBA limited weekly winnings to no more than £5,000 per individual or a weekly total of £6,000.
The cash winnings (or equivalent in prizes) limit applied to all commercial TV game shows on ITV, Channel 4, and satellite channels until 1993. That meant Bullseye, The Price is Right, You Bet!, Play Your Cards Right, Blockbusters… even the Blind Date holiday for the winning couple, all had to keep to the same relatively conservative budgets.
Relatively conservative in comparison with now, when tens of thousands of pounds are regularly handed out on TV for knowing that Paris is in France or that Henry VIII had six wives. That all started 30 years ago when the anti-corruption game show prize limits were abolished. From January 1993, game shows on commercial channels (so, not the BBC), could give away as much cash or equivalent in prizes as they wished. That led to the arrival a few years later of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, which, just as the ITA and IBA had feared, was an enticing enough sum to lead to the return of the quiz show cheating scandal. They clearly should have stuck to speedboats.
