Dotto
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- This article is about the quiz show. For the Dotto trains, see trackless train.
Dotto (1958) was an American television quiz show whose nine-month jump to the top of the daytime quiz show heap ended when it became the unexpected first casualty of what became the quiz show scandals.
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[edit] Gameplay
Dotto was based on the children's connect-the-dots game: contestants answered general-interest questions to connect dots that made a portrait of a famous or historical personage.
[edit] History and scandal
In a very brief period it became the highest-rated quiz program of 1958, with a weekly nighttime version launched on a competing network (NBC) in the summer of that year. Its host, Jack Narz, achieved a Q-rating (recognizability) equal if not slightly superior to that enjoyed by Hal March, the popular host of The $64,000 Question; one of its contestants, a young actress named Connie Hines, later became famous as the wife of befuddled architect Wilbur Post on the popular comedy Mister Ed.
But barely nine months after the show was born, executives at CBS and the show's sponsor, Colgate-Palmolive, confirmed what was first only suspected: Dotto, the highest-rated quiz show of 1958, had been fixed.
[edit] Evidence found
In May 1958, a notebook belonging to contestant (and later journalist) Marie Winn was found by another contestant, Ed Hilgemeier, who discovered that the notebook included questions and answers to be used during Winn's appearances. A CBS executive vice president, Thomas Fisher, tested kinescopes of the show against Winn's notebook and concluded the show looked fixed. The executives also learned the show's producers had paid Winn, Hilgemeier, and Winn's opponent Yaffe Kimball-Slatin to keep quiet about the notebook. But they also learned that Hilgemeier may have demanded more money to keep quiet and filed a deceptive practices complaint with the Federal Communications Commission.
When the executives (including CBS president Frank Stanton) met in mid-August 1958, at the time a nighttime version of Dotto began to look like an NBC hit, executive producer Frank Cooper admitted Dotto had been rigged---and that only a select few among his production staffers knew it as well. (Narz didn't know of the rigging; he later passed a polygraph test while testifying to a grand jury investigating quiz show fixing.) The Colgate and CBS executives agreed: Dotto had to be and was cancelled. NBC followed suit regarding the nighttime version. And ten days later, newspaper stories exploded with newly-corroborated details provided by deposed Twenty One champion Herb Stempel that that show, too, had been fixed. The quiz show scandal was born in full form.
[edit] Aftermath
Some articles about the quiz show scandals have suggested an updated version of Dotto was planned for a 2000 premiere, but the new show never materialized. Connie Hines, the future Mister Ed co-star, was revealed to have been coached for her Dotto appearance but not given questions and answers in advance.
A version of Dotto was also hugely successful in the United Kingdom, where it was broadcast on ITV from 1958 to 1960. The British hosts were (in order) Robert Gladwell, Jimmy Hanley and Shaw Taylor.
[edit] Episode Status
Two episodes are known to have survived. One is a daytime episode featuring Marie Winn's victory over Yaffe Kimball-Slatin, while the other is a nighttime episode featuring Connie Hines.
[edit] References
- Joseph Stone with Tim Yohn, Prime Time and Misdemeanors (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press)
- Robert Metz, CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1975)
