‘Truth Or Consequences’: A Fred Westbrook Photo
‘Truth Or Consequences’: A Fred Westbrook Photo
Did you know this was the first game show ever to air on television? It’s true! ‘Truth or Consequences’ aired as a one-time experiment on the first day of New York station WNBT’s commercial program schedule on July 1, 1941. It was hosted by Ralph Edwards who created and hosted the game in 1940 on NBC radio. The show did not appear on TV again until 1950, when CBS debuted the show which ran there till ’54. NBC picked up the show and did it from Burbank and on On January 22, 1957, the show became the first program to be broadcast in all time zones from a prerecorded videotape; this technology, which had only been introduced in 1956, had previously been used only for time-delayed broadcasts to the West Coast. In 1966, ‘Truth or Consequences’ became the first successful, non network, daily game show in first-run syndication having ended its NBC run one year earlier. This version continued through 1974. The show was done from Metromedia’s studios in Los Angeles. Three years later, in the fall of 1977, a syndicated revival titled ‘The New Truth or Consequences’ premiered. Because Bob Barker was unavailable, due to his work on the daytime and nighttime versions of ‘The Price is Right’, he was replaced by Bob Hilton but this version did not click in the ratings, and was cancelled after a single season.
Bob Barker was officially introduced by Ralph Edwards himself as the show’s new host on New Year’s Eve day (December 31), 1956.
“ToC” was also brought back briefly in ’87, with Larry Anderson as host. It even featured Hillary Safire (the legendary Carol Merrill’s daughter) as the show’s model. But, it didn’t matter. It was gone by the end of the year.
I’m a young whippersnapper who loves TV history. I was familiar with “Ren and Stimpy” first, and the first time I saw a kinescope of “Truth or Consequences” I nearly fell out of my chair when I heard the theme. I couldn’t stop laughing.
‘Truth or Consequences’ was the first series to use multiple film cameras in front of a live studio audience. The cameras themselves were fixed in place and didn’t move. This system would then be used on ‘You Bet Your Life’ with Groucho Marx (a series that used 8 fixed cameras). During per-production on ‘I Love Lucy’ the staff looked at the ‘Truth or Consequences’ set-up and decided to use it but modified it so that the cameras were moveable. And so, contrary to urban legend, it is actually Ralph Edwards who is responsible for using multiple film cameras to recorded a television program (live shows almost always used multiple cameras). What ‘I Love Lucy’ did was to get the cameras moving. And, of course, the development team also had Karl Fruend develop a “flat” lighting system that is still used today. This is the first real innovation that came from ‘I Love Lucy’. The series creator (and no, the series was not created by Desi or Lucy) Jess Oppenheimer created the in-the-lens prompter system. Today this is known as a Teleprompter (which, in reality, is the name of a corporation). Before this a prompter was a roll of paper that was located above, below, or on either side of a camera. Oppenheimer’s invention allowed an actor to look directly into the camera and talk to the TV audience.
Love that Bob.
The photograph seems to reflect some of the soft hues of the Norelco PC-70 cameras.
I happily stumbled upon a CD called. “Music for TV Dinners” in a Public Radio catalog in the 1990s (CD out of print) which has this cut (“Stop Gap”) on it. Of course it’s on You Tube.. http://youtu.be/ICcpIyMiOmk
When Ren and Stimpy was on Nick, the episode where Stimpy becomes a star, they used music when the horse checks out Pretty Kitty Litter…I went nuts for a year trying to remember where I had heard it before…in the middle of the night I remembered it was the closing music bed to the syndicated version of T or C…I had run this program when I worked at WBNG many times!
Judging by that Norelco camera, this must have been from the syndicated era [1966-75], taped at the old KTTV-Metromedia 11 lot on Sunset Blvd. [since demolished for a high school].