Good movie, but not quite history-

Rating: Null/10 (27 May 2003)

Anyone interested in the events portrayed here ought to read the book "Prime Time and Misdemeanors" by Joseph Stone and Tim Yohn (Mr. Stone was the Assistant D.A. for Manhattan at the time his office investigated this affair.) One point he makes is that the Quiz Show scandal was far from harmless- many of the principals involved were tainted by it and took years to rehabilitate their reputations (such as professor VanDoren himself.) On the larger scale, acceptance of such dishonesty damages our whole society.
Before the scandal broke, parents held-up the contestants as examples to their children of what they ought to aspire to intellectually. Afterwards, no one wanted their kids to pattern themselves after people so corrupted in moral ambiguity.
Interestingly, there was nothing illegal about giving the quiz contestants the answers, so long as the shows' sponsors knew about it beforehand (otherwise this would have constituted fraud.) But when the shows' staffs and contestants lied under oath about the quiz rigging, they became guilty of perjury, a Federal offense given the circumstances. The deception was bad enough. Lying about it afterwards only made the situation that much worse.
The story of the quiz scandals should serve as a wake-up call to people who nostalgically yearn for the era and tend to think of the 1950s as the time of shark-finned cars, suburban tracts and "Happy Days" icons and music.