For now the online Britannica has made its content free, which is a really nice deal. It's like Wikipedia with far better writing and much clearer organization. A couple comments on our little genre are worth a peek.
The entry on TV in the U.S. offers a concise account of the '50s fixing scandals. The clincher: "If TV still had a lingering reputation as a modern technology that could take the postwar United States into a utopian new age, this reputation ended with the quiz show scandal."
Which may be too sweeping and melodramatic. I don't know that TV ever looked utopian, but the game show scandals did reinforce television's low-rent image.
A later section of the same article tells the companion story of the return of game shows to broadcast prime time, starting with Millionaire in 1999. The entry nails one of the genre's biggest pluses: "Any negative associations left over from the quiz show scandals had dissipated, and, more important, the shows were inexpensive—a crucial factor at the turn of the 21st century, when budgets for other prime-time shows were spinning out of control."
Yes, cheap is beautiful. And free is nice for the online Britannica, at least for a little while.
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