I thought about this when I saw an item in Google news (noted in a faux tweet) about Houston TV personality Chita Johnson. Chita's day job is onscreen weather forecasting with KHOU. But she has a sideline as a civvie contestant on game shows, having appeared twice on Family Feud and once on The Price is Right. Does she count as a "real contestant," despite her very real training on TV?
Well, I dunno. But I posted a few debunking comments about the entire subject on the GSN board...
And one cynical note: those "real contestants" on game shows are given plenty of coaching. I've read a ton of stories about Wheel of Fortune contestants, for instance, and linked to a lot of them on the blog. They're constantly coached by the show's staffers to clap, speak loud and clear, show enthusiasm, etc.
The idea that "real contestants" just walk in off some street without an extensive vetting and coaching process is pleasant fantasy (even, famously, on Cash Cab, the "street" game show). The key issue, of course, is whether the outcome is rigged. That. Does. Not. Happen. It doesn't happen on Baggage or Lingo or Pyramid or any other game show, given the long deep shadow of the 1950s rigging scandals. Even though contestants are thoroughly coached and some of them, gasp, may have even earned a dollar or two in acting jobs.
The last serious issue with game show rigging occurred on Fox's abortive Our Little Genius. Even the hint of rigging was enough to doom the show before it ever got on the air.
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