© Columbia University Press
The Quiz Show
March, 2009
Paper, 192 pages, 3 b&w illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-7486-2753-0
Edinburgh University Press
$27.50
Cloth, 192 pages, 3 b&w illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-7486-2752-3
$85.00
Despite its enduring popularity with both broadcasters and audiences, the quiz show is marginalized in studies of popular television. Su Holmes takes a fresh approach to quiz shows while also revisiting, updating, and expanding existing quiz show scholarship. Discussing Double Your Money, The $64,000 Dollar Question, Twenty-One, The Price is Right, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and The Weakest Link, Holmes addresses the relationship between quiz shows and the television genre; the early broadcast history of the quiz show; questions of institutional regulation; quiz show aesthetics; the social significance of "games;" "ordinary" people as television performers, and questions of quiz show reception, from interactivity to on-line fandom.