Game Show Confidential

Game and quiz shows first started appearing on radio broadcasts in the 1930s, led by the CBS network’s Professor Quiz, hosted by a man who was neither a professor nor even a college graduate, the first of several frauds that seemed to be endemic to the genre. Professor Quiz was followed by other such game shows as Uncle Jim’s Question Bee and Ask It Basket, which in turn spawned successful box games for at-home play. The show Truth or Consequences made the transition from radio to television in the late 1940s and was so popular that a town in New Mexico was named for the show. Television proved to be the perfect platform for game shows since they were very popular and cheap to produce. Even in reruns today, the older shows still draw huge audiences. This book describes the evolution of the game show, its larger-than-life producers and hosts, as well as the scandals that have rocked it from time to time, including bloopers from such “adult” oriented shows as The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, and Hollywood Squares. This is an entertaining and lively look at an American phenomenon whose popularity doesn’t seem to be going away.

This unique work profiles the private lives and careers of 32 American game show hosts, including the originals (e.g., Bill Cullen, Peter Marshall), the classics (e.g., Bob Barker), and the contemporaries (e.g., Regis Philbin). Organized by host, each chapter includes birth and family information and a complete career history. The most significant developments of each host's early life and career are highlighted--complete with successes, failures, and scandals. Many of the biographies are accompanied by interviews with the host or his family and friends.

GAME SHOWS FAQ: ALL THATS LEFT TO KNOW ABOUT THE PIONEERS THE JACKPOTS THE SCANDAL

How do you confront a threat that is hiding in plain sight? FBI agent Craig Frasier and psychologist Kieran Finnegan hunt an escaped serial killer in the latest explosive thriller in the New York Confidential series. It was one of Kieran’s most chilling cases: her assessment of a murderer known as the Fireman. There was no doubt that the man needed to be locked away. Now Craig is called to a gruesome crime scene that matches the killer’s methods, and news breaks that the Fireman has escaped prison. Amid a citywide manhunt, Kieran and Craig need to untangle a web of deceit, privilege and greed. They suspect that those closest to the killer have been drawn into his evil, or else someone is using another man’s madness and cruelty to disguise their crimes. When their investigation brings the danger right to the doorstep of Finnegan’s Pub, Kieran and Craig will have to be smarter and bolder than ever before, because this time it’s personal, and they have everything to lose.

The rollicking saga of reality television—an ambitious cultural history of America’s most influential, most divisive artistic phenomenon, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning New Yorker writer “Written with a storyteller’s verve, a journalist’s skepticism, a critic’s astuteness, and a fan’s loving eye.”—Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Who invented reality television, the world’s most dangerous pop-culture genre? And why can’t we look away? In this revelatory, deeply reported account of the rise of “dirty documentary”—from its contentious roots in radio to the ascent of Donald Trump—Emily Nussbaum unearths the origin story of the genre that ate the world, as told through the lively voices of the people who built it. At once gimlet-eyed and empathetic, Cue the Sun! explores the morally charged, funny, and sometimes tragic consequences of the hunt for something real inside something fake. In sharp, absorbing prose, Nussbaum traces the jagged fuses of experimentation that exploded with Survivor at the turn of the millennium. She introduces the genre’s trickster pioneers, from the icy Allen Funt to the shambolic Chuck Barris; Cops auteur John Langley; cynical Bachelor ringmaster Mike Fleiss; and Jon Murray and Mary-Ellis Bunim, the visionaries behind The Real World—along with dozens of stars from An American Family, The Real World, Big Brother, Survivor, and The Bachelor. We learn about the tools of the trade—like the Frankenbite, a deceptive editor’s best friend—and ugly tales of exploitation. But Cue the Sun! also celebrates reality’s peculiar power: a jolt of emotion that could never have come from a script. What happened to the first reality stars, the Louds—and why won’t they speak to the couple who filmed them? Which serial killer won on The Dating Game? Nussbaum explores reality TV as a strike-breaker, the queer roots of Bravo, the dark truth behind The Apprentice, and more. A shrewd observer who adores television, Nussbaum is the ideal voice for the first substantive history of the genre that, for better or worse, made America what it is today.

A former federal intelligence officer reveals how companies can gather the intelligence they need to meet (and beat) the competition, while keeping their own valuable secrets under wraps.

Meet Johnny Anonymous. No, that’s not his real name. But he is a real, honest-to-goodness pro football player. A member of the League. A slave, if you will, to the NFL. For the millions of you out there who wouldn’t know what to do on Sundays if there wasn’t football, who can’t imagine life without the crunch of helmets ringing in your ears, or who look forward to the Super Bowl more than your birthday, Johnny Anonymous decided to tell his story. Written during the 2014–2015 season, this is a year in the life of the National Football League. This is a year in the life of a player—not a marquee name, but a guy on the roster—gutting it out through training camp up to the end of the season, wondering every minute if he’s going to get playing time or get cut. Do you want to know how players destroy their bodies and their colons to make weight? Do you wonder what kind of class and racial divides really exist in NFL locker rooms? Do you want to know what NFL players and teams really think about gay athletes or how the League is really dealing with crime and violence against women by its own players? Do you wonder about the psychological warfare between players and coaches on and off the field? About how much time players spend on Tinder or sexting when not on the field? About how star players degrade or humiliate second- and third-string players? What players do about the headaches and memory loss that appear after every single game? This book will tell you all of this and so much more. Johnny Anonymous holds nothing back in this whip-smart commentary that only an insider, and a current player, could bring. Part truth-telling personal narrative, part darkly funny exposé, NFL Confidential gives football fans a look into a world they’d give anything to see, and nonfans a wild ride through the strange, quirky, and sometimes disturbing realities of America’s favorite game. Here is a truly unaffiliated look at the business, guts, and glory of the game, all from the perspective of an underdog who surprises everyone—especially himself. JOHNNY ANONYMOUS is a four-year offensive lineman for the NFL. Under another pseudonym, he’s also a contributor for the comedy powerhouse Funny Or Die. You can pretty much break NFL players down into three categories. Twenty percent do it because they’re true believers. They’re smart enough to do something else if they wanted, and the money is nice and all, but really they just love football. They love it, they live it, they believe in it, it’s their creed. They would be nothing without it. Hell, they’d probably pay the League to play if they had to! These guys are obviously psychotic. Thirty percent of them do it just for the money. So they could do something else—sales, desk jockey, accountant, whatever—but they play football because the money is just so damn good. And it is good. And last of all, 49.99 percent play football because, frankly, it’s the only thing they know how to do. Even if they wanted to do something “normal,” they couldn’t. All they’ve ever done in their lives is play football—it was their way out, either of the hood or the deep woods country. They need football. If football didn’t exist, they’d be homeless, in a gang, or maybe in prison. Then there’s me. I’m part of my own little weird minority, that final 0.01 percent. We’re such a minority, we don’t even count as a category. We’re the professional football players who flat-out hate professional football.

An entertaining and unfiltered look at professional tennis as only Patrick McEnroe can offer. Patrick McEnroe has been in the world of professional tennis in one way or another for most of his life. As a player, coach, and ESPN commentator, he's seen it all. The significant tennis books of recent years have all been autobiographies--famous players burnishing their image or attempting to set the record straight within carefully controlled memoirs. No one has been willing to do a book that pulls back the curtain and presents an honest, no-holds-barred look into the ultimate gentleman's sport and the larger-than-life personalities that inhabit it. Patrick McEnroe does just that. Curious to know which marquee player threw a tantrum and bailed early on a tournament? Why Roger Federer, presumably the greatest player of all time, has a losing head-to-head record with Rafael Nadal? Why certain tennis prodigies burned out early? The real role of coaches like Nick Bollettieri? Which player is as much of a diva off the court as on? The greatest match ever played? In Hardcourt Confidential, McEnroe uses his twenty-five-plus years in the trenches of the game to tell true tales and wild stories about the players you think you know (from Sampras to Agassi to Roddick to the Williams sisters), how and why the game has changed since he first swung a racket, and what the future holds in store for American tennis. McEnroe takes an unapologetic look at the men, women, and events of the past three decades, right up to the epic Federer vs. Nadal rivalry that dominates the game today. He's got a lot to say and he's not afraid to say it.