The Big Money

The big giveaways, e.g., The $64,000 Question, The $64,000 Challenge, consistently top TV polls. Thus networks and sponsors are inspired to bigger philanthropy. By fall, new giveaway shows will be piled onto the old ones, so that the TV people will be tossing around more taxable loot than ever before. Items:

P: CBS will hang on to its front runners --The $64,000 Question, still the most popular and lively of the lot, which continues to bounce contestants over to The $64,000 Challenge.

P: NBC's best bet is still Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life, which hands out only a few hundred dollars but is a top-rated giveaway, thanks largely to Groucho himself, who proves that the test of a good giveaway may not be just how much is taken home.

P: CBS has already launched High Finance (Sat. 10:30 p.m.), an audience participation quiz looking for contestants "who want to satisfy their life's ambitions," i.e., hauling away up to $110,000.

P: NBC rolled out Tic Tac Dough this summer (Mon.-Fri. 12 noon) with Veteran Cashier Jack Barry maneuvering players "horizontally, diagonally or vertically" in the old crisscross game of ticktacktoe. Prize per game: $100. But, adds the network, a winner "may increase his winnings indefinitely."

P: CBS's biggest newcomer, Giant Step (Nov. 7, 7:30 p.m.), will broaden the financial horizon for young people (ages 7-17) with vast knowledge. Top prize: a four-year scholarship to a college of the contestant's choice and, as a plum for graduating seniors, a junket around the world.

P: NBC's The Big Surprise ($100,000) was conceived to totter CBS ratings and failed, nevertheless will be relaunched this month.

P: Bert Parks, who gives away just about everything with ruthless abandon, is tentatively slated to return in October on NBC with Break the Bank and a jackpot of thousands.

P: NBC's upcoming Twenty-One (Sept. 12, 10:30 p.m.), according to the network's boasts, offers "unlimited cash awards." If a contestant continues to beat his challengers, he can keep coming back to fatten his purse until he is defeated. ("After that," asks one TV critic, "where will giveaways go?")

P: NBC's answer to Atlantic City's annual leg show will be The Most Beautiful Girl in the World (Oct. 22, 9 p.m.), with a jackpot (courtesy of Revlon) worth $250,000 for the most "talented, beautiful and intelligent" female on the face of the earth. The public will be the jury and contestants will be picked "without regard to age, color, occupation or country."

P: Next week ABC will launch Treasure Hunt (Fri. 9 p.m.), offering a paltry $25,000 to the person who picks the right treasure out of a muckle of 50 chests. If he misses the moneybags, he may still win title to a car, speedboat, house trailer, round-the-world cruise or a head of cabbage. Treasure Hunt will be the only show on the air that will call for old-fashioned wishbone-type luck. Says ABC President Bob Kintner: "We are more interested in giving away entertainment."

Are giveaway shows, as many critics claim, debasing TV and offering a vulgar substitute for real entertainment? A few winning contestants have been dogged by their fame and fortune into worthwhile pursuits, or received lifetime annuities in odd ways. One giveaway winner now has his own local quiz program, another is being pressured to run for Congress. Stock Market Wizard Leonard Ross, II, who won $100,000 on The Big Surprise, is busy studying the price of coffee in the U.S. for a leading Brazilian businessman. Marine Corps Captain Dick McCutchen, who won the jackpot on both $64,000 shows, is putting the finishing touches on a cookbook. Shakespearean Scholar Redmond O'Hanlon, a Manhattan cop, will have a book of Shakespeare puns on the stand this spring. Alice Morgan, 78, who won $32,000, has completed The Investor's Road Map for Simon & Schuster. And Operatic Cobbler Gino Prato recently signed a second $10,000-a-year contract with a rubber company as good-will ambassador to U.S. shoemakers.

What might be the final word on giveaways comes from TV comedy Writer-Director Nat (Phil Silvers Show) Hiken, who whimsically suggests a show called A Million or Your Life'. "The contestant will stand in front of the TV camera and face two gun barrels. He will have a string leading to the triggers on the two barrels. One will be loaded with a dud containing a check for $1,000,000--the other with a live 37mm. shell guaranteed to tear his head off. If he pulls the wrong string--kaputt!"

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