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spinning wheel and required only the most rudimentary knowledge of common phrases and titles. Its host was a former TV weatherman named Pat Sajak, who had been accompanied since 1983 by the lovely Vanna White. She had showcased more than four thousand dresses through the years while turning the letters on the big board and leading the clapping while the roulette wheel spun. For some Jeopardy fans, even mentioning the two games in the same breath was an outrage. It would be like card players comparing the endlessly complex game of Bridge to Go Fish. Nevertheless, Wheel attracted some eleven million viewers every weeknight evening, and about nine million tuned in to Jeopardy. Harry Friedman’s job, while touching on the world of knowledge and facts, was to keep those millions of people watching his two hit shows. In a media world exploding with new choices, it was a challenge.

In movie studios on this Sony-Columbia lot, men with the bookish mien of Harry Friedman are cast as professors, dentists, and accountants. His hair, which recedes toward the back of his head, is still dark, and matches the rims of his glasses. His love for television dates back to his childhood. His father ran one of the first TV dealerships in Omaha, and the family had the first set in the neighborhood, a 1950 Emerson with a rounded thirteen-inch screen. Friedman’s goal as a youngster was to write for TV. While he was in college, he pursued writing, working part-time as a sports and general assignment reporter for the Lincoln Star. After graduating, in 1971, he traveled to Hollywood. He eventually landed a part-time job at Hollywood Squares, a popular daytime game show, where he wrote for $5 a joke.

Friedman climbed the ladder at Hollywood Squares, eventually producing the show. He also wrote stand-up acts for comedians and entertainers, people like Marty Allen and Johnny Carson’s old trumpet-playing bandleader, Doc Severinsen. He got his big break in 1994, when he was offered the top job at Wheel of Fortune. The show, a sensation in the 1980s, was stagnating. Friedman soon saw that antiquated technology had slowed the game to a crawl. The spectators, hosts, and audience had to sit and wait for ten or fifteen minutes between each round while workers installed the next phrase or jingle with big cardboard letters. Friedman ordered a shift to electronic letters. The game speeded up. Ratings improved.

Two years later, he was offered the top job at Jeopardy. The game, which today radiates such wholesomeness, emerged from the quiz show scandals of the 1950s. “That’s where we came from. That’s our history,” Friedman said. Back then, millions tuned their new TV sets to programs that featured intellectual brilliance. Among the most popular was Twenty-One, where a brainy young college professor named Charles Van Doren appeared to be all but omniscient. The ratings soared as Van Doren summoned answers. Often they came instantly. Other times he appeared to dig into the dusky caverns of his memory, surfacing with the answer only after a torturous and suspenseful mental hunt. Van Doren seemed to epitomize brilliance. He was a phenomenon, a national star. This was the kind of brainpower the United States would be needing—in technology, diplomacy, and education—to prevail over the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Knowledge was sexy. And when it turned out that the producers were feeding Van Doren the answers, a national scandal erupted. It led to congressional hearings, a condemnation by President Eisenhower—“a terrible thing to do to the American people”—and stricter regulations covering the industry. For a few years, quiz shows all but disappeared.

In 1963, Merv Griffin, the talk show host and entrepreneur, was wondering how to resurrect the format. According to a corporate history book, he was in an airplane with his wife, Julann, when the two of them came up with an idea. If people suspect that you’re feeding contestants the answers, why not devise a show that provides the answers—and forces players to come up with the questions?

It was the birth of Jeopardy.