For decades, Dr. Joyce Brothers was a household name. A board-certified psychologist, Brothers found fame and fortune through the media, not the therapist's chair -- she was a pioneer in popular psychology, bringing advice to the masses through her columns in Good Housekeeping magazine, via television talk show appearances, and ultimately, through her TV shows as well.

Brothers' media career, though, didn't get its start due to her expertise in psychology. Rather, it's because of her success on the 1955 game show, "The $64,000 Question" -- despite the best efforts of the show's sponsors and producers. 

For about as long as television has been popular, so have TV game shows. But the history of game shows hasn't been without controversy. In 1956, NBC aired a quiz show called "Twenty-One," where contestants competed against each other to answer trivia questions. The first few episodes were poorly received as neither contestant fared well, and the show's sponsor, Geritol, demanded producers make changes to create a more engaging program. So the producers did just that -- by rigging the game. Favored contestants were provided with the right answer; unpopular winners were instructed to get questions wrong to let a more popular challenger continue to the next episode. When news of this spread, many other TV game shows were similarly accused of being rigged.

"The $64,000 Question" was one of the TV shows whose credibility was at issue, and for good reason: like "Twenty-One," contestants were presented with often incredibly difficult questions, ones that hardly anyone could answer. But unlike Twenty-One, it was rare for a contestant to get enough answers correct to win the grand prize. In almost all cases, the contest wasn't fixed, per se, but it also wasn't all that fair, as American Heritage magazine explains:

When a contestant was fun, magnetic, or simply entertaining, the questions eased up a bit, or leaned toward the player’s specific expertise— not merely geology, for example, but volcanic geology. Likewise, when the producers wanted to end a contestant’s run on the show, they would pick out a far tougher question, flipping through possibilities written out on index cards, sometimes even while watching from the control room. If a contestant had worn out their welcome, the producer had an absurdly difficult question ready to ensure their exit.