Larry Tougas, a reader of this site, writes to ask…
I enjoy watching Survivor, and The Amazing Race, two excellently produced shows. The question I have is regarding the producer's ability to alter the outcome. I was under the impression that since the 1950's game show scandals that producers of game shows must have impartial judges and established rules to avoid favoritism and the ability to rig the outcome. Do these rules actually exist, and if they do they apply to these reality based TV shows? I know that every time a shake-up is done on these shows (like an unannounced re-mixing of teams) the fan web sites accuse the Producer of rigging the game. Is this possible?
The pressures on a game show producer to keep the show fair come in a couple of ways. The big one is probably that they don't want to be sued by losing contestants. Beyond that, it's mostly a matter of the network and producer wanting to be able to stave off any possible government-type regulation, which means that they want to be able to argue that games are run openly and honestly. To achieve all these ends, they draw up a rulebook for each show that covers every contingency the lawyers can imagine, and they require contestants to sign that they've read the rulebook and will abide by its provisions.
I don't know anything about the shows you mention (haven't even watched them) but I'd guess the rules allow for whatever is done that might seem like rigging. As a viewer, you don't have access to all the rules…and since these shows are (I believe) heavily-edited, you also don't see what may be hours of gamesmanship that was taped and edited out. I was once involved with a show that involved a competition of sorts, and the rulebook pertained to how the game was played, not to the presentation of it. In fact, the form that players signed to indicate they agreed to the rules explicitly stated that the producer had the right to do just about anything in the editing of the show just so long as the right folks won at the end. So after the contest was taped, some portions of the game were completely deleted and others were rearranged to make the competition seem closer than it actually was. The game, as broadcast, might not have precisely conformed to the rules but the rules were followed when the game was actually played.
On most shows, the producers designate someone — often, themselves — as the judges. This is done less for legal reasons than for simple expediency. If a decision has to be made, someone has to make it, generally on the spot. There is often the pretense that this party is somehow independent of the show but it's usually just a member of the staff who is charged with knowing the rulebook and paying attention.
That said, producers leave themselves a certain latitude to make their shows more interesting. You can do pretty much anything if you don't favor one individual over another. On the Millionaire shows, the producers could decide that they'd like a big win during Sweeps Week, so they'll make the top questions easier in the second game on the Tuesday show. As long as they don't control which specific contestant gets those questions, they can do that. In the same way, I'm guessing that a show like Survivor can write in a rule that at a certain point, whatever team is ahead is going to have all sorts of things done to it to impede its progress. Or they could say that if the leading team is ahead by X points or certain other conditions are met, a certain procedure kicks in. The key is to write the rulebook that way before the game begins so no one can argue that they did not have the same opportunity as anyone else.