You know that feeling when you're standing in
line at the convenience store holding that little
printed slip of paper and you just sort of let
yourself drift? Oh, absolutely. We've all played
that game. Right. It's like the universal daydream
of sudden wealth. You're just standing there
under those terrible fluorescent lights looking
at the watery numbers you picked. Yeah. And you
start asking yourself. You know, what would I
do if I actually won? Exactly, you start imagining
the house you'd buy or like the car you'd drive.
Or the incredibly dramatic way you'd walk into
your boss's office to quit your job. Oh man,
yeah. It's just a pure unadulterated fantasy
and it feels so good. Well, it feels great because
it's entirely built on hope. I mean... You know,
the actual statistical odds, they just don't
matter in that exact moment. Right. Nobody's
doing math in the convenience store line. No,
exactly. What you're buying for a couple of bucks
isn't like a realistic financial plan. It's the
emotional high of the possibility. We just love
the setup of that narrative in our own heads.
Yeah, because the daydream is flawless. You're
the main character and you always win. Always.
But. Okay, imagine if a television network took
that perfect little daydream and built an entire
show around it. Okay. And not just a regular
game show, but a scripted drama where they actively
make you, the viewer, emotionally invest in the
fictional people holding those tickets. Right,
so you're really rooting for them. Yeah. But
then, instead of letting everyone win, the show
just... ruthlessly crushes that dream for two
-thirds of its calf every single week. Man, it
sounds almost cruel when you phrase it that way.
It kind of is. I mean, it completely breaks the
unspoken contract of escapist entertainment,
but, you know, that is exactly what happened
on primetime television. It did. So today, we
are taking a deep dive into a really fascinating
stack of notes we've compiled from Wikipedia
about a largely forgotten, completely obscure...
1979 NBC series called Sweepstakes. And we should
mention, just to give you a sense of the vibe
right up front, they actually stylized the title
with dollar signs. So it's, you know, dollar
sign, W -E -P -S -T -A -K -E, dollar sign. Which
is just so perfectly 70s. So our mission today
is to explore this truly bizarre television experiment.
Because it really was an experiment. Definitely.
We want to understand its incredibly innovative
structure, its frankly unhinged storytelling
choices, and ultimately why it became such a
spectacular, legendary flop. And I think we really
need to set the stage for why this matters to
you, the listener, because, I mean, this isn't
just a piece of obscure TV trivia about an old
show your parents might have briefly scrolled
past on the dial. Right. It's bigger than that.
It is. It's a genuinely fascinating case study
in audience psychology. It tests the absolute
limits of interact— television and it did this
you know decades before the internet existed
to make interactivity easy yeah it really asked
a fundamental question about what audiences actually
want from their TV screens when they sit down
after a long hard week okay let's unpack this
because the actual mechanics of how they built
this show are just wild we need to look at exactly
how the creators structure this fantasy to manipulate
the viewer yeah the skeleton of the show is baffling
right before we even get to the crazy plots the
creators basically engineered a very rigid, very
specific, emotional roller coaster. And to understand
that roller coaster, we really have to understand
the format first. So NBC ordered this as an anthology
series. Which, just to clarify, means what exactly
in the context of 1979 television? Well, for
the listener, an anthology series means the cast
and the story completely reset every single week.
Think of shows like The Twilight Zone or more
recently like Black Mirror. You don't have returning
characters to anchor the audience. So no sitcom
family or like a squad of detectives you tune
in for. Right. Building weekly viewer loyalty
is incredibly difficult because you're asking
the audience to fall in love with strangers all
over again every Friday night. And the only premise
connecting these strangers was a state -owned
lottery. Okay, so here's the formula they lock
themselves into. There's a strict 60 minute runtime
for almost every episode. Every week, the premise
establishes that there are 12 finalists for the
big state lottery drawing. But the show only
zooms in on three of them. Just three? Three,
so the entire first half of the hour, like 30
solid minutes of television is dedicated just
to meeting these three hopefuls. You learn about
their lives. Right. You see their deep personal
struggles, and you hear exactly what they plan
to do with the $1 million jackpot. Which basically
means the writers are spending half the show
deliberately making you attach to their hopes
and dreams. Yes. They're building this psychological
trap. And then we hit the midpoint twist. Right
in the middle of the episode, a recurring character
known as the Sweepstakes MC, who is played by
Ed Burns, actually conducts the lottery drawing.
He literally draws the winner right there. Right
in the middle. Out of the three people you just
spent half an hour falling in love with, only
one gets the million dollars. And the other two.
They get a $1 ,000 consolation prize. Oh, man.
And then the entire second half of the episode
is just the fallout. We see how the winner handles
their sudden massive wealth. And crucially, we
see how the losers cope with their dreams just
being shattered. What's fascinating here is how
this compares to its television predecessors,
because if you look back at the 1950s, there
was a really popular CBS anthology series called
The Millionaire. Oh, I've heard of that. Yeah,
in that show, an anonymous benefactor simply
handed out a million dollars to someone, and
the audience just watched the effect of that
sudden wealth. So it's just about the aftermath.
Entirely. It was all about the aftermath of a
guaranteed windfall. But sweepstakes took that
premise and gamified the narrative. Ah, I see.
It wasn't just passively observing a lucky break,
you know. It was a competition. But showing you
three disparate people and their deep needs before
the drawing, the show forced the audience to
pick a favorite. It created real agonizing narrative
stakes. Wait, hold on, though. I have to push
back on this from a purely storytelling perspective.
OK, go for it. Doesn't that inherently create
terrible pacing? How do you mean? Well, think
about it like a high -stakes sporting event,
or even like a modern reality TV elimination
show, but applied to a scripted television drama.
Right. You spend 30 minutes falling in love with
a character's dream. You're rooting for them.
And then at halftime, you just watch them get
handed measly thousand bucks yeah and for the
next half hour you just have to watch them carry
on with their miserable life it feels like going
to a magic show where the magician promises an
incredible illusion but the quote -unquote trick
is just that he steals your watch And then spends
30 minutes explaining that your watch is gone.
Yes. Exactly. It completely breaks the covenant
of the fantasy. That is a perfect mechanical
analogy. You are essentially writing disappointment
into the DNA of every single episode. Right.
In a standard drama, you build tension toward
a climax at the end of the hour. You want the
resolution right before the credits roll. But
here, the climax is shoved right into the middle,
and the entire back half of the episode is just
denouement. you're dealing with the emotional
hangover of the drawing for 30 minutes. Exactly.
And to make it even more complicated, our sources
explicitly note a crucial detail about the show's
philosophy. The writers actually had a rule that,
quote, the most deserving finalist does not always
win. Which, oh man. Because if the halfway climax
structure wasn't inherently problematic enough,
the writers quickly realized they had a massive
pacing problem. Oh yeah, a huge one. If the audience
knows the most sympathetic person is going to
win every week, there's no suspense. So to keep
audiences from getting bored, they were forced
to escalate the stakes and the contrasts to utterly
unhinged levels. Unhinged is the right word.
Let's look at the actual storylines they used
to fill this rigid format. Tonal chaos is probably
the best way to describe what happened next.
The sources note that the show swung wildly between
comedy and drama, often within the exact same
episode. Which just sounds exhausting. It creates
massive psychological dissonance for the viewer.
But, you know, to understand why they did this,
we have to look at who is making the show. Sweet
Stakes was produced by Miller -Milkis Productions
in association with Paramount Television. And
what was their track record at the time? I mean,
what else were they making? Well, if you look
at the industry in the late 1970s, Miller -Milkis
were the powerhouse behind massive, feel -good,
warm hug television hits. Like what? They produced
Happy Days. They produced Laverne and Shirley.
Wait, really? Yes. These were shows defined by
their sunny optimism and guaranteed happy endings.
So the people who gave us the funds, literally
the coolest, most invincible guy on television.
are the ones serving up this show about crushing
disappointment. That seems like a massive leap.
Why would they pivot so hard? It really comes
down to how the entertainment industry works.
When producers deliver massive culture -defining
hits like Happy Days, networks often give them
a blank check. Oh, sure. They get the freedom
to experiment. Exactly. And in the 1970s, cinema
was going through a very gritty, realistic, new
Hollywood phase. You know, movies like Taxi Driver
or Network. Right. It seems Miller -Milkis wanted
to experiment with that dark, grounded realism,
but they tried to sneak it onto network television
under the of a shiny, glitzy game show format.
Oh, wow. A Trojan horse. Basically. They sell
NBC a glitzy lottery show. But inside, it's a
gritty exploration of 1970s socioeconomic depression.
Yeah, but the way they executed it was just wild.
Let's look at episode one, the series premiere.
If you're listening to this right now, put yourself
in the shoes of a 1979 viewer. OK. Who do we
have competing for the million dollars? Well,
we have a wife who's separated from her husband.
Okay, a domestic drama. Makes sense. Then we
have an ex -con, played by Adam Arkin, who is
out on probation and desperately needs a legitimate
job to get his life back on track. High stakes,
real human struggle. Right. And the third finalist.
Oh boy. A dog. A literal dog. A dog named Grover,
whose greenie relatives, including Abe Vigoda,
are demanding a share of the dog's winnings.
I just, it's so absurd. So you have an ex -con.
desperate for redemption, whose entire future
hangs in the balance, pitted against a canine.
The psychological whiplash there is just staggering.
I mean, how is a viewer supposed to weigh those
needs? You can't. No. You're asking the audience
to simultaneously engage with the painful reality
of the American penal system and a wacky sitcom
plot about a wealthy pet. It breaks the reality
of the universe. Wait, it gets darker. Let's
look at episode two. Oh, this one is rough. The
three finalists are an offbeat artist who paints
on the walls of condemned buildings and wants
to buy the building before his art is destroyed.
OK, quirky, a little bohemian. Right. Then a
lonely young woman looking for her long lost
father. Heartwarming. Very touching. And the
third is a blind girl who needs expensive eye
surgery. And, listener, remember the rule we
discussed earlier. The most deserving finalist
does not always win. Exactly. So there was a
two out of three chance that audiences tuned
in, met a blind girl who needed eye surgery to
see, and then watched Ed Burns announce that
the quirky painter won the million bucks. Leaving
the blind girl to cope with her thousand dollar
consolation prize. It's just devastating. It
is deeply cynical for a primetime broadcast.
You're baiting the audience with a medical tragedy
and then actively refusing the catharsis. And
it wasn't always depressing in a relatable medical
debt kind of way. Sometimes it was just utterly
chaotic. Like episode three. Yes. Episode three
had a pickpocket and his literal victim competing
against each other. Which is just weird. And
then the pilot episode, which was actually...
Episode 5 in the broadcast order, and is the
only 90 -minute episode, features a destitute
bookie who is desperate to pay off his debts
to other criminals. And according to the sources,
how does his story resolve? He loses. Of course
he does. He wins the consolation prize. And the
source notes his quote -unquote happy ending
is that he is last seen fleeing a theater with
two criminals in hot pursuit. That's the end
of his arc. Wow. Just thanks for playing. Enjoy
your thousand dollars. Run for your life. It's
a remarkably bleak view of the universe to broadcast
to millions of people. It's essentially telling
the audience that the universe is random, uncaring,
and your struggles do not guarantee a reward.
Here's where it gets really interesting, though.
Because as the episodes went on, they didn't
just mess with the tone. They started messing
with the internal logic of the show's universe.
Oh, yeah. This is wild. Let's talk about episode
six. The finalists are a guy who wants to start
a business, a 12 -year -old girl who wants to
help her dad's fast food franchise, and someone
named Beverly. The sources highlight Beverly
specifically because of who she is connected
to. Right. Who is Beverly. Beverly is the girlfriend
of the sweepstakes emcee himself, Ed Burns' character.
Oh, unbelievable. He is literally the guy pulling
the winning ticket, and his own girlfriend is
a finalist. And her motivation. She wants to
use the winnings to help the emcee get his screenplay
film so he can fulfill his aspirations of becoming
an actor. Now that is a structural choice that
completely shatters the illusion of the show.
Completely. I mean, if the guy pulling the ticket
has a vested interest in who wins, it turns the
supposedly impartial lottery into a corrupt narrative.
Yeah, the whole game is rigged. In the industry,
we call that fourth wall breaking, where a show
acknowledges its own artificiality. It really
suggests the creators were either trying something
incredible avant -garde or they were completely
running out of ideas by weak sites and just started
cannibalizing their own framing device. I'm leaning
toward avant -garde because it's just so deeply
weird. But unfortunately for Miller Milka's productions,
the avant -garde doesn't always play well to
a mass audience looking to unwind. No, it doesn't.
Which brings us to The Friday Night Massacre.
Having established how experimental and sometimes
downright depressing this show was, we have to
look at how the 1979 American public reacted
to this cocktail. To understand the reaction,
we need to look at the data from the premiere.
Okay. The show debuted on January 26, 1979. It
was given the Friday night slot at 10 0 0 p .m.
Eastern Time. Now, in the television industry,
January is the season of the mid -season replacement.
Right, which basically means the network is taking
all the shows that fail in the fall, throwing
them out and just throwing a bunch of new stuff
at the wall in January to see what sticks. Exactly.
NBC was rolling out a massive slate of mid -season
replacements that exact night. They kicked off
the evening with a brand new show called Different
Strokes. Which, obviously, we know became a huge,
enduring success. It did. But NBC paired different
strokes with a string of other news shows hoping
to carry that momentum. Shows like Brothers and
Sisters, Turnabout, Hello Larry, and finally
capping off the night at 10 zero p .m., Sweepstakes.
So how did it do? The numbers from that premiere
are brutal. Out of 63 programs broadcast on network
television that entire week, Sweepstakes ranked
59th. Wow. bottom of the barrel. So the audience
just actively rejected it on night one. They
didn't even give it a chance to find its footing.
The rejection was immediate, and the critics
were just as merciless. I can imagine. There
is an article published on the exact day of the
premiere in the record of Hackensack, New Jersey,
reviewing the upcoming lineup. The critic called
Sweepstakes an unsophisticated anthology series
and complained that NBC's string of intelligent
shows is broken at 10 to 11 because of it. It's
just a very dry, amusing historical artifact.
I just love picturing a critic in Hackensack,
New Jersey, sitting down in 1979 looking at a
screener where a dog competes against an ex -con
for a million dollars and just sighing in defeat.
Right. They preemptively declared the night ruined
by Grover the dog before the public even saw
it. If we connect this to the bigger picture,
this critical panning and the abysmal ratings
tell us something vital about the limits of audience
endurance, especially in that era. What do you
mean by that? Like, why did it fail so spectacularly?
Well, escapism requires an actual escape. When
people tune in to a show about will in the lottery
they're looking for the realization of that daydream
We discussed at the start of our deep dive. They
want the fantasy They want the catharsis of the
fantasy but sweepstakes insisted on showing the
depressing reality of losing Yeah, two out of
every three people featured on that show went
home with a reminder that they were still trapped
in their difficult lives Viewers likely rejected
the show because real life already provides enough
disappointment. That makes total sense If you're
struggling with inflation and a tough job in
1979, why would you tune in at 10 zero PM on
a Friday to watch a blind girl not get her surgery
funded? Right. You go to television to see the
one in a million shot actually land. Not to be
reminded that the odds are always against you.
Precisely. And NBC realized this incredibly fast.
The network yanked it off the air by March 30th,
1979. It lasted just over two months, nine episodes
in total, and it was gone. completely erased
from the cultural memory, though our notes do
provide one fantastic, ironic epilogue to this
whole mess regarding the cast. Oh really? The
very last episode, episode 9, featured an actor
named Ben Murphy as a guest star. Okay. He played
a parking attendant who needed the money to repay
a loan he took out just to impress a rich woman.
Standard sweepstakes tragedy. Sure. But apparently
Ben Murphy did not learn his lesson about the
curse of this format. Just four years later,
in 1983, he went on to star in a nearly identical
show for ABC. Wait, really? It was literally
called Lottery. That is incredible. The allure
of the sudden wealth narrative is just too strong.
Even for the actors who have already watched
it fail firsthand. They just couldn't resist
pulling the lever on the slot machine one more
time. Absolutely. So what does this all mean?
When we look back at the brief, chaotic life
of Sweepstakes, we see a show that was wildly
ambitious. It really was. It was an interactive,
genre -bending experiment decades before its
time. It tried to mash up the anthology format,
the game show, the sitcom, and the gritty drama
all into one rigid hour of television. A lot
of plates spinning. But it was ultimately doomed
by its own commitment to showing the depressing
reality of losing. It broke the golden rule of
the fantasy. It reminded us that for every person
holding the giant novelty check, there is a room
full of people who are walking away empty -handed.
Yeah. The next time you're standing in that convenience
store line, buying a lottery ticket and imagining
the millions. Yeah. Take a second to look at
the two people standing next to you in line,
because in the sweepstakes universe, you have
to watch them go home with the consolation prize.
You know, this raises an important question,
a final thought to mull over. Yeah. We look at
sweepstakes as a massive failure of 1970s scripted
television. But did this forgotten 1979 experiment
actually serve as the unseen blueprint for modern
reality television? Oh, wow. After all, think
about massive unscripted hits like Survivor or
American Idol. They are built on this exact same
engine. They really are. They introduce us to
a wide group of hopefuls with desperate dreams.
They ask us, the audience, to pick a favorite
and emotionally invest in their success. and
then week after week, they force us to watch
the emotional devastation as those hopefuls are
eliminated one by one. That's so true. Sweepstakes
failed because it applied that cruelty to fictional
characters. Reality TV succeeded by applying
it to real people. Man, that is a wild thought
to leave on. Well, that wraps up our look at
the incredible baffling world of Sweepstakes.
Keep digging into your own curiosities and we
will catch you on the next Deep Dive.