Henry Imler June 25th, 2007

The television is the Colosseum.

Today, Glenn was talking with Chuck Barris, the author of The Big Question and the creator of several game shows in the 60’s and 70’s, such as The Dating Game and The Gong Show.
The book revolves around a game show in 2011 where the contestant is
asked “the big question.” If answered correctly, the contestant wins
100 million dollars; if answered incorrectly, the contestant is
executed.

GLENN: How about — how about this. How about, what
America did, because I think it’s just a slippery slope, it’s all in –
it’s all in phases. To go from no execution on the air to a game show
is one thing. But to go from, let’s see Saddam Hussein hung, we could
have aired that, and it would have gotten huge, huge ratings. It would
have the most watched show of all time. And you already saw all the
people that were fighting to download it on the Internet. There is an
appetite for legitimate executions. But that isn’t the next step? Well,
this one is kind of like that.

BARRIS: Well, you’re right. I mean in my opinion, if you had
an execution on television, it would get the biggest audience ever, I
don’t care if it’s Saddam Hussein, you know, it can be Joe Jones, the
person is executed, the crowd — the audience out there in my humble
opinion will be watching in droves. The people who say they
wouldn’t watch that I don’t believe for a minute. I think some people
would not watch an execution, but I believe some — a great majority of
them would. But whether there would be a program that would execute a
contestant, that’s I’m not so sure about.

If that show was on, The Big Question that is, could you really not watch? I don’t know if I could keep the channel turned. And that is a darned shame.

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