Michael Larson - Accused of Cheating

Accused of Cheating

While Larson was running up the score, the producers contacted Michael Brockman, head of CBS' daytime programming department. In a 1994 TV Guide interview commemorating the Larson Sweep, conducted at the time the movie Quiz Show was released, he recalled "Something was very wrong. Here was this guy from nowhere, and he was hitting the bonus box every time. It was bedlam, I can tell you. And we couldn't stop this guy. He kept going around the board and hitting that box."

The program's producers and Brockman met to review the videotape. They noticed that Larson immediately celebrated after many of his spins, instead of waiting the fraction of a second that it would normally take for a player to see and respond to the space he had stopped on (effectively showing that he knew beforehand that he was going to get something good). It was also noticed that Larson had an unusual reaction to his early prize of a Kauai trip, which was out of his pattern – he initially looked puzzled, smiling and clapping after a pause.

CBS initially refused to pay Larson, considering him a cheater. However, Brockman and the producers could not find a clause in the game's rules with which to disqualify him (largely because the board had been constructed with these patterns from the beginning of the series), and the network complied. Because he had surpassed the CBS winnings cap (at the time) of $25,000, he was not allowed to return for the next show. CBS later raised, and has since eliminated, the winnings cap.

The five light patterns on the Big Board were erased and replaced with five new ones for about a month. Then, to make sure no one was memorizing those, they were again replaced with five new patterns for another month. Finally, in August, new software was installed which gave the Board a total of 32 patterns, effectively ensuring that nobody would ever again duplicate Larson's trick.