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The writers of the show can't use their position to do that. In fact, they aren't supposed to tell anyone what their job is. The real fallout from the Twenty-One scandal wasn't America's lost innocence, it was the reappropriation of resources from the security of our defense to the security of our game shows. A TIME/CNN poll shows that only 32% of Americans think game shows are always run honestly, while 76% say it doesn't matter. Nevertheless, Greed had to change its name to Greed: the Series to skirt a rule that says shows can't change their rules once they're on the air. (They're lucky there's no game show Supreme Court.) On Twenty One, none of the handwritten questions are entered into a computer; when they are removed from the safe, they are accompanied by nine security guards. Contestants at all shows are monitored by network standards-and-practice executives; the contestants are even followed to the bathroom. Everyone at Millionaire, including the electricians, had to sign two FCC forms, and the writers, who sit in a shredder-filled room with a combination lock that is regularly changed, signed nondisclosure agreements of a sort rarely seen outside secrecy-happy Silicon Valley. The writers have their own kitchen and bathroom and, at first, were told they would have to clean them themselves because the cleaning people would not be allowed in. Worse yet, they can never meet Philbin.
The five writers, mostly twentysomethings aspiring to work on sitcoms, are supposed to compose 20 questions a day. They make $1,500 a week and, when the show became a hit, tried to join the Writers Guild, before discovering that game-show writers in the union make only $1,100. Then they considered forming their own union until they found that there were lots of people who could write multiple-choice questions.
Philbin, meanwhile, pretty much just shows up and gets paid. Last Saturday a corporate jet picked him up in Miami, where he had returned from a cruise, and flew him to New York City hours before taping because, long after the game shows are replaced by a slew of westerns, Philbin will still be a star.
--With reporting by Dan Cray and Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles