ABSTRACT
Generations of listeners and viewers have spent hours and hours participating in games testing their memory, intelligence, and specialised or general knowledge. Practitioners of television criticism are habitually recruited from the Humanities departments of universities. Game shows foreground the fact that they are a cultural practice rather than a ‘text’. The study of ‘participatory’ forms of television radicalises the discussion about television as a social and cultural site, or forum. In Television Culture, John Fiske presents a useful ‘hierarchy of quiz shows’, organised in relation to the social and cultural currency accorded to the various competences required for participants in the shows, either directly as contestants, or vicariously, as audience. Games like The Newlywed Game and Wheel of Fortune are games of participation, in which the display of competences include the other contestants in playful interaction.
