Happy Throwback Thursday! Our throwback year this week is 1983, the year the gameshow Press Your Luck premiered!
It was a revival of an earlier gameshow created by producer Bill Caruthers called Second Chance. It aired on ABC in 1977 and was similar to Press Your Luck with contestants answering trivia questions to assume control of a randomly generated board with cash and prizes. It also had spaces labeled with a devil that took away all cash and prizes if landed on. It was cancelled after 95 episodes, and Caruthers retooled the show into Press Your Luck. This version was hosted by Peter Tomarken with Rod Roddy announcing.
Press Your Luck gained media attention in 1984 after a scandal having to do with the winnings of a contestant named Michael Larson. Larson taped episodes of the show on his VCR and played them back frame-by-frame. He noticed that the game wasn’t as random as previously thought, with just five light patterns around the board. He memorized the patterns and became increasingly convinced he could predict when and where the randomizer would land. He also discovered that the 4th and 8th squares on the board always had cash and never a “Whammy”.
During his appearance on the show, Larson hit a Whammy on his first spin, but then went 45 consecutive spins without hitting another one. Ultimately he won $110,237 in cash and prizes. After an investigation, CBS determined that Larson’s memorization of the boards patterns didn’t constitute cheating and he was allowed to keep his winnings. The board was then programmed with more than 30 new patters so no one else could duplicate Larson’s feat.
Unfortunately for Larson, he invested most of his money in bad real estate deals and lost all of his winnings within 2 years. He later fled Ohio while under investigation for fraud. He was found living in Florida when he died of throat cancer at the age of 49.
Following its cancellation in 1986, Press Your Luck frequently ran in reruns. A weekly primetime version started airing on ABC in 2019, hosted by actress Elizabeth Banks. The 6th season premiers tonight at 8pm on ABC.
Learn more here.