Dialing for Dollars

Dialing for Dollars was a franchised format local television program in the United States and Canada, popular from the 1950s to the early 1990s.

At the beginning of a typical Dialing for Dollars program, the host (a local television personality) would announce the day's password, which often contained one or more of the following: a secret word, the amount of money at stake, and a randomly determined "count."

[1] Broadway producer Lee Guber attempted to resurrect the concept on a national basis in 1987, meeting with Canadian broadcaster Peter Emmerson with regards to hosting what would have emanated from the former GFG Productions facilities in Brooklyn.

Live with Kelly and Ryan carries on the tradition with its daily Travel Trivia contest, and a few local shows directly trace their lineage to Dialing for Dollars (an example is AM Buffalo).

More recently, cable network Adult Swim has periodically revived the concept beginning in mid-2018 for their online livestream; due to the original concept being rendered obsolete by the advancement of technology, instead viewers of the livestream must memorize a certain word (indicated by the onscreen appearance of a plane marked "SPY").

Another similar format, the Prize Movie, aired for many years beginning in the early-1970s on WUAB-TV in Cleveland, Ohio; host John Lanigan would call people in a manner similar to Dialing for Dollars, and would spin a wheel containing photos of both station personalities and stars of the syndicated fare seen on the station; he would then ask the caller to identify that person.

WFLI-TV in Chattanooga, Tennessee, beginning with its first year of operation in 1987, ran a 30-minute live and locally-produced program entitled 53 Trivia Spin.

Once a random non-selected number was landed, the caller would win a selected amount of money or a smaller prize that was given such as coupons and tickets.