He worked as an assistant to the producer Mark Goodson and as a showcase and question writer for The Price Is Right, Concentration, The Better Sex, Match Game and Family Feud.
He was once introduced by his father on an episode of Family Feud to promote his band The Midnight Ives and had an appearance with Ronnie Mars on Dinah!.
In March 1979, Dawson married Cathy Hughart, an assistant producer on his father's Family Feud show.
In 1982, allegedly she gave Dawson a sheet of paper on which, she told him, was a code that would reveal the whereabouts of the money.
Inforenz then used their own cryptanalysis software to suggest a ten-letter decryption key, DMARYFLUCK (short for Diana Mary Fluck, Dors's real name).