Quiz Show

Kriti Gandhi, an 18-year-old graduate of Centennial High School, won her opening round of the Jeopardy! Summer Games Teen Tournament and has advanced to the semifinals. On the program that aired Wednesday, Gandhi defeated two contestants to earn $17,700. Her semifinal round will be televised today at 7 p.m. on WMAR (Channel 2) in Baltimore and at 7:30 p.m. on WJLA (Channel 7) in Washington. If Gandhi wins tonight, she advances to the finals, which will air tomorrow and Friday. "It's actually really surreal," said the McGill University-bound teenager.

You have to see it to believe it, and even then you want to nudge the person next to you and ask: "Have we somehow entered a parallel universe here?"What you're watching is America's newest quiz show, ABC's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" a campy half-hour unlike probably any other game show you've seen.For openers, there's omnipresent music that swells so B-movie ominously you half expect Bela Lugosi to lurch across the set.Then there's the audience, which encircles the host and contestants like an edgy fight crowd at a Vegas casino.

Joe Russo, Hammond High's first and only head football coach, announced at a meeting of county football coaches that he has resigned as the Bears coach.Russo, 54, has a 22-year career record of 119 wins and 101 losses -- all at Hammond. The Bears posted a 1-9 record this season.The Bears never won a Howard county title and their best record was 8-2 in 1985.In 1990, his team had three running backs with 1,000-yard rushing seasons, including Kelly Woodward, John Bell and Mario Mason.Currently, two of his players are enjoying outstanding Division I college careers -- Tim Spruill at Virginia and Ron Gamble at Connecticut.

Andrew Maly has this gift.He can tell you that in 1846, the settlers in California staged the Bear Flag Revolt. He can name the capitals of Sri Lanka and Cyprus. He can tell you that Leon Spinks beat Muhammad Ali in 1978 to win the heavyweight title in one of the biggest upsets in boxing history.Perhaps even more impressive: He can listen to a three-second snippet of a cartoon voice and tell you, with absolute certainty, that it belongs to Woody Woodpecker."I'm blessed," says Maly, 34, an environmental engineer from Bel Air, "with the ability to retain useless knowledge.

The November "sweeps" ratings period won't officially end until tonight, but the blockbuster performance of ABC's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" is already altering the prime-time landscape and shaking up network strategy for the next important audience measurement in February and beyond.CBS yesterday announced it will launch a new quiz show, "Winning Lines," in early January, while NBC said it hopes to have its remake of "21" on the air by February."In the vein of networks being copycats, we're jumping on the quiz show bandwagon like all our other competitors," CBS chairman Leslie Moonves said yesterday during a teleconference.

HARPER'S CHOICE resident Rita Benton started the New Year by receiving the gift of life -- a new kidney donated by her teen-age son, Shannon."I feel like a brand new woman," said Rita from her bed at Johns Hopkins Hospital last week."

BOSTON -- And you thought we had maxed out on shamelessness. That sometime during the early 1990s, someone on a tabloid TV show about a kinky, cross-dressing affair with a best friend's Rottweiler had crossed the last frontier. Finally, we had let it all hang out.Well, me too. In fact, by the time the story of the sex worker and the spinmeister came along, there was more public entertainment than private embarrassment. None of the parties seemed to be especially scandalized by this scandal.

Redfield Mason, an Indiana farm boy who helped the Navy break the Japanese military code in World War II, then won national fame when he won $100,000 on a television quiz show with an unlikely mastery of Greek and Roman mythology, died July 9 at a nursing home in Warrenton, Va. He was 91.His family said he had lived on a farm near Warrenton since his retirement from the Navy as a rear admiral in 1966.In a 45-year naval career, Admiral Mason, who grew up on a farm in Martinsville, Ind., graduated from the Naval Academy in 1925, learned Japanese at the U.S. embassy in Tokyo in the 1930s and was decorated for his command of naval support operations in the Korean War.As an intelligence officer at the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington in World War II, he helped break the Japanese code.

I'm disappointed to learn that I blindly missed a defining moment in American history.This has come to my attention in the many gushing reviews of a new movie called "Quiz Show."The movie is loosely based on the true story of how a popular TV quiz show from the 1950s called "Twenty-One" was rigged to heighten suspense and boost ratings and profits.Most of the critics say the movie is of great significance because the quiz-show scandal marked the loss of our national innocence.Americans were supposedly stunned to discover that they couldn't believe everything they saw on their rabbit-eared TV sets.

Oh, how important are the little things.For years the phone rings and one picks it up to hear: "Is this Stephen Hunter? Please hold for Mr. Big."The seconds pass. Eventually, out of some telephonic ether, from a place where time doesn't exist, Mr. Big himself comes on, unruffled, unbothered, only slightly aware that the person holding the phone at your end registers on the radar of humanity.This time, however, the old horn goes jingle-jangle, and when a reporter picks it up, he hears the incredible: "Steve . . . Bob Redford."

HOLLYWOOD - It's not often a show about modern "dating" brings to mind the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, but watching Bravo's new reality series Date My Ex, which begins tonight, I found myself inexplicably flashing back to Ralph Fiennes as scholar turned disgraced contestant Charles Van Doren in Quiz Show. No doubt this was, in part, a subconscious attempt to remain awake, to relieve the utter tedium of Date My Ex, in which Jo De La Rosa, formerly of The Real Housewives of Orange County, engages in an upscale dating game with - oh, what will they think of next?

SOPHIE ALTMAN, 95 Creator of TV's 'It's Academic' Television producer Sophie Altman, who created the long-running quiz show It's Academic, pitting teams of high school students against each other, died of heart disease Saturday at Georgetown University Medical Center, said her daughter, Nancy Altman of Bethesda. Altman was a seasoned TV producer in 1961 when she started It's Academic in the Washington area. The quiz show is entering its 48th season in Washington, and there are local versions in Baltimore, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and several other cities; at one point more than 20 cities had their own versions.

Kriti Gandhi, an 18-year-old graduate of Centennial High School, won her opening round of the Jeopardy! Summer Games Teen Tournament and has advanced to the semifinals. On the program that aired Wednesday, Gandhi defeated two contestants to earn $17,700. Her semifinal round will be televised today at 7 p.m. on WMAR (Channel 2) in Baltimore and at 7:30 p.m. on WJLA (Channel 7) in Washington. If Gandhi wins tonight, she advances to the finals, which will air tomorrow and Friday. "It's actually really surreal," said the McGill University-bound teenager.

A LOCAL television tradition for more than 40 years will feature South Carroll High School this month at the taping of It's Academic. "We got our team together last spring," said Gary Foote, South Carroll physics teacher and coach. "Ever since, we've been training by going over questions. And, recently, we even bought a buzzer system to help prepare." The weekly high school quiz show began taping its 32nd season in Baltimore and 42nd season in Washington this year. Each show features three-area high school teams, made up of three players each, competing to answer questions related to science, math, history, literature and current events.

Two days after receiving fourth runner-up honors at the annual Miss America pageant, you may find Miss Maryland Camille Lewis at a nearby video store. The 23-year-old Silver Spring native will more than likely be renting local filmmaker John Waters' Hairspray, after missing a question about the movie's setting during a quiz show-style round of questioning Saturday night. "I wouldn't mind seeing that," she said of the Baltimore-based '80s flick. "I'm very open to researching that movie."

KABUL, Afghanistan - Cue music. (Man with accordion assaults the ears.) Lights! (They flicker a bit, but the studio brightens.) Cameras! (The picture seems slightly unfocused, but it will do.) And ... finally: Live, from Afghanistan! It's Saturday night! (So what if it's only live in a sort-of kind-of way.) More than 700 people applaud wildly. Those who can whistle do. For after more than six years in the dark, Afghanistan's longest-running, even if limping, variety and quiz show is back on the airwaves, drawing standing-room-only crowds to the theater where it is taped and attracting people to the country's few remaining televisions like moths to light bulbs.

Ever wonder what would happen if they crossed "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebeck and "McLaughlin Group" leader John McLaughlin? Anne Robinson, host of British game show import "The Weakest Link," could be the answer. The quiz show, which makes its debut tonight at 8 on NBC (Channel 11), at first seems to bear a resemblance to "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" (also a British import), with its flashy set and questions worth more and more as each round progresses. But there are definitely some differences.

IN THE END, it was a hippopotamus that trampled Jason Dettelbach's chances of becoming a millionaire last month. The 24-year-old College Park resident, appearing on the television quiz show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" failed to pick out the hippo in a multiple choice lineup as the animal that kills the most people in Africa. Still, Dettelbach walked off with $125,000 and another question: What do you do with a windfall? It's not an unusual situation. Bonuses, inheritances, lotteries and stock options can all of a sudden dump a lump sum in your lap. Local, financial experts say those with newfound wealth may splurge on a new car or vacation, but often end up with the same goal: To not lose what they've gained.

The November "sweeps" ratings period won't officially end until tonight, but the blockbuster performance of ABC's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" is already altering the prime-time landscape and shaking up network strategy for the next important audience measurement in February and beyond.CBS yesterday announced it will launch a new quiz show, "Winning Lines," in early January, while NBC said it hopes to have its remake of "21" on the air by February."In the vein of networks being copycats, we're jumping on the quiz show bandwagon like all our other competitors," CBS chairman Leslie Moonves said yesterday during a teleconference.

Joe Russo, Hammond High's first and only head football coach, announced at a meeting of county football coaches that he has resigned as the Bears coach.Russo, 54, has a 22-year career record of 119 wins and 101 losses -- all at Hammond. The Bears posted a 1-9 record this season.The Bears never won a Howard county title and their best record was 8-2 in 1985.In 1990, his team had three running backs with 1,000-yard rushing seasons, including Kelly Woodward, John Bell and Mario Mason.Currently, two of his players are enjoying outstanding Division I college careers -- Tim Spruill at Virginia and Ron Gamble at Connecticut.