Ask Me Another

To rouse jaded audiences, CBS's TV quizzers last week strained mightily to give away money with new gimmicks that yielded precious little entertainment:

P: Two new shows shrugged off book learning: How Do You Rate? (Mon.-Thurs., 10:30 a.m., E.S.T.) matched the sexes in frantic little contests of mental and physical dexterity (reading garbled messages, changing light bulbs); Wingo (Tues. 8:30 p.m.) hustled over low-plateau quiz questions (name the first big battle of the Civil War) to select a contestant for the show's big moment--a whack at spelling Wingo by drawing blindly from an assortment of the word's letters. Probability of hitting Wingo and winning $250,000: one in 2.200.

P: To lure an audience back to the faltering $64,000 Question (Tues. 10 p.m. E.S.T.), CBS set up a stunt based on a bingo mutation that can earn a home viewer as much as the classic $64,000.

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