Saint Dotto

Dotto is a 1958 American television game show that was a combination of a general knowledge quiz and the children's game connect the dots. Jack Narz served as the program's host, with Colgate-Palmolive as its presenting sponsor. Dotto rose to become the highest-rated daytime program in television history, as of 1958. Dotto replaced Strike It Rich in CBS's 11:30 am daytime time slot on January 6, 1958. In a rare instance of two networks programming the same show, a weekly nighttime edition was launched on July 1, 1958 on CBS's competitor NBC on Tuesday nights in their 9:00 p.m. slot. At the height of both shows' popularity, Dotto was abruptly cancelled without public explanation over the weekend of August 16, 1958. Soon after, Dotto was publicly revealed to have been fixed by its producer, tarnishing the show's reputation and setting the stage for legal and political investigation of the fixing of 1950s quiz shows. Two contestants, one a returning champion, competed in each episode of Dotto. The object of the game was to identify the subject of an incomplete portrait drawing, which was accomplished by answering questions and connecting dots. The champion and the challenger were both given their own version of the portrait, which contained fifty dots for each contestant to connect. The contestants were positioned on stage in a manner where neither one could see the other or their progress. There was also an overhead projector on stage that was called the "Dottograph", which would come into play as the game progressed. Play in each game started with the challenger and he/she was given a category along with a choice of three questions, each with a corresponding number of dots to connect. The questions were worth five, eight, or ten dots and more dots meant a higher difficulty. Answering correctly enabled the challenger to have his/her dots connected, but a wrong answer or failure to answer gave that privilege to the champion.