Dialing for Dollars was a franchise format local television program in the United States and Canada, popular in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The program's usual format had the host, a local television personality, announce a certain password (a/k/a "the count and the amount") to the audience at the beginning of the program and then randomly select a phone number from a bowl or drum (from those that had been previously submitted by viewers) and call it. If the viewer was watching the show, they would know that they were being called, answer the phone with the correct password, and would win a monetary prize. If the number did not answer, the prize money would continue to increase.