 This is the SF Productions Podcast Network. From the Pop Culture Bunker, I'm Mindy, and I'm Mark. You can check out our audio podcast, How I Got My Wife to Read Comics on iTunes, or our website, sfpodcastnetwork.com. I'm an unrepentant game show aficionado. My favorite is also that of most people, based on its record-breaking 49-year run and counting. With the show coming back in a COVID world, I thought this would be a great time to discuss the prices right and remind people that it goes back before Bob Barker. Game shows were a staple of 1950s TV for the same reason they're making a resurgence today. They're cheap to produce. Game show impresarios Mark Goodson and Bill Todman had a producer named Bob Stewart, who had already created To Tell the Truth and would later go off on his own to create the password and the $10,000 pyramid. In 1956, Stewart reportedly heard an auctioneer outside his office window and came up with a show where contestants would bid for prizes. Many game and quiz shows incorporate products as prizes, a great way to advertise them, but this made those ads the main focus of the show. The original prices right aired from 1956 through 1963 on NBC and then on ABC for two years after that. Bill Cullen was chosen as the host, having already been a regular on To Tell the Truth and I've got a secret. Cullen would go on to a lengthy game show career, later acting as the substitute teacher on shows where the main host was ill. You can check out episode 212 for more info on Cullen and the other host we'll be covering. For those used to the expansive show of today, think of it as contestants row only. Four players, one a returning champion, the other three pulled from the studio audience, would bid on various prizes. Instead of the single bid process of today, there would be several passes with minimum increases in the bid, no $1 more, with Cullen eventually calling for final bids meaning they were close and could either bid one more time or freeze. Prizes went from small appliances to TVs, RCA's of course, since the original show ran on NBC, and all the way to outlandish items, a Rolls Royce with a chauffeur, corporate stock and island, things like that. There were also home viewer showcases where you could send in a postcard with your exact bid to the penny on a huge assortment of prizes. Amazingly, in that pre-internet era, multiple viewers would get it exactly right, forcing the tie to be broken by giving the exact cost of one of the showcase items. It's fascinating to see these episodes where the complete street address of a viewer would be shown on screen. Speaking of that, you can see episodes of the original prices right on Dijonet Buzzer. The program was shown both on daytime TV and in primetime for years. It was even the first regular game show to be aired in color, no kinescopes or videotapes exist of this though. Cullen would normally be seen leaning against a lectern or even sitting on a stand. He had polio as a child and needed assistance walking. There were substitute hosts, the show was mostly aired live, so Cullen did need some time off from time to time, with Merve Griffin and Grand Dom of game shows Arlene Francis being just two of those substitute hosts. Based on the relatively small amounts being won and the screemulous way the game was played, it weathered the quiz show scandals of the late 50s, one of the few to do so. The show also has the honor of being parodied on the Flintstones, Barney competed on the price is priced and won a boat. Like all game shows, TPIR ran its course and wrapped it up for a while. Cut to 1972, CBS wanted to launch a daytime game show block with The Joker's Wild and Gambit being two of the new shows. The third would be a rebooted version of The Price is Right making contestants row just the starting point of a series of price-based games. Dennis James was proposed by Goodman Todman as the new host, but CBS was interested in a man already hosting another series, the syndicated truth or consequences at the time. Bob Barker would go on to host the show for 35 years with the television city studio named in his honor. Contestants had one chance to bid on a small item to get on stage and play a pricing game which generated the following strategies, $1 over the highest bid which only makes sense for the final bidder to do, only $1 again, assuming everyone else is over the actual retail price, or $420 a common joke bid by college students who make up a large chunk of the TV audience along with seniors. A new contestant would come on down to fill the hole and bidding would begin on a new item. Once on stage, a contestant would play one of what are currently 77 different games and there have been 110 over the history of the show. Many scholarly papers have involved statistics and tips involving the pricing games. Obviously knowing the prices of cars, trips and appliances helps, but there are some psychological items to consider, for instance, people will generally pick higher dollar amounts from a list even if it makes more sense not to do so in order to win a much bigger prize. Even a set of options, people will rarely pick the first or last one. The producers know this and adjust game setup accordingly. The Price Is Right announcers have included Johnny Olsen from 1972-85, Rod Roddy from 1986-2003, Rich Fields from 2004-2010, and George Gray who is currently doing it starting in 2011. And then there are the models showing off the prizes, with over 25 of them over the course of the series so far. Some of the major players, On Nature Ford, 1972-76, Janice Pennington, 1972-2000, Holly Holstrom, 1977-95, Diane Parkinson, 1975-93, Kathleen Bradley, 1992-2000, Brandy Sherwood, 2002-09, Shane Sterling, 2002-08, Gabrielle Toot, that was 2003-08, Rachel Reynolds who started in 2003 and is still there, Gwendolyn Osborn from 2005-17, Amber Lancaster who started in 2008 and is still there, and Manuel Arbalaz who also started in 2008 and is still there. And we also have the male model James O'Halloran from 2014 to today. Melissa Ordway starting in 2013 is a regular substitute, she's also an actress on The Young and the Restless, which also tapes in the same building which allows them at the last minute to go, hey can you come down and do a show. There was a great deal of controversy regarding some of the models in Barker. There are multiple lawsuits and allegations of sexual harassment and wrongful termination. If these had happened in the existing Me Too environment, it's doubtful Barker would have remained on the air. In 2007 Barker did retire and after a long search, comedian Drew Carey was chosen as his successor. He happened to be doing a CBS primetime game show called Power of Ten at the time which showed his talent at hosting. After a shaky start, Carey settled into the role and continues it today. There's a whole Kirk V. Picard thing going on between Barker and Carey but they really just have different styles. The show made a few changes in the Carey era. No models were added and all models were miked for the first time. During the Barker era the only time you ever heard a model was when the host brought them to his mic to chat. Now you hear them all the time chatting and cheering on the contestants. There are a lot more theme episodes now related to holidays events or salutes to various groups. There was an episode in 2008 where a contestant got their showcase bid exactly right. You can find this on YouTube and can see from Carey's expression that he thought the contestant had cheated. The show's producers had gotten lazy about the variations on prizes which just made it easier to remember the prize costs. That along with some research on recent episodes and the assistance of a superfan audience member yelling out info made it happen. You can check out Perfect Bid, a Netflix documentary about the whole thing. The price is right was so popular that it spawned multiple spin-offs. Alongside the original run in the 70s was a 30-minute weekly syndicated version with Dennis James as host. He was reportedly booted after a poorly thought out comment during a game in 1977. They were playing cliffhangers and after Yodely Guy fell off and the game was lost, James said, there goes Fritz. Dennis Pennington, a model at the time, had just lost her husband Fritz during a mountain climbing incident and she refused to go back on stage after hearing this. Barker took over the hosting role until the end of that run in 1980. A nightly 30-minute syndicated series ran in 1985 for one season referred to as the Night Time Prices Right with Tom Kennedy hosting. In 1994, a 30-minute daytime daily syndicated series called The New Prices Right premiered. Doug Davidson was the host of this very updated series using a lot of neon, younger models and gimmicks added to the pricing games. Contestants where it was eliminated so whoever was called on down would just go directed to the stage to play the pricing game. The three players would spin the wheel, leaving only one to go on to the showcase, which was played like the range game. Fans were not amused and after losing some of the syndicated affiliates, the series went under in only five months. There were also primetime specials from time to time, some involving a final prize of one million dollars. Finally the show went international with dozens of versions from Argentina to Vietnam running in 11 countries today. As mentioned at the top, the show is now returning after a pandemic-related hiatus. The audience is gone, but the games, the wheel, the models and the fabulous showcases are still in play. We watched one of the primetime specials, The Daytime Show Returns on November 16th, and the show works for the most part. The only real change is that contestants will actually have to rely on themselves to play the games too often anymore, they just let the audience decide for them, which obviously is no longer an option. So we do love the prices right, and we wanted to be in the audience, but due to COVID, we weren't able to. Yep. So instead, we just made more audio podcasts. Right. You can check out our audio podcast, How I Got My Way Through Comics on iTunes, or on our website, sfpodcastnetwork.com. From the Pop Culture Bunker, I'm Mindy. And I'm Mark. Thanks for watching.