The Price Is Right: Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of My Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating facts behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more. We are your showman of the showcase showdown related Facts. My name is Jordan run Tug. Wow, that's an all timer, and I'm Alex Sigel, and we're here to invite you to come on down because we're talking about the price is right. Yes, the beloved television mainstay which is required sick day viewing when I was a kid, premiered fifty years ago this very month, and it holds the record for the longest running game show in TV history. As a little kid, I adored this show so much because it was so colorful and loud and vibrant. It was like a casino on TV every day. Despite its rechery music and set design, the rapid fire pacing of the show, with the onslaught of games and prizes and cameras creaming wildly around the studio audience, it feels kind of ahead of its time in a funny way. What about you? What do you think about this show? Is this something you were into or was this just too too kitchy for you? I was not a game show guy until until until Millionaire, and yeah, just not a game I mean I knew Bob Barker from spaying and neutering your pets, and because of Happy Gilmour. There's one thing I know about kids. They love to talk about spaying and neutering their pets. You know, I have to admit I have not watched this show since its departure of Bob Barker after thirty five years in two thousand seven, No shade that. Drew Carey he had this theory about the show's longevity. Talking to the l A Times, In said, the reason it was so popular originally and why it's still popular is because of the powerful basic premise of the show. Everything is based on prices. Every one identifies with prices. The minute we put something up for bid and the contestant makes a bid, the viewers involved once it become involved. We've accomplished with the producer of every game show wants viewer involvement the prices right, has that to the nth degree. I would agree with that to a certain extent of that. Prices aren't very sexy, but viewer involvement, just like it's the Hairy style. I think I like about this movie is that it's a movie. It's it's a similar spirit in this explanation, everyone identifies with Prices, So yeah, I mean, okay, I just think it was appealing for me. One of the reasons, at least because it was one of those raw, unscripted seeming shows on television. It almost had a touch of the Jerry Springer with just you just saw this like crowd of chaotic seeming people shopping up and down, screaming most of the show, and like in a pre reality TV era that was fun to watch well, from the surprising role that Bob Barker's gray hair play in ratings, a Plinko accident, the cost producers thirty grand, the time a woman nearly gave birth in the audience, and the other time the mom from The Brady Bunch had a car accident live on stage, to the scandal but nearly shut down production on the show, and the potential mini few between Bob Barker and Drew Carey. Here's everything you never knew about the Prices right now. First things first, the version of the price is right that we all Know and Love with the colorful sets and the fail horn and the audience of over zealous Prices and Bob Barker and all that. That was actually called The New Prices Right when it premiered in September of nineteen seventy two, and that's because the original version of the show debuted in nineteen fifty six under the stewardship of host Bill Collen, who's the so called Dean of game shows because he hosted a truly astonishing thirty five of them in his career. However, this early version of The Prices Right was not very interesting. It was originally a black and white show on primetime NBC, consisting of four people bidding auction style on items, and this approach was about as boring as it sounded. It went off the air in but by the dawn of the seventies, a pair of producers named Mark Goodson and Bill Toddman wanted to revive the show for daytime, and this plan was met with resistance because the show seems so outdated and bland. They really needed to use it up. So they looked at the most successful daytime game show that was out there at the time. That was NBC's Let's Make a Deal, which was this very active audience participation show with a circus like atmosphere. He had colorful flashing lights and sound effects and enthusiastic crowd members and crazy costumes who were called up to play this rotating series of very what's the word, uh sexual, Yeah, a very eye catching game. So this new version of The Prices Right incorporated some of these elements from Let's Make a Deal, which is ironic because following Drew Carey's ascent to The Prices Right hosting gig, Let's Make a Deal as revived with this whose lines that Anyway, colleague Wayne Brady as the new host Anyway. The Price Is Right premiered on September four, nine seventy two. We just missed the fiftieth anniversary, and they used the title the New Price Is Right for the entire first season, and amusingly, the producer behind it, Mark Goodson, was not very optimistic about the show at first, even though he pitched it, because it was so heavily dependent on sponsor plugs and prize copy. He felt that the audience would lose its patients with these endless prize descriptions. But the show was designed in such a way that it held the audience's attention. Again, all the lights and the sound effects and the quick cuts. It's very, very eye catching. Uh. Some of the creative folks who worked on the show are masters in their fields. The person who wrote the iconic and awesomely retro theme I got the name of Ed kal Hoff. It's the same guy who did the theme music the Nickelodeon's Doubledare and ABC's Monday Night Football. Right yeah. Uh, And that theme remained constant and unchanged for the three five years. The Bob Barker host of the show was a glorious anachronism on daytime TV. Weirdly for something that sounds so show busy and flashy, it was recorded in London. I can't articulate why, but that doesn't know doesn't so well with me. The show's Las Vegas Midway style set was designed by a man named Don Roberts, who also designed the sets for the legendary TV shows like All in the Family, Different Strokes, Jefferson's Good Times, One Day at the Time, Who's the Boss, and Married with Children. I just find it so crazy that the person who designed the set of the prices right, also designed Archie Bunker's living room, and the and the Bundy's that's but you're not just here to learn. I want to do this all in your in your game show announcer voice. But you're not just here to learn about the behind the scenes folks on this cherished game show. You want to know more about the face of Danna br Mr bab Bucker, Mr bar Bucker. I was doing Oprah, I guess, one of the most beloved names in television. He's been around so long that you would be forgiven for believing he was simply born on a TV sound stage holding a weird shaped mike. But Barker actually grew up on a reservation in South Dakota, and as an official member of the Sioux tribe, he's an eighth Sioux. Incidentally, uh, nope, not incidentally, no segue there. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor five days before Bob turned eighteen. I could have written a better transition there. I'm sorry. Nope, No, that's perfect. Because Bob enlisted in the Navy and served from he didn't see combat. Um, he said, I was all ready to go. But when the enemy heard that I was headed for the Pacific. They surrendered. He's a good quote MI Show. I gotta say this may not be hyperbole, however, because Bob Barker could kick some ass. Yeah. Bob apparently studied martial arts for years under Chuck Norris um Walker Texas Ranger. He of all of the recycled Bill Braski jokes from early days of the Internet, saying, Chuck Norris Bacon epic. When I don't know, you punched yourself out, Just say slavery, Just say Texas Ranger Manuel McQuaid. Uh, what else is he in? Am I missing an action? Anyway? Chuck was against stuff, Yeah, yeah, returning to the Dragon on Chuck was against on Truth or Consequence, which was Bob's pre prices, right show, and he was so impressed. It was so impressed with Chuck's demonstration of karate the art of the empty hand, and he figured out, you know, I'll give it go myself. I was in the Pacific. I can, I can, I can do it. Bob's an athletic guy. He attended Jewelry College on a basketball scholarship, and it took to martial arts quickly. According to an article in the Washington Post. He holds a red belt in karate and two red belts yeah apparently, well and u tang su Do, which is Korean. But this is from the nineties, so yeah, Bob could be a black belt by now. Yeah. I've seen some unverified listicals that say he's a black belt now at age Yeah, Jesus God um. And knowing all this, it comes no surprise that he refused a stunt double for that famous cameo and Happy Gilmour in which he beats the crap out of Adam Sandler. Barker actually agreed to start on the film when he found out that he would in fact win the fight. Um. Weirdly, throughout the two thousands, The Prices Right was actually produced and directed by a guy named Adam Sandler. Not the same yeah or is it uh. In addition to his Turn and Happy to Give More, Bob Barker has made cameos on The Nanny Futurama Family Guy, How I Met Your Mother, The Bold and Beautiful episode of Bonanza. That's awesome? Just one, I think, just the one? Yeah, one and done, Bob didn't Bob didn't need it more. Always leave him one more and SpongeBob SquarePants, where he've always a character named Bob Barnacle. Bob began his entertainment career in radio just after his stint in the Navy, working at stations in Missouri and Florida, and apparently he got his first job after learning the station manager had a major fascination with planes. So Bob went into his interview decked out and his Navy airman outfit and all his brass and dazzled the guy with talk about aeronautical daring for forty five minutes until he got the job. His big break in TV occurred and he was tapped to host the game show Truth or Consequences, which and until nineteen seventy, so almost twenty years so he's already a very familiar face on TV by the time The Prices Right came his way in two and amusingly, he initially didn't want to take the job. Truth or Consequences was a very audience participation heavy show, similar in structure sort of to The Prices Right, and Bob didn't want to get pigeonholed as a one note host, not even just being pigeonil as a game show host, being pigeonil as a game show host who specializes an audience participation. I guess there are gradiations in the game show host hierarchy. But eventually Bob was convinced. He took the gig, which went on even longer than Truth or Consequences thirty five years. In fact, he broke Johnny Carson's record for hosting the same show. This brings us to the matter of Bob Barker's hair, which was, in its own way, I may say, quietly radical. I've personally only ever known him as a silver fox. In fact, the side of him with jet black hair and old photos is jarring to me, and I find him somewhat unrecognizable. TV executives like their on air personalities to have a certain look and could be quite controlling about it. You hear stories of actresses having it written to their contract that they can't cut their hair, and everyone's supposed to maintain a certain weight. I imagine David Letterman's massive Rick Ruben style beard that he has now is a reaction against that too. So when Bob Barker started going gray, Network had some thoughts. Bob litterally told the l A Times I was prematurely gray. I began the gray at my temples, and I guess it could be the technology at that time was not what it is today, and I did not look good. It looked like I had no hair at my temples, So they suggested I tinted, and that's what he did for many years, and that's how audiences knew him. Then Bob went on vacation in nine seven and decided not to bother with the hair die and he wound up getting lots of compliments from people on the gray and feeling all gassed up, he went to the network executives and asked permission, which I still find hilarious top dyeing his hair, and they agreed, and the audience response was overwhelming. They thought it was, in a strange way brave, which again is hilarious. He was greeted with a massive ovation in the studio the day he walked out for the first time with his gray hair, and the ratings noticeably improved. And the funny part was because of the way they taped the show, it basically appeared that Bob went gray over the course of a single day. Yeah, he got a letter from a guy that said, Bob you must have had one hell of a night. Well, he chose the false grail. He chose poorly. The other funny part is that once it went white. I guess the makeup people took weeks and weeks to find out what makeup looked good for him on camera, because suddenly, like his whole color palette was off anyway, but arguably more than his perfectly quaffed white hair. Bob's greatest trademark to me, at least, was his sign off for each episode, This is Bob Barker reminding you to help control the population. Have your pets spade or newtered. Bob Barker is one of the most famous animal rights activists in Hollywood, and he's been doing it long before it was fashionable. He credits his late wife, Dorothy Joe, for sparking this passion, much like Lynda McCartney sparked Paul's. She was apparently very in the vegetarianism decades before it was mainstream, and their love stories sweet. Bob met his future wife when he was just fifteen years old. I guess they were high school sweethearts, and for their first date they attended an Ella Fitzgerald concert. Awesome also, damn they're old, it's gonna be this year. They were married from until her death in one when she was only fifty seven, and Bob said he's never had the inclination to remarry, but it's funny, I guess. The first one bid prize ever offered on the prices right during Bob's tenure was a fur coat. This would change as Bob's love of animals suddenly began to impact the auction. He started ending each episode with this famous reminder to have your pet spader neoter in two, and he insisted that all the showcases, you know, the big plethora of prizes that you could bid on at the very end of the episode, you know that'll always been this huge assortment of stuff, would never have anything that involved animal products. Sometimes they were themed, and if they were, they wouldn't have anything with rodeos or zoos or even circuses. Because Bob felt that all these exploited animals. They stopped giving away aquariums, stopped giving away fishing rods, and even the prop food and the prize refrigerators or grills would all be plastic veggies instead of meat. And for years they even refused to give away General Motor Cars when it was discovered that GM used live animals and crash tests, which is a practice that they've since stopped doing. Bob's activism extended beyond the prices, right, I didn't realize this. He hosted the Miss USA and Miss Universe paget from nineteen sixty seven until night seven, when he reas kind over a disagreement over for coats. He also donated two point five million dollars to renovate a Los Angeles building to become Peter's West Coast Hub, one million dollars to Columbia Law School to fund the study of animal rights, and he purchased four hundred and sixty acres of land in California to be used as a donkey sanctuary. That's just adorable, But this is slightly less adorable. Well yeah. Bob was also given a whopping five million dollars to marine wildlife and environmental protection group called the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, who have been dubbed eco terrorists by the Japanese government for their hands on direct action tactics in trying to end the practice of whaling and sealing. Their leader was voted out of Green Peace for being too confrontational. They have claimed to have sunk ten whaling ships and destroyed millions of dollars worth of equipment, and interfered with seal and whale hunts by shining laser lights at them for bottles of foul smelling but eric acid onto vessels at sea, boarding whaling vessels to protest while at sea, and seizing and destroying drift nets at sea. Bob gave these folks five million dollars to purchase an anti whaling vessel capable of disabling whaling ships by ramming the sea. Shepherd Conservation Society named the ship the Bob Barker in his honor, that whips the last thing a bunch of whaler's sea. It's a giant ship in placing with Bob Barker's name heading right to I hope they have like the old timey like mermaid at the front of it, but it's Bob Barker. Bob, just the silver silver coffiard man in the suit just wipes your ship out and you sink from They're whalers, what was moby dick? I agree with them. I'll buy them a ship. They can call it the the Bruce Springsteen's best album is Nebraska. The USS Bruce Springsteen's best off MS Nebraska. Uh, what's the deal with those microphones? Segue from the world of eco terrorists, we go to the world of microphones. Um, yeah, you know. This is honestly the other thing that I associate with Bob Barker, other than hair and beating up Adam Sandler, is those that weird thin stemmed microphone. Um. And that is the point. Apparently producers went for them because they looked less intimidating to contestants, and uh, this would put them at ease since most people who are on game shows have never had a microphone thrust into their face before. And I guess your normal what does that? Probably an sight Probably having one of those jammed in your mouth feels a little aggressive. It just feels like you're on like late night news, you know, film at E leven type things we're being interviewed at, like a crime scene or something. It's just it's feels stressful. These thin ones are just goofy looking. One of the other reasons is because they pulled people from the audience and immediately have them start playing, so they couldn't use clip on mics or boom mix, so it was easy for him to control the audio feed by just pointing at this thing, rather than having to wait for people to get like laugh miked up or whatever. So yeah, anyway, uh, I guess. Also, the common thing that a lot of people do when a microphone is putting their face for an interview is to reach forward and grab it, and that inclination is tamped down by having the big, skinny one. And yeah, you know. The other thing is that with the long telescoping neck, you can hold it much lower, which, yeah, I guess it looks better than having your hand right up by your chin. Yeah. Drew Carey has continued using these microphones since sticking over in two thousand seven, a nod to tradition. Speaking of ongoing traditions, the famously bespectacled Drew Carey opted to get laser eye surgery soon after taking over as hosts on Prices Right. There was such a trademark of his show A Drew But you know he took the prescription, lends his out and just continue to wear the frames in the manner of it's the opposite of Clark Kent when he takes him off he's anonymous, and then puts him on and he's Super Drew. I guess things got so bad that in June eight, producers issued a policy that forbids audience members from wearing fake eyeglasses like Drew's, which I guess they've they've backed off on wise. I wonder why that is. I mean, I wonder if it's just like confused the chimp that they have running the cameras, like suddenly thrown into a rage, just like what let them wear their glasses to somebody who like, honestly, he's wearing glasses that just happened to look like us. Take them off, Take them off, them off, break his legs. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment. Yes, this all gets us to the larger question of how do you get on the show in the first place. Well, to start in an easy some hopefuls have to wait upwards of four hours in a massive line before being allowed onto the set, and then you have got to go through the taping, which can run upwards of ninety minutes. On one hand, it's cool to watch the television taping, but on the other hand, it's ninety minutes of excruciating suspense while you wait and see if you're gonna get the call to come on down, So kind of a slug. Now, contrary to popular belief, contestant names are not chosen at random. There are interviews beforehand during this massive multi hour period to determine which nine contestants will get the call out of approximately audience members. And it helps if you impress a man names stand Blitz. Since ninete it's been his job to talk to every person in line who wants to join the studio audience for the prices right. He sizes them up in twenty seconds or less to see if they have what it takes to come on down, And he explained toy, but he looks for in a potential contestant. In an interview with The New York Post, he said, I'm looking for energy, sincerity, and potential humor. And if they can equal my energy or exceed it and maintain it there at the top of the list. And it's obviously difficult to put this across in twenty seconds when you're responding to three questions your name, where you're from, and what you do. But the producers are serious when they say they're looking for enthusiasm. The audience members are expected to clap and cheer relentlessly. They often clap basically NonStop for hours on end, and more than that, the audience members are expected to keep clapping even during commercial breaks. Apparently, the show just keeps the music on and the audience members are just supposed to keep on clapping. One writer who intended to take being is said that by the time the show taping was over, his palms were like two Hamburger patties. That is disgusting. No, I can't bide by that. I don't even like being told to cheer during concerts when like clap your hands, you can't do it. I hate it. No, it has to be organic. And I tell you one thing that drives me up a damn wall is people go on how you doing, and you get the obligatory and they get yeah. I if I had a gun, I would shoot them. So all this clapping and false bonnami is that how you yeah? Is uh not the biggest problem in the world, because the audience and get pretty rowdy. In fact, it gets so loud the contestants almost never hear their call to come on down, and producers need to hold up Q cars with individual names on it. And when the contestants do come on down, the camera crew is remarkably quick at finding them in the audience. Former Prices right executive producer Mike Richards, Yes, that Mike Richards, who went on to ruin Jeopardy. More on him later, is quoted by Buzzfeti is saying, or expert, where's Waldo? Players? We've seen the pictures of the contestants and they each have numbers on them, so sometimes that dictates where they're sitting. This all sounds very sinister. We all that we then have a grid of the audience that we hand to the cameraman so they know where they're going. It sounds like some James Bond thing. All right, your here's your target now. For years, the man responsible for issuing the famous call to come on downs the show's announcer, Rod Roddy, a beloved presence on the show for his booming voice, Bill Haley style spit curl maybe more Roy Orbison and his Liberaci asked loud suits. He took over from original announcer Johnny Olsen, but it took a wire from the whole soup thing to catch on. He later told The A V Club that he started wearing Thie silk suits from Bangkok in order to keep pace with Bob Barker. Who is that. That's kind of a Natalie attired gentleman, a dandy dresser. I'm gonna tell you one thing, that guy was not going to Bangkok just for the suits, even there are several times a year. Yeah, no, great segue for this. After that, health health problems plagued his final years on the show, and he was reportedly diagnosed with colon cancer, apparently on September eleventh, two thousand one. Oh, I feel so sorry for intimating he was a sex tourist, which he probably was. Holy can you imagine getting you go home and you're like, what now, I've all I've seen that, and I've also seen that he just had surgery that day. But I've seen both. But yeah, that that is that's quite a that's quite a thing. And he ultimately died of male breast can sir in two thousand three. And he was a staunch advocate for men receiving mamograms as well. So that's our our p s A for this episode. Uh. This brings us to the real star of the Prices Right, not sex tourism, not September eleven, not male breast cancer. The prizes. Business Insider reports that a team of twenty people look up what's popular and given in the zeitgeist. Uh, so they can choose the prizes. To keep the price continuity uniform throughout the show, producers get the retail prices from the same group of retailers, largely based in California, the coastal elites deciding the rest of the country's actual retail Once again, Holy fight the real enemy. Rips up, rips up image Drew carry What was I talking about? Brand new car? Of course, major prize on the Prices Right are the brand new cars, and there are a lot of them at any given time. The Prices Right has between thirties seven and forty five cars on a special lot at the CBS Television City Studios. Not to mention boats, jet skis, trailers. Uh. Former executive producer Mike Richards told already mentioned him is the guy who ruined Jeopardy. Okay, yeah, Mike Richards told BuzzFeed. We do six shows a week, and each episode, for the most part, has three cars in it, So we're through eighteen cars in a week. Then the next week, I don't want to see the same car. I bet you don't, buddy, and I don't think our viewers do either. So then you've got to have a whole other set of cars. Yeah, so that's probably one of the probably what the you know, the biggest brass ring and Prices right is the new car right, But um, you don't get one. You don't get to drive away with them. They're just there. You don't get it. They're just for display. Um. So what happens is the production contact a dealership in your hometown and brokers a deal for you there, and then after the cars appear on the show, they go back to the dealer who supplied them. So which means that if you live in the l A area, you may be driving a car that was featured on the Prices Right, which I think is pretty cool. So each show has roughly thirty prizes in it, not counting this stuff like grocery adoms. So when you're doing a hundred and ninety episodes a season, that is a lot of stuff. The team calls it the fire hose of Prizes, which is fed from three separate warehouses on the CBS Television City lot, which includes a thirty thousand square foot facility. Again to take it back to Indiana Jones, it's like where they stowed the ark of the Covenant. And there's been some crazy stuff over the years. Someone's got a ferris wheel. Another contestant won an island on the St. Lawrence Seaway. Back in the fifties version of a woman want a peacock to go with her color TV set, which is a play in the NBC in living color, and that peacock, remember remember networks, remember television. Finally, and a man named Carl Slater when a dining room set a young horse. What's the differentiation between a young horse and a pony? I would imagine size a suit of armor and a trip to a castle in Scotland to see the origins of the armor. How about that? Good for Carl? Uh? You know the bad news is, obviously there's a dark side to all this because this America does the show about you know, capitalism prices the essence of the prices, right his prices. As Bob Barker said, Kenzie, end game show. You gotta wait for a while, to get it, so don't bother to show up to your taping with a U haul. The price department doesn't start working with intestants to get prizes until after the show has aired, which can be upwards of three months later. So if you're looking to forestall your house foreclosure with your prices right car, it ain't gonna happen. But as with everything, the real kick in the teeth comes from the taxes. Winners have to pay taxes up front on the full retail value of the item before they given access to said item, and as a result, a lot of the people who win decide not to accept the prizes. ABC News interviewed a few contestants about how much they had to pay in taxes after being on the show, with one guy saying he won fifty seven thousand dollars in prizes but had to pay close to twenty thousand in taxes. Another contestant turned down his ten thousand dollar cash prize because he didn't want to give half to his ex wife. That's the Oprah thing too, you know when she gives everybody a new car, you gotta pay taxes on that car. I think, like, like before you leave the studio that day. Yeah, you show up to taping, You're thinking, just just be stead We're gonna talk about you know, Steadman and Dr Phil is going to come on. And now all of a sudden, I gotta pay yeah for a car I didn't even ask for. It's what they don't tell you. It's how they get you. That's how they get you. I cannot believe we had made it this far without talking about the Big Wheel. One of the most familiar sights on The Prices Right is the big wheel you used to decide who gets the progress to the showcase showdown at the end of the episode. This was actually a late addition to the game. It wasn't added until The Price Is Right was expanded from thirty minutes to a full hour in nine. The rule of the wheel is that it must do a complete spin all the way around in order to count. If it does not, the audience subjects the poor sap who tried to spin it to a brutal round of booing, and they must try again. This rule came to bite Bob in the ass on October two, two thousand three, when he attempted to assist a wheelchair bound contestant by spinning the wheel for them. Unfortunately, it didn't go all the way around, prompting around of savage booing and hissing from the audience at Bob, who later described this as the most humiliating moment of his fifty year game show hosting career. Amusingly, the Big Wheel has been the subject of serious scholastic study. The Royal Economic Society published a twenty six page paper in two thousand two titled to Spin or Not to Spin? Natural and laboratory results from the Prices Right and They sought to calculate decisions the contestants make while spinning the wheel and found that the majority of time contestants disregarded what would be advantageous mathematical statistics. In other words, it's hard to make rational decisions under pressure. I could have told you that without the use of a paper. So the Big Wheel was not in the original Prices Right set up. But more surprising to me was that they went more than a decade before introducing everyone's favorite Prices Right game. Come On, Plink Oh. The game, which The Atlantic has referred to as quote basically a metaphor for life, debuted in three You know the rules, You drop a chip down a peg board and it falls into one of nine spaces on the bottom, each valued at a different dollar amount. Contestants played grand but a debuted, making Plinko the first game on the show to offer that kind of big money. Now you can win up to fifty grand. Speaking of big money in Plinko, the chips used to play the game, well, they kind of belong in a museum, folks. There are only ten Plinko chips in existence, five for the show and five as backup. According to Buzzfee's interview with then executive producer Mike Richards, these chips are extremely expensive to make, and they're delivered to the set whenever they're used on a towel, not unlike a holy relic. And when they're not being used, they're locked away in a box after every taping so they can't be stolen or copied. The top secret, the old time Plinko record is held by a man named and Glass. We appeared on the show in January of two eighteen. He needed thirty eight thousand, eight hundred and fifty dollars and then on the flip side prices right. History was made in March of when someone dropped five chips on the Plinko board and they all landed on zero. That person lost their faith yeah that day. But perhaps the most notorious plink Oh moment occurred in two when the producers of The Prices Right made a very costly mistake. They were filming a commercial to show how easy it was for contestants to hit the grand prize ten thousand dollars space on the Plinko machine, and they rigged it so that it would hit ten grand every single time. Then, when it came time to film the next episode of the show, the producers forgot to reset the Plinko board. So when the Plinko board was brought out, people were amazed when this one lucky contestant hit the center ten thousand dollars space three times in a row. Wording to one redditor who was in the audience that day, everyone was screaming, Drew was literally jumping up and down that a producer burst onto the stage and frantically stopped the player from dropping her fourth chip. Because at this point they finally figured out what had happened. Uh producers reshot the segment, but the Plinko player still walked away with thirty grand. They honored their screw up. That's one thing to say for the producers on the show. Whenever there was a screw up on their end, they always honored it, you know, in favor of the contestants. So walked away with thirty grand plus an extra three grands from when they reshot it. So there you go. And while we're on the topic of costly mistakes on air, there have been a few. Once the producers right off the wrong brand of a computer contestant was supposed to value, uh, so they just wound up just giving it to them. During a taping in two thousand eleven, one of the prize models knocked over at Big Screen TV worth over a grand uh. And there have been many games over the years that accidentally revealed the actual retail price of an item far to her, either through mechanical or human error. But the costly as mistake aside from Plinko gate, occurred in two thousand fifteen when one of the prices right models, who we will will remain nameless charitably by us, accidentally gave away a car valued at twenty one d sixty dollars. She pulled the wrong card away, revealing the actual price too soon, and the unofficial law of the games that whenever the crew screws up, the contestant wins. The poor model, who had been on the show for six years by that point, gave an interview to Inside Edition in which she described the mortifying situation, saying, I thought, a this is my last day at work, be they're going to take it out of my paycheck every week. I thought this was it for me, but thankfully, She added that Drew could not have been more supportive. Same with the producers. Mhm. Yeah, So if you ever think you screwed up at your job, think about was it a mistake? Almost twenty two? Yeah, it's understandable that accidents occur simply by the law of statistics. Because there are a hilarious number of games. A total of a hundred and twelve have been played on this show by your account, I trust you, and there are seventy nine are in current rotation. There have been some games that have been axed for technical problems, poor audience reaction, or it's just too difficult. Is this the most complex game show? I would argue yes. The many games that are played on the show are stored in the CBS lot. It must be hauled out and prepared for quick entry when needed. Some of these costs upwards of thirty grand build and are so big they need jumbo jet style tuggers to push them into place on the set. They're tested frequently since many of them have amazingly complex electronics behind them, and a failure during taping would result in a lengthy delay in front of an impatient and presumably intoxicated audience. Do they let you bring booze in pre game on the sidewalk? Imagine there's like tailgate parties and the prices right parking lot. The show has a special effects and lighting crew who examines every electronic aspect of the show. Large custom made consoles sit on stage with a crew operating them, not on like mission control. Basically it's like a concert. Right. They've got flashpots, explosives, they got fire breakaway sets, mechanical props, buckets of water to be dumped on the models. Um because, as we'll get into later, this show treats models like firewood. Uh. But the plethora of these games actually meant that Drew Carey had his work cut out from when he took over as host in two thousand seven. Yes, but first let's talk about Bob's retirement. But she announced October thirty one, two thousand six, Halloween, a scary day indeed for Prices Right fans. On June fifteenth, seven, then eighty three year old Bob Barker hosted his last episode of The Prices Right, which aired both during the regular daytime spot and again in prime time as the lead into the thirty four annual Daytime Emmy's. In a very poetic touch, the final three Pricing games played on Bob Barker's final show, where the first three games played on his very first show, fighting reverse order. So he went out on the way he came in that but Bob nearly stayed on the show even longer. He offered to delay his retirement because CBS had a really tough time finding a host. A number of candidates were auditioned and all hosted a mock non broadcast episode with audience members who volunteered to stay after you know, taping from one of the Bob Barker episodes. These hopefuls included George Hamilton's and Zering, Mario Lopez, John oh Hurley, and former Double Dare host Mark Summers and This Is Amazing. Mark Summers was reportedly Bob Barker's choice for his successor, but the network shut it down, saying that Mark was too short, although he did go on to help host a traveling version of the Prices Right Um, a non televised version I think um andres roadshow host Mark Wahlberg, not that Mark Wahlberg different. Mark Wahlberg also lost out, supposedly because the network thought he wasn't attractive enough, but he's also gone on to host the touring version of Prices Right Live and This is Cole. The show's announcer at the time, Rich Fields, desperately wanted a shot at auditioning, but CVS adamantly denied him the opportunity, and he left the show a few years later. Rosie O'Donnell was also rumored for the job, but she very publicly took herself out of the running. The official version was that she would have to leave her home in the East Coast and moved to California for the gig, but the real reason is supposedly the fact that CBS received a ton of hate mail once her name was leaked. Kind of chalk that up to good old fashioned homophobia or sexism or both. Finally, Drew Carey was offered the gig in the summer of two thousand and seven. Then CBS chairman Les Moonvez was impressed when watching Drew host the primetime game show Power of Ten, and Drew originally turned this gig down, just like Bob Barker before him, and then network began aggressively courting him. I say aggressive. They sent him a package with a gift that Drew assumed would be an iPhone which had just been released some you know, high end Bob to try to curry his favor to host this daytime TV juggernaut. Hilariously, he opened the package and discovered that they tried to win him over with the Freebee Prices right T shirt and Mum Sheep skates. Yeah yeah, But ultimately Drew took the gig, announcing it during an appearance on The David Letterman Show, which I think is very appropriate considering Letterman was seen as the king of late night and Bob Barker the king of daytime TV, at least on CBS. And on October two thousand seven, just under a year after Bob announced his retirement, Drew Carey made his debut on the Prices right stage. Yeah, and they really kind of greased the wheels for him, which is admirable because you're coming in. He's gonna be enormous shoes to fill the legacy of this show, so longtime producer Roger dobb Cowitz dubbed Cowitz Roger Roger Dobbs our dubbs Uh. He said it was a conscious decision to ensure that for the first few months of Drew's tenure, plenty of people would win the show to help audiences warm up to him. He later wrote in a post off his personal blog, I completely ignored the prize budget for the first couple of months. I scheduled easy games with obvious right and wrong price combinations so that more contestants could go home as winners. He just accomplished his mission a little too well. By January two eight, he said, I was about seven hundred thousand dollars over budget, had like four months of truth tenure, almost up to like three cores of a million dollars above budget, and uh, with the network unwilling to fork over the cash, he's as they went into a period where we were forced to use tougher games and smaller cars. Sadly, it is probably not a coincidence that Roger was fired from the show in two thousand and eight after Carrie's first season wrapped up, and that dude had been at this show since the beginning thirty six years longer than Bob. Show goes over budget, one season cruel, She's a cruel mistress the Big Wheel. Uh, but it's too a street. Audiences needed time to adjust to Drew. Drew needed time to adjust to the new gig. The show was done live to tape under Bob, as in what you see is what gets printed, like on the studio floor, off the cuff in real time. Drew struggled with this, reportedly, which is surprising considering that he had just come from the improv centric Whose line is it? Anyway? But he's mostly like the he's like the straight man on that show, right, He's pretty funny as the host. But yeah, wow, he's no Bob Barker. Sorry, model of all American masculinity, animal lover, black belt, sue navy vet. Well we get into some sexual predator. Yeah yeah, there it is sex pest. So early on in Drew's tenure, tapings have begun to stretch closer in ninety minutes and with seventy five over seventy five games with over seventy five sets of rules, the producers tried to help him out by only featuring six complicated games a week for a while, so they went on limb for Drew. This brings us to perhaps my favorite anecdote of this episode. They're kind of might be a little bit of a few between Bob Barker and Drew Carey. At least there was, but then again, maybe I'm projecting. Bob has admitted that he's not exactly been a loyal viewer since he hung up his microphone and rarely tunes into the carry lead Prices right right there with you, Bob. But in July, Barker told TMCs cameraman Drew does the show differently than I did. I tried to make the show really exciting. He doesn't do that. He just plays the games that In my opinion, that's pretty unambiguous, but I guess. Hours later, Bob tried to explain himself on Entertainment Weekly. He said that he would never criticize Drew, CBS or the Prices Rights producers because quote, I have a sizeable royalty that I am paid every year on the show that the show is on, I would be an absolute fool. I hope the show stays on for years. In other words, I love the show because I still get paid. As for his criticism of Drew, Bob Barker has said, he's been charming and complimentary, and he had me on the show to plug my book. To think that I would say anything derogatory about him is idiocy. I mean, okay, but you said it. But yeah, But he's appeared on the show a few times, I think most recently for is ninety five birthday, maybe one of his big birthdays. So I guess it's all water under the bridge. Um. There's something that Drew does on his version of the show that I think it's very nice that I'd like to talk about. If contestants guess the actual value of an item rather than simply close to it, they get a cash bonus of five dollars. And this money is literally paid from Jew's pocket, like taken from his suit and out of his presumably quite generous salary. CBS calculated the by two thousand seven, ten years into his tenure, Drew had given away around a hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars of his own salary that he doesn't have to do. And there's another cute thing that he does too. Many of these games on the show still operate by old school cranking pulley operators, and Drew always makes a point to introduce the crank operators on stage, since union rules dictate that if an employee's face has shown, they must receive more cash, so he always has them come out and say a quick high, which I think is very nice. I agree. Now. The show has had a number of celebrity guests over the years, and some of the more recent ones include Seth Rogan, Kristen Bell, Demilovado, Heidi Klum, you got your ex boy banders and your real housewives, and even Snoop Dogg dropped a plinkoat chip or two. But what we're talking about pre fame stars appearing on the Prices, right, I really only got two, but they're good ones. The first is Vannah White, who went on the show in two years before she started flipping letters on the Wheel of Fortune. Sadly, though she got the call to come on down, she never made it out of contestants row. She said she never got to play any of the games. But then there's Aaron paul A k A. Breaking Bad's Jesse Pinkman, who made it onto the show and was extremely enthusiastic about it. A video of his two thousand performance surfaced a few years ago and it's adorable. Encourage all Prices Right and or Breaking Bad fans to check it out. It went down shortly after we moved to l A to pursue acting, and he loses his damn mind when he finally gets on camera. You can see him scream you're the man, Bob, You're my idol, before successfully placing the closest bid on a flat top desk. And he made it all the way to the showcase showdown before going just a little too high, just a hundred and thirty two dollars on a price package worth over twenty six grand, and it included a sports car. He was so close he can't go over. That's the whole thing about the price is right, as close as possible to the actual price without going over, And he went over by just a hundred and thirty two dollars. Thirteen years later, he was still pissed about it. He told Jay Leno that he was depressed for many many months after this. I mean wouldn't you be, Yeah, especially if you're a struggling actor in l A. Although I guess it meant he probably wouldn't have had the money to pay the taxes on all that good do Well, can you put it on a payment program? Like can you defer payments? Maybe maybe there's some kind of Yeah, that's a good point. Just break your legs right then and there. Here's your choice. You pay us or five minutes in the alley with a veto no with Bob red or possibly black belt. Bob's just up there like limbering up. He's like, trust me, you don't want to take the alley. As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more too much information. After these messages, there are other non celebrity centric appearances that have gone down in the vast lore of the prices right a Verse. For example, one guy got famous by bidding four dollars on every prize because did he win back? Guy? I don't know. I think there's gotta be a guy Olds who did sixty nine for everything right, Like, yeah, people are clever. One of the most infamous incidents occurred nine seven and involved a woman named Yolanda. This being in the late seventies. She was wearing a tube top, as was the fashion of the time, and when she got the call to come on down, she got so excited that the tube top slipped off, revealing too much for daytime. When Yolanda finally got to the podium on Contestants Robe, Bob couldn't help but saying I've never had a welcome like this to During an appearance years later on Larry King Live, he said that was the most talked about single incident in the history of the show. That said, coming on down with the wardrobe malfunction is rob but it's better than not showing up at all. During the Barker years, a contestant named Patricia Bernard had an unfortunately timed bathroom break and completely missed the moment that her name was called. The cameras were scanning the audience looking for her and quickly noticed her husband running around trying to find where she'd gone. Oh my god, can you imagine she just couldn't hold it. A similar thing happened in but Yeah, but there's another. There have been other times when people have missed the call. Sometimes this waste names being pronounced incorrectly, other times due to the fact that taping had already started while people were still filling into the studio. There was a woman who was said to be married, and she was still getting used to her married name, so she forgot her own maiden name when it was called, and she was like, there's no woman here by that name, no good thing. California is a no fault divorce state, so that's all mildly awkward. But that's nothing compared to an incident that occurred in Daniel Perez is a comedian who had lost her legs in an accident that occurred a decade earlier. During your appearance on The Price Is Right, she was awarded a treadmill. The crowd went silent, thankfully. Dan El Perez, being a comedian, had a sense of humor about it all. She told our former colleagues at People Magazine. I just thought, oh, this is perfect. You cannot write this, you cannot make this up. It's not even that I'm in a wheelchair. It's that I literally don't have feet. But I was so hopped up on all the cash and prizes and the doorphins you go and you just want to win. It doesn't matter what it is that you win, so good perspective on it. It's tough to explain how dedicated these people are in the audience of the Prices Right, but here's an example that illustrates it quite well. Bob tells the story of the l a times. I was talking to the audience once during a break and taping, and a young woman in the audience began to have a baby. I turned to the studio pages and said, we help her out, and this woman said, no, I don't want to go. You might call my name, and I said, madam, we are not going to call any more names until you're on your way to the hospital. And just to wrap up this segment, there was the time that Mrs Brady of the Brady Bunch had a car accident on the set of the show. Florence Henderson was the special guest and she was supposed to sit in an suv as it was driven onto the stage as part of one of the Prices Rights Mother's Day episodes. You know, she's one of the most famous TV moms of all time. The person behind the wheel got a little distracted by everything going on, the cameras and the lights and the crowd and Bob Barker and Mrs Brady. It's too much. Something had to give and he accidentally drove the suv straight into the wall of the set at a breakneck two. Luckily, no one was hurt and there was no severe damage to the car or the set or Mrs Brady. Something similar happened actually with one of the models who was supposed to drive a sports car onto the set while they were filming, you know, the show it off and do the like van of white thing, except she drove it straight through a wall. She said she didn't realize that the car was a stick shift. And this brings us to the topic of the prices right models, or Barker's Beauties as they were informally known during Bob's tenure. They are, of course the lovely lady who pose with the prizes a sort of proto van a white gig, although they did at a Dude in twelve. This is difficult to talk about because this is where we get into the tales of Bob Barker being accused of sexual harassment many times over. There have been many unsavory stories that spilled out of the tabloids since the mid nineties and since nine I think six women were fired from The Prices Right and they've all sued Bob, who was the executive producer of the show, for charges including sexual harassment, racial discrimination, and wrongful termination. I feel like it's only right, as we talk about the fun things about the show, to share some of these stories right now. The first story is that of Diane Parkinson, who left The Prices Right In after eighteen years. At the time, it was said that she was leaving to pursue other interests, but the following year after she left in, she filed a lawsuit against Bob Barker for sexual harassment. She alleged that Bob used force the course or into a three year sexual relationship. She says that she slept with him for fear of losing her job, and upon her resignation, she received a thousand dollars a month in what she says was huched money. The producers claimed this was severance pay. Bob Barker insists that this relationship with Diane was a consensual relationship. According to him, Diane quote volunteered to add some hanky panky to his life. That's a quote, thus ushering in quote, a sexual revolution thanks to his time with her. Good God, I can't believe I just said all that. Why would he put those quotes out? I guess management firm, right, Yeah, I don't. Actually, I'm trying to remember what those quotes are from. I wonder if they're from a deposition, which would be even more insane. Several other women associated with the show claimed Diane was overly flirtatious and inappropriately touchy feely with Barker, who was seventy years old at the time she resigned. Ultimately, she dropped her lawsuit citing health problems, and her attorneys were fined two grand for her refusing to comply with legal questions that she deemed invasive the legal system. Yes, truly, no notes. So a number of people on the show kind of ganged up on Diane. That one person who refused to speak out against her was her fellow Barker beauty mobel Holly Holstrom. She was dismissed from the show in September after nineteen years, supposedly because of fourteen pounds she had gained due to a prescription medication she was taking. She later alleged that Barker actually fired her, as if that wasn't bad enough. She alleged that she was fired because she refused to support Bob during the whole Diane Parkinson thing when she was accusing him harassment. Bob wanted her to go on talk shows and basically say that the whole thing with Diane was a fiction. Uh, she didn't want anything to do with it. She flat out said, I don't really want to testify out their oath and basically perjuring myself. She didn't want to get involved, and she said she was dismissed from the show as a result. Barker responded to all this by suing Holly for libel and slander, but dropped the suit forty eight hours before the trial began. Holly Hallstrom counter suit Bob for age, weight and medical discrimination, wrongful termination, and malicious prosecution, and ultimately received a multimillion dollars settlement in October of two thousand five. During the nearly ten years that this lawsuit was in courts, she spent all of her resources and savings, and at her lowest point, she sold her house and ended up living in her car. As she said in interviews regarding that period of her life, I refused to give up and let the evil old bastard win. And she has since started a foundation for individuals who have suffered wrongful or malicious conditions in the workplace and don't have the power or resources financially or otherwise to go up against powerful individuals or large corporations. Well, if you thought that was bad, hang on uh. During in June taping of the show Modeled, Janice Pennington was accidentally hit by a camera and knocked off the stage and into contestants row six ft below. She suffered a concussion and a broken clavical and was rushed unconscious to the hospital, where she underwent two surgeries, one of which left one of her shoulders an inch shorter than the other. Because of the scars from her surgery, she was no longer allowed to wear a swimsuit on the show, and her modeling career suffered. She got a one point three million dollars settlement for her injuries, and things seemed to be fine for another decade. Then in October of two thousand, Janice was let go after twenty nine years on the show, which you think makes her the longest serving Prices right model. Yeah, she was there from the beginning. I mean that's twenty nine years. That a long time, and apparently, according to her, Bob didn't even say goodbye to her. She told The l A Times that she believed she was fired because she sided with Diane Parkinson in her wrongful termination deposition. Responding to the controversy just before his retirement in two thousand seven, Bob Barker told USA Today, they have been such a problem, Bob buddy, I don't want to say anything about them. They were disgusting. I don't want to mention them. Fire his pr person, or at least get him one. It doesn't seem like he has one. But even after he left the show, models were still mistreated. After a model named Brandy Cochrane became pregnant with twins, she reported that producers started saying things like wide load coming through. She was ultimately fired after taking maternity leave in two thousand eight, which is illegal, and she filed a lawsuit against the show in two thousand ten, in which she won over eight million dollars. Yeah, damn, well, we can end on the lowest moment in the show's history. So instead, let's talk about the high point, a truly stunning bit of gameplay. I'd like to discuss the most sublime moment in all of Prices Right history. It was during an episode that aired on December six eight, a man by the name of Terry Knice I think is his name, managed to guess the exact value of an elaborate showcase showdown package, something that hadn't ever occurred during the show's run. There was an RV, a karaoke machine, a poll table, and he got it right on the nose, which like should not be positible, and the production crew agreed. They suspended production for forty five minutes while they tried to figure out what had happened, because everyone assumed this was the result of cheating. So you mentioned earlier the show's longtime producer, director Roger Dobko, how do you say his name? He had just been fired and they thought that maybe he was sabotaging the production out of revenge. And if you got to watch this clip online, the best part is Drew Carey's unenthusiastic reaction. He later explained, everybody thought someone had cheated. We just fired Robert Dobkwitz and all the fan groups were so upset about it. I remember asking, were we ever going to air this? And nobody could see how we could. So I thought the show was never gonna air. I thought somebody had cheated us, and I thought the whole show was over. I thought they were going to shut us down, and I thought I was gonna be out of a job, which let me dial it back. Esquire wrote a really fascinating piece about this incident in two, and Terry Kinnice, the Lucky Winner, claimed that he obsessively watched the show with like a religious fervor, and he had merely memorized the value of the prizes since the show did repeat things on occasion, and so he had a rough idea of the value of these items, and to round it out, he supposedly picked the numbers seven four three, which was the family pin number, consisting of like birthdays and anniversary dates. I forget what was the number thousand seven hunt? Okay, I believe so. But if you think Terry's obsessive viewing is strange, things are about to get even weird. Or there's a documentary made about this whole incident. In two thousand and seventeen called the perfect bid the contestant who knew too much and it sent us around. Another Price is Right super fan named Ted Slawson who's been studying the game since the seventies, and he even developed a homemade computer program to train him on price values, and he started going to tapings regularly. It was even called a contestant once, but surprisingly didn't win. But during his repeated trip to the tapings, he'd call out the correct answers from the audience and helped contestants win. You know, that's part of the game, is that the audience can yell out prices and that's allowed. And I guess he'd become something of kind of like a legend in the Prices Right community. Like when he said something, you you listened, uh, he said. He claims that he called out the correct bid to this Terry guy during the showcase, and Terry listened to him, and that's why he won. Terry disputes that two nerds butting heads. Who's telling the truth. The world may never know. But following this whole kerfuffle, the Prices Rights producers began changing the diversity of the items on the show, going so far as changing the options packages on cars that they were offering, which impacts the price. So all in all, all of this was just to make it less likely than contestant could just memorize prices from watching the show over a long period. Well, we've just about come to the end of our time exploring The Prices Right. But given that it's such a numbers based show, I wanted to share a quick by the numbers lightning round of stats that I personally found interesting and if you've listened this far, you may too. Many of these are courtesy of Deadline or CBS themselves. More than nine thousand nine episodes of The Prices Right have been taped over sixty eight thousand contents since have been instructed to come on down. More than three hundred million dollars and money and prizes have been given away. Over the last fifty years. More than eighty four hundred vehicles have been given away. First was a Chevrolet Vega valued at two thousand and seven hundred forty six seven hundred forties. The most expensive was an Audi R eight hundred and fifty seven thousand, three hundred dollars. More than two point four million people have attended a studio tapping of the Prices Right in person on two separate occasions. A ninety nine year old contestant has been known to come on down, the oldest age of any contestant on the show, and at two thousand and eight, a California teacher one one million, one hundred fifty three thousand, nine hundred and eight dollars during the Prices Right million dollars Spectacular prime time special, which makes him the record holder for the most one on the show, but the record for regular daytime play was broken in twenty nineteen by Mike Stober, who won close to two hundred and sixty three thousand dollars in cash and prizes. And I think that's about all I got, Heigel. If unless you've got something, uh, I just you know, I hope we've gotten you all as close as we can without going over. Well after that, I guess there's nothing left to say but help control the pet population. Have your pets spade or neutered. My name's Jordan Runt Tug and I'm Alex Hegel. We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown, and Jordan Runt Talk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtalg and Alex Hegel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts and I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. And as acting Jet That Land at Black Passing Int.