Question about picture in Golden Gallery...

[asd2001]

I have a question about the picture shown on the following page of the Golden Gallery (in order for the page to load, you will need to be logged in) --

http://www.golden-road.net/modules/xcgal/displayimage.php?pid=1382&album=36&pos=41

The caption under the picture says "Bob reminds us to watch the show next week for the premiere of The Phone Home Game."

Was this taken from a TPIR commercial/promo?  It just seems so strange to see Bob standing in front of a pricing game when he's surrounded by the light border!

And light border or not, the whole idea of a pricing game being promoted a week in advance -- and taping the promotion in front of the game itself -- just seems really unusual!  I imagine that this was done due to Phone Home Game offering the home audience a chance to participate.  Did they do something similar with the "Play Along" promotion?

[JT]

Phone Home had a most unusual intro to the show.  The game debuted in Sept. but that summer they ran a week of fresh shows (not repeats) that featured a daily segment introducing the game and explaining that viewers at home could win by mailing in a postcard.  So by the time they taped Phone Home for the first time, they had some viewers to call.  The above was inserted into reruns before the season began to drum up more excitement.  All they did with Playalong was on occasion, after Playalong was featured, they would go into commercial with the announcer giving the Playalong address for viewer postcards.  (The same plug was done on occasion right after Phone Home was played.)