The official press release on this isn't set to come out for a couple of weeks or so, but I thought the loyal fans should hear about it first.
The recent host tryout shows have definitively proven one thing: No matter how good of a host a candidate might be, no one will be able to host "The Price is Right" the way Bob Barker could. And since viewers are used to Bob's superb hosting style, no executives want a new host that won't live up to those impossible-to-meet standards.
That's why, for the past five months, the electronics and mechanical technicians at CBS have been hard at work creating a Bob Barker robot that will be able to take over hosting duties for "The Price is Right" in season 36. They gave it a test run last week, and while there are still a couple of bugs to be worked out (during Ten Chances, instead of sounding exasperated at a series of bad guesses, the robot caught fire -- incidentally, don't expect to see Ten Chances played for the next couple of months), it looks like it'll be ready to go by the time episodes for the new season will be taped.
Named the BarkerTron 3500 (the number of episodes it's estimated the robot will last -- this will take it through the milestone 10,000th episode), this machine is an incredible reproduction of Bob -- it has the same height, it can wear the same suits... it even has realistic skin, so female contestants won't notice they're not kissing the real thing. The optical sensors scan Contestants' Row and the audience to pick up any interesting events that happen during gameplay that should be pointed out, plus they've been specially designed to read even the most illegible handwriting, so the pages can go ahead and get even sloppier with their name tags.
The speech center has been programmed to match Bob's voice exactly, and the internal computer can comment on any situation. If the prize is a piano, the BarkerTron 3500 will ask the contestant if he or she knows how to play the piano. If the contestant is particularly anxious before the reveal of the last number in Temptation, the BarkerTron 3500 will perform a number of fake-out motions before finding out whether the contestant has won or lost. They've even programmed a number of facts such as "Pathfinder hasn't been played perfectly since 1993," so the BarkerTron 3500 will be able to declare its own historic moments.
Naturally, a robot of this complexity requires a reliable power source -- nothing would frighten the audience more than seeing the host suddenly stop moving in the middle of a game. But with the amount of energy required to simultaneously power the internal computer and external mechanics, batteries were not a viable option -- they would have been too large, making the robot too heavy and bulky. However, the CBS technicians have come up with a brilliant solution -- the BarkerTron 3500 is powered by an extension cord plugged into the robot's hand. In that same hand, the robot is holding the microphone, making the power cord look like the microphone cable that we're used to seeing trailing Bob.
The BarkerTron 3500 is a stunning piece of cutting-edge robotics -- while watching the show, you'll forget that you're not really watching Bob Barker. I've heard some of the people around the studio say that viewers won't like the robot, but I say they're vastly underestimating how identical the BarkerTron 3500 is to the real thing. They claim that the BarkerTron 3500 won't even make it to the end of April. Fools.