Bidding question

[penncentral]

During the Barker era, it seemed to me that the contestants would frequently ask Bob to repeat the bids. I am assuming that this was because the contestants could not see or hear the bids very well. This doesn't seem to happen as much nowadays.

Are the contestants able to hear the microphones now? Or is there a display that shows all the bids?

[ooboh]

Contestants could easily just peer over at the bid displays.

[JayC]

For anyone that's been to a taping in the past few years, is contestants asking for the previous bids something that's been edited out?

[MSTieScott]

Editing is certainly a possibility. I truthfully don't remember how often contestants would ask for bids to be repeated during my final years there.

However, they also have installed speakers behind Contestants' Row. I'm not sure which audio feeds are being sent to those speakers (it's possible that they're exclusively for audio from Drew and/or George), but if the other Contestants' Row microphones are going there, that may also help cut down on the number of repeat requests.

I've attached two pictures. The first one was taken in June 2009 and shows the type of speakers that used to be installed back there. The second one was taken in March 2013 to document the temporary step that was placed behind Contestants' Row for the first kids' episode (so the children would be able to see over the displays), but it also shows how the speakers changed.

[Axl]

So it looks like they just went from one long speaker for each contestant to two smaller ones in order to accommodate the adjustable mic stand housing?

[GobGlom]

So it looks like they just went from one long speaker for each contestant to two smaller ones in order to accommodate the adjustable mic stand housing?

Not quite. There are 5 speakers for four players in the first image. I see that it was simply a modification made during the redress of the old analog displays. I would guess that those large speakers were intrusive and making contestants stand a bit further back but still accomplished their goal of hearing bids, the host, and announcer.