FULL RECAP - TPiR 12/16/2008

[Ted]

How do you do it Ted?  Do you just have an amazing memory in general or do you have to cram to remember these numbers?  How many prices do you figure you can memorize at any one time?

My process has changed over the years, but I think I have a better-than-average memory (at least for some things).  Surprisingly, I think the show actually uses a larger rotation of prizes these days than they did back in the 80s when I first started going to tapings.  I remember when there used to be only 90 small prizes in the rotation.  This season alone, I think they've added about 90 new ones to the over 200 that they've used in the past few years.  There's been a dramatic increase in the number of grocery items on the show this season as well. 

[barkerguy]

Who else here thinks that he should get $56,437 in cash?

Not me. But, if someone bids perfectly on the showcase, not only do they win both showcases, but they should give the contestant $5,000 cash bonus.   

[sideshowPA]

But, if someone bids perfectly on the showcase, not only do they win both showcases, but they should give the contestant $5,000 cash bonus.   

Let me make sure I have this right....some of you are proposing that a new rule be added for an event which has now occurred twice in 37 years?  Sorry, that's silly....

[JohnHolder]

LINK: News coverage mentioning Ted and G-R.net

[Ton80]

I hope it's okay to do this, but here are some excerpts from the article that I found interesting...

There’s an Internet buzz  surrounding a “Price is Right” contestant who guessed to the dollar the price of his showcase of gifts during Tuesday’s episode.

At least they correctly refer to is as a Showcase, and not a Showcase Showdown.

Postings on message boards at golden-road.net...say one of the site’s regular members was in the audience and had been shouting out pricing answers all during the show. In this case, the audience member, who calls himself “Ted” at golden-road.net, is an expert on pricing these items and has experience giving correct dollar amounts to contestants.  “Not sure if I’m welcome at Studio 33 anymore, but I’m sure I’ll find out one of these days,” Ted wrote on a golden-road.net message board.

Did they talk to you, Ted, before quoting you here??

A Las Vegas radio station says that it landed an interview with Terry. KQOL-FM identified him as Terry Kneiss.  In the interview, Kneiss said he added up the items on his own and got no help from shouts coming from the audience. “I have hearing problem,” he said.  He gave this advice to anyone who wishes to replicate his good fortune: “Do your homework. Watch the show, watch the show, watch the show.”

I put the emphasis on that line above .  It seems like we're hearing a different story from Terry.  Maybe he was "encouraged" by TPIR producers to say that if asked??

[Drewfan2008]

I put the emphasis on that line above .  It seems like we're hearing a different story from Terry.  Maybe he was "encouraged" by TPIR producers to say that if asked??

Or he just wants to be deemed "Smart". If I were the one to do it, I wouldn't say I got help from anybody.

[Ted]

Nobody has talked to me at all or asked my permission to quote me.  And for the record, the guy who's been there 99 times is NOT me!  I'm the one who's been there 37 times (Terry said 33 in the interview).

And you know, Terry has said he was "numb" from the experience all along.  Maybe he doesn't remember where the "743" came from, or maybe (just maybe) he did come up with that on his own. 

[bydesign77]

Hey, just to let you know, they don't have to ask to quote you if you say something in the public domain. It's then on the record in public.

[ThunderE6]

So it seems that Kneiss is calling Ted's postings here untrue by means of his own quotes.

The plot thickens, eh?

[gamefro]

Another excerpt from the article:

Seems that such a precise "Double Showcase" guess has never happened in the show's long history.

Of all the things that are mentioned in the article, this is a glaring error.

and a comment by user 'barrettmarkj'

I used to live in Southern California and was in the audience for a few game shows. They are obviously rigged for ratings! On the show "Card Sharks," some guy on the side of the stage would give hand-signals to the contestants re: whether to say "higher!" or "lower!" It was an eye-opener, and disgusting. Price is Right viewership has gone into the tank since Bob Barker retired... so they hope this "controversial story" helps build some PR and ratings. Sickening.

This guy has obviously never heard of the quiz show scandals...


So many internet comments about this event being "rigged".  Most of them talk about it in the sense that the show was rigged to spice up ratings, because Drew is not a good host.  For whatever flack this incident has brought up, there is quite a bit of buzz about the show right now...too bad most of it is negative.

[Otm Shank]

Another excerpt from the article: Seems that such a precise "Double Showcase" guess has never happened in the show's long history.
Of all the things that are mentioned in the article, this is a glaring error.

Actually, they chose their words very carefully. A "Double Showcase" guess. They avoiding excessive wordiness for the general readership, but it is factually correct. The last showcase exacta was before the DSW rule. Without the word "double," though, would be incorrect, as you say.

[mrbrown2195]

Just so y'all know - the TMV TV show had a segment tonight about Terry's win entitled "The Price is Right: Conspiracy Theory!".

Not much "new" - they just played the radio interview where he totally discounts Ted (i mean, come on, he's obviously getting a number from somebody in the audience... if the camera wasn't focused on Drew when he made his bid, it would've been a lot more obvious), and TMZ joked that both Terry and Rich were "retired meteorologists".

Yeah, it's garbage TV, but at least it is entertaining unlike that "Entertainment Tonight" crap.

[gamefro]

Actually, they chose their words very carefully. A "Double Showcase" guess. They avoiding excessive wordiness for the general readership, but it is factually correct. The last showcase exacta was before the DSW rule. Without the word "double," though, would be incorrect, as you say.

The carefully chosen wording does make the average person think that a showcase exacta hasn't happened before, when it has.  I overlooked the wording and obviously came to the same conclusion.

[JohnHolder]

We may be beating this point to death, but as I understand it, the previous PB was on the syndicated version, and the show considers that a separate set of records, not to mention that the nighttime show never had a DSW rule - so this is, in fact, the first time there's been a perfect bid on the CBS version, as well as the first time that a PB has resulted in a DSW.

It's also possible that since Roger-the-Institutional-Memory is gone, no one currently working on the show actually has any accurate idea whether it's happened before. Even if a lot of Roger's on-air answers to Bob's "How many times has this happened?" were made up on the spot, the fact is that Roger would have known where to find the accurate answer if he wanted to, and I'm not sure anyone there now does (knows, or wants to). The current personnel may not care about the difference between "This hasn't happened since I've been working here" and "This has never happened."

After thinking about this for a couple of days...y'know, even if there had been something fishy (and there clearly wasn't), all this really cost the show was an extra daytime Showcase of about $30,000. Roughly the same amount as the free Plinko money given away because of the staging error earlier this season. I wonder why there's such a furor about cheating/rigging/S&P now, and not when two people won $1 million each on the MDS's with less accurate bids.

John

[Otm Shank]

Having now perused the show a bit, did anybody notice that they avoided shooting me at all during the one-bids?... They always cut back to Drew when the bidder in the #3 position bid and then had a close up of the bidder in the #4 position.  Perhaps they knew ahead of time that I was a "ringer" as it were and avoided showing me giving any perfect bids on the air.  But it had been over two years since I had been there, so I kind of doubt that.

I wanted to get back to this point, several pages back. When I saw this on TV (standard def), Ted was deliberately cropped out of the picture when Contestant 4 bid. However, the online (16:9) version showed none of these edits. So it was obviously done in post-production. My question is, what kind of message is being sent to "us" by having these time-consuming edits made in post?