Simple Questions & Answers Thread

[gamesurf]

Had The New Price Is Right (1994) used one-bids where four contestants came on down, would you have supported the Final Jeopardy!-style bidding, where each contestant had ten seconds to bid, with the closest/quickest without going over wins and gets to play a pricing game? In addition, what about a Showcase where all three contestants also write their bids for one Showcase only (no bidding/passing, just the closest without going over wins, and a triple overbid meaning that nobody wins the Showcase)?

Sure, there are plenty of "fairer" ways to do Contestant's Row than down-the-line-one-person-one-bid, but there's a reason it's endured for 66 years.

One Bids are simple, quick, fun to watch, easy to understand, and invite the home viewer to have a quick reaction like "it's way more than that" or "one-up that guy" or "what a dumb bid" or "bid a dollar, these guys are crazy". They set the tone for the pricing games without upstaging them.

If you replace it with ten seconds of think music and secret bids, you lose that immediate viewer reaction. Secret bids might be more fair, but open bids make a better show.

I’ve seen this mentioned in the FAQ here, but after watching all of those episodes on YouTube, I never saw the contestants line up where the top winner bid / spun last or even first.  Every episode I saw, the contestants lined up in the order in which they were called up on-stage.

But yes, I agree the 3 person TPWR showdown didn’t offer much strategy.  Maybe it gave contestant #3 the best opportunity to win a car?  Out of all the episodes on YouTube, a car game was never played 3rd, whereas the Showcase most often contained one.

I've not watched a ton of TNPIR, but after reading I checked out the first five random episodes that popped up on YouTube with TPWR; sure enough, the purple contestant won four out of five times.

My fix: scrap TPWR, have all three contestants bidding on the showcases, but Cullen-style where contestants have multiple chances to either raise their bid or freeze. Require the winning bid to be within a $3,000-$5,000 range if you don't want to give away a $35,000 showcase every night.

[JayC]

This discussion also begs the question of why they didn't just use the Big Wheel to determine who goes into the Showcase. It's such an iconic part of the show and they did use it for some of the episodes, so why did they feel the need to create a new element to determine who goes into the Showcase? Was it that the powers that be at the daytime show didn't want them to use the wheel, or was it more change just for the sake of change?

[blozier2006]

This discussion also begs the question of why they didn't just use the Big Wheel to determine who goes into the Showcase. It's such an iconic part of the show and they did use it for some of the episodes, so why did they feel the need to create a new element to determine who goes into the Showcase? Was it that the powers that be at the daytime show didn't want them to use the wheel, or was it more change just for the sake of change?

Knowing Jonathan Goodson, it was purely change for the sake of change (as the whole of TNPIR '94 was, if you think about it).

[Axl]

Was it that the powers that be at the daytime show didn't want them to use the wheel, or was it more change just for the sake of change?

I think it was just one of those things they wanted to shake up. The Big Wheel is iconic, but arguably the weakest iconic element of the show. Has nothing to do with pricing, is mostly chance, takes up a lot of time, and absent a dollar or a spin-off, is often not particularly exciting. The Price Was Right had a solid and pretty fun premise that fit easily into the show (and was temporarily revived in a slightly different form with Back in '72), despite the complications that resulted from only having 3 contestants.

They easily could have delved into Paley Center archives for commercials, followed by researching old newspapers for prices similar to Now... or Then.

Video in the Paley Center archives is not available for commercial use. And even when you can find the video, licensing issues can get very complicated, which apparently is what happened with this game. If you find a commercial you like, who actually owns it? The advertiser, or the ad agency that produced it? You need to know to get permission. Even if it fell into the public domain, there may be music in it that still needs to be cleared. Are the actors in it owed residuals? Was there any litigation connected to the commercial or the product? What if the commercial is for a product that competes with one of your real sponsors. Doing these clearances is a long process.

[PimpinJC]

Was it that the powers that be at the daytime show didn't want them to use the wheel, or was it more change just for the sake of change?

Well, outside of the odd use of it being for Clock Game, the sole purpose of the video wall was to show the TPWR clip.  My guess is that the powers that be used this version somewhat as an experiment of what a modern version of Price could look like and what all changes could eventually be incorporated into the daytime show; hence why we saw an episode with a completely different Plinko layout to potentially make it easier to get a full $25,000 win (the triple 0 / double 5000, which lasted 1 episode), elimination of trip skins to just show the trip on the video wall (again, lasting only 1 episode), different prize reveals like in Safe Crackers to eliminate a potential winning edge, eliminating grocery items, etc.

I’d take a guess and say the video wall was conceived first as the turntable in the powers that be eyes probably looked too old fashioned for a modern show, and TPWR segment was born to find a use for it.  After all, I remember it being discussed that there was a push to remove the turntable after Bob retired and bring back the video wall.

[FDRfan]

When did TPIR start using the  $1000 graphic with the red outline when someone hit a 1.00 during the showcase showdown during the Barker Era?   

[SeaBreeze341]

When did TPIR start using the  $1000 graphic with the red outline when someone hit a 1.00 during the showcase showdown during the Barker Era?   

Season 21.

[CaptainPrice]

The star-shaped "money win" graphics were definitely in place by November 30, 1992's episode. It might have been a week earlier, but that's the earliest known instance to my knowledge.

[blozier2006]

The star-shaped "money win" graphics were definitely in place by November 30, 1992's episode. It might have been a week earlier, but that's the earliest known instance to my knowledge.

One way to close the window in the other direction... do we know the latest episode with whatever graphic package was being used before that? (I think it was plain Helvetica numbers, but don't hold me to that).

[FDRfan]

I have two more questions about the showcase showdown.

1st. When was the latest they used the money win graphics that resembles the grand game dollar amount?  I remember seeing it just once.

2nd.  When did they stop using the orange outlined pennant-shaped isosceles triangle (That resembles a no passing sign) closeup? 

I'm asking these question to date the possibility of the earliest I watched Price.

[SeaBreeze341]

The Grand Game marquee was done away with early in 1987, but in Season 15.  The font remained for some time however.  The split screen for the contestants (assuming that's what you were asking) was retired by Season 25

[blozier2006]

The split screen for the contestants (assuming that's what you were asking) was retired by Season 25

I think he's referring to the original Breslow-era split screen, which was much narrower (and, indeed, "pennant-shaped") than the later Alter-era one (which filled the entire height of the screen). Again, that switched in the fall of 1986.

[FDRfan]

I noticed wasn't cliffhangers played much in season's 18 and 19 after looking at the stats.  I find that to be odd since Cliffhangers is a popular game next to Plinko.

[ooboh]

Since the rats in Rat Race are selected at random, and we've seen that there's no guarantee that any given rat will finish (or even start), isn't it theoretically possible that all five rats fail to finish the race? If so, does anybody know what would happen in that case?

[GR_Man_9009]

Since the rats in Rat Race are selected at random, and we've seen that there's no guarantee that any given rat will finish (or even start), isn't it theoretically possible that all five rats fail to finish the race? If so, does anybody know what would happen in that case?

If it were up to me, it would be in terms of distance.