The week before Thanksgiving throughout most of the 1980s was Home Viewer's Showcase week, where several minutes of the show would be presented with a large assortment of fabulous prizes for the home viewer to call. Starting at 4 PM eastern today, you can catch the 1983 HVS week over on Pluto's TPIR: The Barker Era channel. Imagine if they brought this back today, where instead, you would have to call 1-855-50-PRICE and then answer within a short period by dialing in the ARP on your phone by pressing the amount and then pound, where you wouldn't have enough time to "Google the Answer" (a 30 second time limit for about five prizes).
It could only be presented one day instead of an entire week to ensure lineup flexibility and to ensure that people could only dial in at a certain moment when the screen flashes right after the HVS presented so that people wouldn't have time to look up the prices, but we could still have a reveal just before Christmas Week as usual, with Drew dialing the number of the phone who dialed in the correct prize, with a random drawing for ties. My idea for a HVS-shortened lineup would be: Gridlock/DP/ME/1RP/Safe for a Car/Balance.
Finally, to ensure no cheating, the West coast airings would have a slightly reworked Showcase where some of the options/extras may be slightly different to ensure a different ARP (i.e. a different hotel room or experience, a different car option). Two hours is plenty of time to "Google the ARP", so I don't want someone from out west watching an online stream, waiting a couple hours, and then calling when shown on the screen. Still, just two prices in hand could still be simple enough to make the final drawing based on the nearest between the ARP of each slightly different HVS. Say if HVS #1 was $87,354 and HVS #2 was $88,253, if say the closest bids were $87,353 and $88,252, then both would be considered $1 off and eligible for the tiebreaker drawing. Drew would explain the differences between the two on the day the HVS is awarded and briefly why it is done. Your phone must be geolocated in the appropriate time zone for the HVS aired during the Eastern/Central airing to be eligible, and similarly for those west of the Rockies.
