Any thoughts on the first-season episodes that Pluto is now showing?

[asd2001]

This has probably been answered at some point in the long history of this forum:

On one of the episodes that was shown last night (11/28), Give or Keep ended in a tie (and per Bob, the contestant wins in that situation). From what the group collectively knows about the history of this game (which admittedly may not be much especially for these very early episodes), was this the only time that ever happened? It's almost hard to believe that the prices of the prizes offered had a scenario where a tie could have even occurred, but again, the show was in its infancy, so it's presumably not something the producers had given much prior thought to.

EDIT: I just remembered that this occurred on an episode that was shown after the block of Tuesday’s Season 1 episodes (so from Season 11-ish). My apologies for any confusion. But I’d still love to know if a tie in Give or Keep ever happened again.

[Nick]

How rapidly did Wheel take off? It premiered 1/75 and the trial hour shows were 9/75.

I don't know the ratings data off the top of my head, but I recall Roger's recollection is that the Showcase Showdown and specifically the use of an oversized wheel was a direct shot at Wheel.

Another tidbit: 14 of the first 25 contestants to play PG3 made it to the Showcase (not including the tossed 0003D).

So, combining this along with the stats of your other post, while there was an evident disadvantage to being third insofar as how much you could win to qualify for the Showcase, more than half in first five weeks did make it to the Showcase; and this would be reasonable insofar as there would be some losses in the first two games on some occasions.

Not much in the half hour format you could do since the third game was the last, but this begs the question: If you're in the Row before the fourth game in the hourlong format, do you throw the One Bid?  You know it's likely not going to be a car game, and unless there are losses in the final two games, you may be, at best, setting yourself up as the first or second spinner in the Showcase Showdown.  On the other hand, you may not win a succeeding One Bid and be forever without another chance forced to wait ten years before you can again try.

If anything, the Cullen version started with a bigger bang than TNPiR did with a bigger variety of prizes and a more energetic host off the bat.

Did it, though?  I admit my knowledge of the Cullen versions is pretty limited, but I seem to recall some story floating the Internet years ago about it having a disastrous pilot and Bill almost getting choked by his mic cord when it got caught while the turntable spun.  Perhaps it was better by day one, but even then, do we know for sure it did have a larger variety of prizes at the start of the run?

Bob had yet to start his opening monologue

On this subject, while I praise the late '70s as being the peak of the show's golden era, one thing that definitely got better later on was when Barker starting opening the show with true monologue.  The fare in the '70s was often along the lines of, "Welcome to The Price Is Right! If you're looking for excitement, you've come to the right place because over the next hour, we are going to try to give away thousands of dollars in cash and prizes to this studio audience!", which is very stereotypical game show host cringe.  Sardonic as Barker was in the '80s, the opening monologue was a definite highlight of the show (and I find it impressive how Barker more or less improvised his monologues, yet it was no secret that Richard Dawson had a writer for his opening bits on Family Feud, and well... they weren't nearly as entertaining).

[pannoni1]

Did it, though?  I admit my knowledge of the Cullen versions is pretty limited, but I seem to recall some story floating the Internet years ago about it having a disastrous pilot and Bill almost getting choked by his mic cord when it got caught while the turntable spun.  Perhaps it was better by day one, but even then, do we know for sure it did have a larger variety of prizes at the start of the run?

What really helped with the prize variety was that Bob Stewart was involved throughout the Cullen era, and according to the 2013 book Quizmaster, Bob Stewart had two main procedures with his staff during meetings of the show: "What haven't we done yet?" and "What can we do differently?", which usually lasted all night and had an eight-week lead time so that everything would be worked out smoothly, including a prize that would go suitably with a bonus. There was a huge two-story warehouse roughly the size of a department store in your average suburban mall, storing everything from furniture, appliances, electronics, fashions, and even some cars, and this well-oiled machine allowed for an ever-changing wonderful array of prizes.

It was the technical side of the production that was the biggest fault of the pilot, not the host, prizes, or contestants. But it was also the weekly Home Viewers' Showcase that really garnered the attention of that show, and it led to a surge in phone calls to the suppliers of the prizes, and this eventually led to quite a few exactas, even to the penny. It took less than 13 weeks for the original Price to become the top-rated show in its timeslot, boosting an impressive 49.6 share, and of course this helped Bob Barker's fortunes too with Truth or Consequences having a stronger lead-in, boosting its ratings in the process. It was so popular that it moved to a new studio with audience seating for 1000, and even that came with a six-month waiting list. By contrast, it took seven years for CBS' Price to become number one, and those empty seats in those early Barker episodes showed how much work was needed to return the show to its early-mid Cullen era glory days. The fact that TNPiR didn't have returning champs like the Cullen days may have also turned some viewers off.

I'm also a bit surprised that the early Pricing Games didn't go along the "General knowledge" route like the bonuses in the Cullen version did, which included things such as writing a book of poems and then selling them to win cash for each book sold, a trip to London that involved selling neckties for 15 cents each, and talking to every contestant in the 1963 Miss America Pageant and winning a cash amount based upon how well that women performed, up to $10,000 if she won the title (imagine Bob doing such a bonus!) If anything, the transition between what viewers knew from the Cullen run to the Barker/James era was much rougher than what happened during the early Drew period.

[PimpinJC]

Not much in the half hour format you could do since the third game was the last, but this begs the question: If you're in the Row before the fourth game in the hourlong format, do you throw the One Bid?  You know it's likely not going to be a car game, and unless there are losses in the final two games, you may be, at best, setting yourself up as the first or second spinner in the Showcase Showdown.  On the other hand, you may not win a succeeding One Bid and be forever without another chance forced to wait ten years before you can again try.

Take the W where you can and get up on stage.  Your car game could be luck based like 3 Strikes / Let em Roll and you can still lose it.  At least on stage, you control your own fate.  Plus, highly likely you can get your car once you get to the Showcase.

[alansh42]

First, is anyone keeping a list of which episodes have been run?

Second, it would be nice if they put them in Pluto's on demand section. I haven't been able to coordinate every day. For a regular cable channel I could DVR it but that's not an option with Pluto.l

[MSTieScott]

I haven't been watching all of the episodes, as two hours of season one is difficult to sit through. It doesn't help Pluto when, for example, I sat down shortly before 6:00 Pacific this evening only to be greeted with yet another airing of the tribute special. If I had known that was going to happen, I would have made a point of jumping in an hour earlier. Instead, Pluto doesn't get my ad impressions.

The problem with the TW/RU format is that it was often impossible for the third onstage contestant to make it to the Showcase, even if they won their pricing game. This was especially true in the first two years or so, when the third slot was almost exclusively reserved for quickies (which usually offered a much cheaper prize/prize package than the car and fee games). I understand rewarding big winners, but it seemed totally unfair to the third onstage contestant, especially if it was someone who was called sixth (therefore never having any chance of winning their way up to play game 1 or 2).

Somebody correct me if I'm misremembering, but wasn't one of the original plans for The New Price Is Right to have three showcases, allowing all three onstage contestants to participate? It would make sense based on both the number of pricing games as well as the fact that there are three doors on the stage (in the earliest episodes, each showcase always seemed to be contained entirely within one door). It was only when the producers realized that there wasn't enough time in the half hour for three showcases that they had to cut it down to two and create a rule that unfortunately left the lowest winner out in the cold.

I imagine there were a lot of last-minute rule changes that came about when the producers realized they had too much show for their time slot. I know that one of the plans was to sometimes determine who would win their way up on stage by playing a variant of the original Bullseye with all four people in Contestants' Row. But just imagine how much time that would have taken. And the asterisks on the original One Bid displays imply that having a bid-bid-bid-bid-freeze auction like the original Price Is Right was a consideration.

This is slightly off the Pluto topic but is an interesting point of comparison none-the-less. I had said that Barker wouldn't hit his stride until years later. What is interesting to me, looking at 1972, is that Dennis James hit his stride right out of the gate and watching early James episodes is a ton of fun.

I'm not sure I agree with that. Granted, the sample size for Dennis James is low, but I always got the impression that both Barker and James had a similar stereotypical '70s game show host slickness to them. Barker was just better at establishing a rapport with contestants and prodding them to make a decision in a less aggressive way.

It's almost hard to believe that the prices of the prizes offered [in Give or Keep] had a scenario where a tie could have even occurred, but again, the show was in its infancy, so it's presumably not something the producers had given much prior thought to.

They gave enough thought to it to have the "tie goes to the contestant" rule in the first place. Especially in the early days, the producers were largely bound by the companies willing to pay for a spot in a fee game like Give or Keep. I'm guessing that with everything else they were trying to manage on a show with so much to coordinate, they were content just to get three pairs of small prizes whose prices were close enough to not make the game insultingly easy and didn't have time to also try to work the prizes into pairs that couldn't create a tie.

Overall, the first season just feels like a big work in progress

This is a very apt description. No show hits its stride right out of the gate, and while it's fascinating to watch season one from a historical perspective, from an entertainment perspective, two hours straight is too much.

[gsn93]

I'm not sure I agree with that. Granted, the sample size for Dennis James is low, but I always got the impression that both Barker and James had a similar stereotypical '70s game show host slickness to them. Barker was just better at establishing a rapport with contestants and prodding them to make a decision in a less aggressive way.

I wonder how much of this is down to the fact Dennis only hosted the show in the half-hour format. Watching the available episodes from his run as host nearly half of the runtime is dedicated to the showcase round. The show always felt like it was in "hurry-up" mode to squeeze in the longer showcases. One of the circulating episodes even has audio from the breaks not completely muted out and you can hear Dennis engaging with the audience and it seems like he does have a decent enough rapport with interacting with them when not rushing to the flow of the 23 minute runtime.

[thatvhstapeguy]

Somebody correct me if I'm misremembering, but wasn't one of the original plans for The New Price Is Right to have three showcases, allowing all three onstage contestants to participate?

As far as I know, this has long been the rumor, and would make a great deal of sense, but I don't think we have any hard confirmation of this.

I know that one of the plans was to sometimes determine who would win their way up on stage by playing a variant of the original Bullseye with all four people in Contestants' Row. But just imagine how much time that would have taken. And the asterisks on the original One Bid displays imply that having a bid-bid-bid-bid-freeze auction like the original Price Is Right was a consideration.

This is one of the reasons why everyone here would kill to get footage/information about the runthrough taped August 15, 1972. Who knows what kind of bidding system they used on there.

[therealcu2010]

As far as I know, this has long been the rumor, and would make a great deal of sense, but I don't think we have any hard confirmation of this.

I believe Roger himself said it, I wanna say on Rich Fields' podcast...before Rich got fired for being an idiot that is.

[ThatDonGuy]

This has probably been answered at some point in the long history of this forum:

On one of the episodes that was shown last night (11/28), Give or Keep ended in a tie (and per Bob, the contestant wins in that situation). From what the group collectively knows about the history of this game (which admittedly may not be much especially for these very early episodes), was this the only time that ever happened? It's almost hard to believe that the prices of the prizes offered had a scenario where a tie could have even occurred, but again, the show was in its infancy, so it's presumably not something the producers had given much prior thought to.

EDIT: I just remembered that this occurred on an episode that was shown after the block of Tuesday’s Season 1 episodes (so from Season 11-ish). My apologies for any confusion. But I’d still love to know if a tie in Give or Keep ever happened again.

I remember one Give or Keep tie where the final item the player kept was $46, so if that wasn't the last price on the episode you saw, then there was more than one tie. At least they didn't switch back and forth between calling it a win and a loss, like they did with Buy or Sell.

[SteveGavazzi]

At least they didn't switch back and forth between calling it a win and a loss, like they did with Buy or Sell.

They did?

[tpirfan28]

Not entirely sure if this topic is the right one to ask but here goes: I'm watching the first playing of Most Expensive and Bob mentions it's new.  Was this the first time on the the games was declared new-to-the-show?

[thatvhstapeguy]

I believe Most Expensive is the first known game that Bob refers to as new on the air. It doesn't seem that he ever refers to Any, Bonus, DP, Bullseye, Grocery, or Double Bullseye as such on their first playings. The only possible wrinkle is if he referred to Clock and Tags as such, however, we lost both of those premieres to fur skips.

[jhc2010]

Not much in the half hour format you could do since the third game was the last, but this begs the question: If you're in the Row before the fourth game in the hourlong format, do you throw the One Bid?

This is also usually true today when a car/cash game is played first. The second Pricing Game is almost assuredly a quickie for a prize that isn’t a car or cash. I’d seriously consider throwing the second IUFB if the first game is one of the many that falls into the car/cash category, especially if there is a high likelihood of getting to bid last on the next IUFB.

[furneralcar47]

Howdy Mama Bev!

Well, I truly enjoy the early years of TPIR.

I challenge anyone to name a game show that was more settled and polished than TPIR in 1972.

Tv was very different then, as were the contestants. 

The 3 showcase idea does sound interesting but undoable unless the show went to 45 minutes like some of the soap operas ran before they expanded to 1 full hour.

Light, love and life to all!!