I'll have to do a dive into the topic because this one misfires so badly it feels exceptional to me.
I have no idea what you mean by "this one misfires so badly", but I'm only inclined to interpret that as an insult.
It's worth mentioning again that I am Canadian and formerly worked in Canadian broadcasting. All of that to say I have an idea on both sides of production how the industry works.
I'll save much of the commentary and criticism I could share since it's largely political and outside the scope of this forum, but suffice it to say Canada needs to develop some true culture of its own instead of trying to be so
avant-garde in anything arts and entertainment (and always using tax dollars to fail at this), or just
ripping off licencing foreign formats and throwing some maple leaves and other "Canadiana" all over it to make a "Canadian" production (and always with no budget).
It's worth mentioning as well that Howie's involvement in this thing is the latest in a trend that's been going on for decades of getting a Canadian talent way above your pay grade (because he's actually famous outside the country) to come be part of a production in Canada as a means of giving the industry a boost and "doing a favour" for the country of his birth. It's such a tired trope but, hey, I suppose it's easy work, good-enough money and easy exposure (since I'm sure these few episodes they're producing will be rerun into the ground to fill Cancon quotas).
I like to consider the Doug Davidson version a sort of "fast food" counterpart to Bob and Drew's. It's nowhere near as good as the real thing, but it gives you a quick dose if that's what you're in the mood for.
That's an interesting take. To me, the Davidson version was what All American and CBS wanted to do with the daytime show that they (thankfully) never got to do (at least not until Roger was out of the picture). They seemed to think it was a problem that the show remained virtually unchanged for decades and, gee, Barker's getting old, so we gotta' get him out of there with someone "young and hip", right? And that Contestants' Row is so boring! Let's just eliminate that. So syndication was the path to sell a drastically different show with barely a look and feel of everything that made Price great (I mean, what has been this obsession since the '90s of trying to replace the Turntable with a video wall? What was ever wrong with the Turntable?). If in some alternate universe the Davidson version had actually been a success, I believe the daytime show would have morphed into it eventually and Barker most certainly pushed out.
This fails to recognize the fact that The Price Is Right is a television dynasty. Should you happen to come into possession of it, you don't try to "make your mark" on the production; you don't try to "take the show in a new direction" (and certainly not turn it into a "game show within a variety show"). You take it. You hold it. You make no changes to it, and then you pass it onto someone else. That fact you can take an episode each from 1976, 1986, 1996 and 2006 and have virtually the same show is a
good thing. Sure, many will say the show has managed to "update" and still lasts in daytime. Given that network daytime television is essentially dead at this point and Price turns a profit at minimum, the bar for survival is quite low.
