Nighttime Episode - Kennedy (Feb / Mar 1986)

[sandbags]

My mom (Pam S.) was on the nighttime syndicated version of hosted by Tom Kennedy around Feb/March 1986.

from what i have gathered:
- She won a secretary desk in Contestants’ Row
- Played (and lost) a pricing game involving a car, refrigerator, and piggy bank
- There was no Showcase Showdown wheel because it was the 30-minute nighttime version
- She advanced to the Showcase & won because the other contestant overbid

Her winning showcase included:
silver coin collection
luggage
living room furniture and carpeting
trip to Rio

Does anyone recognize this episode or know the air date?

[gamesurf]

Locating specific episodes of the Kennedy version can be tricky because it was syndicated, and air dates weren't consistent throughout the country so episodes are labeled by episode number or approximate "tape date". It's trickier to nail these than it is for the daytime version. But you have a clue that should help us:

- Played (and lost) a pricing game involving a car, refrigerator, and piggy bank

This [and the prize list you posted] is a big help. The game is "Any Number"; no other game includes a piggy bank, so we can we can reasonably throw out any episode that doesn't contain Any Number.

Since it aired towards the end of the Kennedy run, we can also surmise that it taped in the latter half of the Kennedy season, so we can throw out anything that taped in April or so. I would guess it taped in very late 1985 at the absolute latest.

This collector has done a decent job cataloging the episodes they've seen. There's a lot to dig through.

That's the good news.

The bad news: Unfortunately, I'm not finding an Any Number episode that matches these prizes on this list. There's one with a secretary desk in Contestant's Row leading to Any Number, but none of the other prizes match your description.

Maybe somebody else with more familiarity with the Kennedy version can jump in but that's the best I can do at the moment.

[Nick]

Locating specific episodes of the Kennedy version can be tricky because it was syndicated, and air dates weren't consistent throughout the country

Weren't they? By 1985, the episodes were most assuredly delivered by satellite and not bicycled tapes. If Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! were capable of airing the same episode in each market each day in 1985, then I see no reason why the same wasn't true of the Kennedy version of Price.

But if I'm wrong, then somebody go ahead and prove me so.

[Chelsea]

Weren't they? By 1985, the episodes were most assuredly delivered by satellite and not bicycled tapes. If Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! were capable of airing the same episode in each market each day in 1985, then I see no reason why the same wasn't true of the Kennedy version of Price.�

But if I'm wrong, then somebody go ahead and prove me so.

Wheel of Fortune didn't go 'all stations same day'' with its air plan for shows due to sufficient satellite availability among signed stations until September 1989.  There are episodes as recently as the previous spring that I have multiple/different verified (commercials + newspapers) airdates for. Any satellite station was on the 'A' schedule by default, and by then there were a lot of them - but there were different tape schedules through at least that fall. Episodes were also aired well outside of production order until that point except for a few synchronized contest and theme weeks, mostly from 1987-89. 

Many of it's contemporaries that season generally had at least a B schedule, including the aforementioned Wheel, $100K Pyramid, and Let's Make a Deal. Tic Tac Dough and Joker's Wild definitely had B (and until the early 80s at least a C) air plans, though I'm not positive they were still around in the final year.  I'm under the impression that IF Jeopardy had a 'B' schedule in season 1 (which produced fewer episodes) it was gone by 1985.

Kennedy's TPiR had satellite delivery, and any station on sat would have been on the 'A' schedule by default (still aired out of production order, but at least in the same order), but in 1985 there were still a significant number of stations not equipped for satellite for syndication, enough to justify a 'B' schedule at the very least since the big thing would have been to get the show cleared, even if you still needed tape circuits to do it. (And regardless of the air plan, even on satellite the show still aired wildly outside of production order - shows with Johnny were still airing in major markets as late as early 1986).

[Nick]

Incredible information that I am surprised I have never seen published elsewhere.  Thanks for sharing.

It's a shame we don't have production calendars for the Kennedy version.  It'd also be nice to know what this "A" schedule was.  Did "aired out of production order" mean episodes were not taped in order or that they just aired out or order from what the production numbers would have dictated as the proper order?

Also, side question: When did the airdates finally get added to the slates on the daytime show?  In the late '80s they were still not on the slates, even though the shows were generally being produced and aired in order, or airing in sequence of the production numbers if they were taped out of order.

[Chelsea]

Sadly unless a copy of the schedule sent to stations in 1985-86 emerges online (extremely unlikely) or it turns out Bob Boden or someone similar saved a copy and it turns up online (you'd be surprised), the full air schedules for the nighttime show are lost to time. Would love for that to no longer be the case. 

Unless someone at the show or Fremantle goes digging into the archives, the best chance to work out a production order would be for Buzzr or one of the streaming channels to begin running the show. Most of Game Show Network's 1996-98 airings include a graphic that shows the tape month/year, so I can narrow down and block together any individual show of the roughly 75 I have by month - but that's about it.

Honestly, I should put out a list of what I have, and what I know of the order and why. We know explicity which show was N0011 (first taped show, N-001-1 for nighttime, week 1, show 1) because GSN aired it in a marathon and explicitly declared it such on air (and it was the 'reset episode' when their run of the Kennedy eps hit the end and cycled back). We also know which show is N0335 because it exists as a slated master. That's...about it. With respect to Rewindium, the user linked, anything else is a 'best guess', including which show is the last one taped, based on those graphics and the various cosmetic and personnel changes.

Aired out of production order just means that episodes aired out of production number sequence. One day in May 1986 could be N0335, the next N0324, etc. (Hypothetical example, not actual schedule).  Much like the daytime show, the nighttime versions generally used production numbers sequentially as they reeled off episodes. The only difference was the nighttime show not airing them in that same order.

The first aired show in 'A' markets (satellite, primary tapes), for example, was a show taped in June 1985 with Most Expensive, One Away, and Pick a Pair (and the big door pan-across opening), while the first show taped was all the way back in March 1985 with Lucky Seven, Grocery Game, Danger Price and the classic audience pan-across, still "Sparkling with excitement").

Re: Daytime show slates: I have a slated master from 1998 (0812K) that is still TBA (as are all before), while the next one I have from early 2000 (1362K) lists the airdate (2/15). Seems reasonable the change happened somewhere in there.

[TPIRZippy]

Re: Daytime show slates: I have a slated master from 1998 (0812K) that is still TBA (as are all before), while the next one I have from early 2000 (1362K) lists the airdate (2/15). Seems reasonable the change happened somewhere in there.

In March 1998 I attended three shows and at each, they handed out the old postcards with the photo of Bob on them with the note on the other side to fill in the air date and the address you were sending to, and on your way out you would drop it in the box at the back of the studio and they would stamp and mail it for you.  For example, the taping I attended on 3/9/98 (the first of two, as they did two tapings a day then) was known to be airing on 4/2/98 and did indeed air that day.  (I was in the second row of the ceremonial 5000th show, taped 3/11/98 as we know from the BBS plaque, and it did air on 4/9/98 as they said at the taping.
I don't know when they started handing out the postcards, but it would make no sense to have the fill-in blank for the air date if they didn't know it at tape time. Wonder if they didn't hand out the postcards at tapings with a TBA air date.  (0812K that you mention was taped in June 1998, months after the March tapings I went to with planned air dates.  Wonder if the design on the doors changing from "26 years on CBS" to "5000th show on CBS!" for a day to the more generic design used the rest of S26 had anything to do with it.)

[Nick]

I don't know when they started handing out the postcards, but it would make no sense to have the fill-in blank for the air date if they didn't know it at tape time. Wonder if they didn't hand out the postcards at tapings with a TBA air date.

The one recording of Johnny's warmup that we have comes from #1685D, taped sometime in the fall of 1975; and Johnny mentions the postcards that can be dropped off as the audience exits, so the practice was around for a long time and for a long time before airdates were being written on the slates.

And even though they went years without putting them on the slates, it seems the intended airdates were known and, as one would expect, aligned to the production calendars. For example, #1414D is "TBA" on the slate for the airdate but was clearly intended for May 15, 1975 with the theme of the second Showcase being themed around that date.

[TPIRZippy]

The one recording of Johnny's warmup that we have comes from #1685D, taped sometime in the fall of 1975; and Johnny mentions the postcards that can be dropped off as the audience exits, so the practice was around for a long time and for a long time before airdates were being written on the slates.

And even though they went years without putting them on the slates, it seems the intended airdates were known and, as one would expect, aligned to the production calendars. For example, #1414D is "TBA" on the slate for the airdate but was clearly intended for May 15, 1975 with the theme of the second Showcase being themed around that date.

That's what I thought I remembered from all those years ago (before boards like this were a thing)...I thought the postcards were a longstanding thing but started to wonder when TBA airdates became a thing. 
It is interesting with the studio situation the last couple years how messy the airdate vs. tape date thing has been.  A taping I attended the last week of July 2025 was scheduled right from the get-go to air on July 2, 2026...a more than 11-month time between tape and air would leave room for even the slowest mail delivery if they still did the postcards! 

[Rewindium]

Greetings to all for my first post as a long time fan of The Price is Right. Thanks to Chelsea for the name-drop. I run the Game Show Guides site which was formerly known as the Rewindium Blog

Determining what the approximate month of a taping is now a bit easier for episodes of Tom Kennedy's version in part because of the episodes of Bob's version that Barker Era had added a few years ago from season 13 and most of the season 14 episodes through to the January 9, 1986. Some of the changes that can be discerned for both Bob's version and Tom's version as they were both taped at the same time on different days include the older blue seats being changed with some episodes having a combination of both the older and newer seats, the older brown curtains being changed and some of the pricing game sets like with Grocery Game, Safe Crackers and Danger Price with updated signage and props. If it's an episode from February or March 1986, the odds are most likely that it would had been announced by Rod Roddy and the opening titles were changed from blue to red for the last of the taped episodes for that version. The change in the color of the opening titles to red hasn't been determined yet for Bob's version but they were mostly red for most of the second half of season 14 and the first six weeks of season 15 before reverting back to blue for good shortly after the 3000th episode.

I too hope for the day that a calendar for Tom Kennedy's version with the pricing games organized by production number is made available to the public

[blozier2006]

With respect to Rewindium, the user linked, anything else is a 'best guess', including which show is the last one taped, based on those graphics and the various cosmetic and personnel changes.

If memory serves, Randy West posted (on Facebook) handwritten calendar entry showing the lineups for the four episodes from the final tape day (N0342 to N0345, VTR 03-06-1986)

#N0342: Lucky Seven, Grand Game, Clock Game
#N0343: Money Game, Take Two, Safe Crackers
#N0344: Range Game, One Away, Race Game
#N0345: Golden Road, Cliff Hangers, Double Prices