This morning, CBS aired the last episode of The Price is Right hosted by Mr. Barker and I believe it repeats this evening. There was a time when I kinda liked that show. It moved quickly, it had a nice sense of "family" about it, the prize models were sexy and Barker's self-adoration was right on the edge, as was his condecending attitude towards the contestants. He probably meant it for real but you could take it as self-satire and it didn't get in the way. Slowly but certainly, most of those things began to change, especially the last one. It also harmed my enjoyment of the proceedings that I began to hear all these tales of Mr. Barker not being the nicest man in the world.
Hosting a show as long as he has is amazing achievement; no doubt about that. But I can't help but compare it to the other great endurance record in Monday-Friday network television: Johnny Carson's 30+ years of The Tonight Show…and like Barker, Carson hosted another successful show (a game show) before that. It's quite a contrast. Johnny kept his marathon going for so long by continually freshening his act. Perhaps he didn't do that as often or as thoroughly as he should have but he did approach every broadcast like it was opening night, sweating over a new monologue and comedy spot, fighting for the hot guests. Bob, on the other hand, has stayed on the tube for so long by finding a formula and slavishly replicating it, day in and day out. Yet another reason I stopped watching The Price is Right was the sheer, stultifying repetitiveness of it all. I never felt that way with Johnny.
CBS still hasn't announced who'll take over for Bob Barker once the summer reruns are over. It sounds to me like an impossible mission. The audience for The Price is Right has devolved to a pool of viewers who want to see ol' Bob do the same thing, over and over. If the new guy does the same show, it'll just point out how stale the whole format has gotten. If they freshen the show and reinvent it for a new host, people will feel a beloved tradition has been despoiled. If I were in charge, I'd look into constructing a CGI Bob Barker and letting it host the program. That's almost what they've had for the last twenty years.