I will probably make some enemies when I say this but say it I must: I like Drew Carey hosting The Price is Right as much as or more than I ever liked Bob Barker, who did it for several centuries. I've never been a steady watcher but then again, it doesn't vary that much from day to day. The Plinko chips may fall into different slots, the Showcase Showdown wheel may land on different amounts, The last three digits on the Lucky 7 game may not be a sure thing if you guess "five" for all of them…
…but it's pretty much the same show during any particular period when you watch it. I think that's one thing people like about it. It's always surprising in the expected manner.
What I like about it is how fast it moves and how every episode is technical miracle of rolling games and prizes in, rolling games and prizes off, moving cameras into position to shoot them and the contestants, having the models be exactly where the models need to be…and so forth.
I may have said this before on this blog but if The Price is Right as it currently is had never existed…and if you went to a network and pitched it the way it is…and if they understood what you were proposing to do on that stage in each episode…they would have told you it was impossible. You couldn't make the show popular enough to pay for giving away so much in cash and prizes each episode and you certainly couldn't shoot that hour-long episode in less than about six hours.
But somehow they do it and every year the prizes get bigger and the pace gets faster. I know viewers complain that Mr. Carey doesn't spend much time talking to the contestants before he gives them the chance to win up to $100,000 playing Pay the Rent. He doesn't but that's one of the things I like about him. Also, he doesn't think he — and not the games — is the star of the show.
I've been thinking about this as I've lately watched The Price is Right Channel, which can be viewed on Pluto TV. They also have a Deal or No Deal Channel, a Star Trek Channel, a Cops Channel, an Addams Family Channel, a CSI: Channel and dozens of others including one that just shows episodes of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…and it's all free! Cowabunga!
The Price is Right Channel is currently running episodes of that show from late 1982 so you can watch folks go orgasmic at winning a brand-new $6100 Chevy and you can get frustrated trying to guess the cost of a hair dryer back then. This was a good period for the show. Bob Barker was still dying his hair (he stopped in '87) and he'd just started pushing having your pet spayed or neutered and objecting to fur coats on the program.
Almost best of all, there was a nice feeling of "family" with Bob, announcer Johnny Olson and the three prize models, Dian, Janice and Holly. This is before Johnny died (which he did in '85) and the three ladies started suing Barker and/or the show. And best of all, Barker hadn't gotten so insufferable about the audience loving him. Most of them did but there were times when he seemed to forget that maybe some of them were so excited to be there because they might be able to win a new Mazda RX-7.
The pace of those old shows seems slow today and the prizes seem less worthy of the hysterics some showed when they got to leave with one. But there's also something charming about them…especially if you can guess the price of a Sunbeam Mixmaster in 1983.