The Price Is Right (1956 American game show)

The Price Is Right is an American game show produced by Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions, wherein contestants placed successive bids on merchandise prizes with the goal of bidding closest to each prize's actual retail price without surpassing it. The show was a precursor to the current and best-known version of the program, which premiered in 1972 on CBS's daytime schedule. It makes The Price Is Right one of only a few game show franchises to have aired in some form across all three of the Big Three television networks.

The series, hosted by Bill Cullen, premiered on NBC's daytime schedule on November 26, 1956, and quickly spawned a primetime series that aired once a week. The Price Is Right became one of the few game shows to survive the rigging scandals of the late 1950s, gaining even more popularity after other game shows had been canceled when exposed for being rigged.

The show was sponsored primarily throughout its run by Unilever, then known as Lever Brothers Corporation, and the specific products that were often featured were Imperial margarine, Wisk laundry detergent, Handy Andy liquid cleaner, and Dove bath and beauty bar.

The four contestants of the week would usually receive a complimentary supply of Dove beauty bars.

An alternate sponsor was Speidel watchbands, notably their new Twist-O-Flex bands.

In 1963, The Price Is Right switched networks and both the daytime and primetime series moved to ABC. On September 3, 1965, the show aired its final episode after nearly nine years on the air.

Game play

On the original version of The Price Is Right, four contestants – one a returning champion, the other three chosen from the studio audience – bid on items or ensembles of items in an auction-style format.

A prize was presented for the contestants to bid on. A minimum bid was specified. After the opening bid, contestants bid on the item in turn with each successive bid a certain amount higher than the previous bid. A contestant could freeze their current bid instead of increasing it if they believed their bid was close enough to win. A later rule allowed contestants, on their opening bid only, to "underbid" the other bids, but it automatically froze their bid and prevented them from later increasing the original bid. Some rounds were designated as "one-bid" rounds, where only one round of bidding was held (the format used on the current version of The Price Is Right); sometimes the minimum-bid and higher-bid threshold rules also were waived.

Other than in one-bid rounds, the bidding continued until a buzzer sounded, at which point each contestant who had not yet "frozen" was given one final bid. Bidding also ended when three of the contestants had frozen, at which point the fourth contestant was allowed one final bid unless they already had the high bid. Cullen then read the actual retail price of the prize. The contestant whose bid was closest without going over the actual price won the item. If everyone overbid, the prize was not won; however, Cullen sometimes had the overbids erased and instructed players to give lower bids prior to reading the actual price (similar to what is done on the current CBS version and its syndicated spinoffs).

After most one-bid rounds, a bonus game was played, in which the winner of the one-bid prize would play a random game (such as wordplay or tune-matching) for additional prizes.

After a set number of rounds (four on the nighttime version, six on the daytime), the contestant who accumulated the highest value in cash and prizes became the champion and returned on the next show.

Home Viewer Showcases The Price Is Right frequently featured a home viewer "Showcase", a multi-prize package for which home viewers were invited to submit their bids via postcard. The viewer who was closest to the actual retail price without going over won everything in the Showcase, but one item was sometimes handmade so the viewer could not check the price of all the items. The term "showcase" was later replaced by "sweepstakes".

Very often, home viewers were stunningly accurate with their bids, including several viewers who guessed the price correct down to the penny. In such a case, the tied contestants originally were informed via telegram and asked to give the price of a specific item and continuing until one broke the tie. Re-ties and all-overbids were thrown out. By the time of the ABC run, the tiebreaker changed so that the person who was first to send in the correct bid won the prize.

Home Viewer Showcases have also been featured on the CBS version, in 1972, 1978, annually from 1980 to 1987, 1990, and in 2011. Its format was unchanged through 1990, but the 2011 version, because of the advance in technology, changed to a ten-prizes-in-a-week format, with two prizes appearing per episode during the week. Each day the price of one of the prizes was revealed to the home audience, and the price of the second prize (which was in either of the two Showcases) was not provided. Instead of postcards, the bids had to be submitted through the show's website.Prize of the Week, March

Prizes While many of the prizes on the original Price Is Right were normal, standard game show fare (e.g., furniture, appliances, home electronics, furs, trips, and cars), there were many instances of outlandish prizes being offered. This was particularly true of the nighttime version, which had a larger prize budget.

Some examples: A 1926 Rolls-Royce with chauffeur A Ferris wheel An Amphicar Shares of corporate stock An island in the St. Lawrence Seaway A Piper Caribbean airplane A submarine

Sometimes, large amounts of food – such as a mile of hot dogs along with buns and enough condiments (perhaps to go with a barbecue pit) – were offered as the bonus.

Some other examples of outlandish or "exceptionally unique" bonus prizes: Accompanying a color TV, a live peacock (a play on the NBC logo) to serve as a "color guide" Accompanying a barbecue pit and the usual accessories, a live Angus steer Accompanying a prize package of items needed to throw a backyard party, big band legend Woody Herman and His Orchestra Accompanying a raccoon coat worth $29.95, a sable coat valued at $23,000 A bonus prize of a 16'x32' in-ground swimming pool, installed in the winner's back yard in one day's time A bonus prize of a trip to Israel to appear as an extra in the 1960 film Exodus

In the early 1960s, the dynamic of the national economy was such that the nighttime show could offer homes in new subdivisions (sometimes fully furnished) as prizes, often with suspenseful bidding among the contestants.

In the last two seasons of the nighttime run, the series gave away small business franchises.

In some events, the outlandish prizes were merely for show; for instance, in one episode contestants bid on the original retail price for a 1920s car, but instead won a more contemporary model.

History The Price Is Right was created and produced by Bob Stewart for Mark Goodson–Bill Todman Productions. Stewart already had created one hit series for Goodson-Todman, To Tell the Truth and he later created the enormously successful Password. In 1964, Stewart left Goodson-Todman to strike out on his own as a producer. (Frank Wayne, who later served as executive producer for the Barker version of The Price Is Right, took over Stewart's Password producer duties.)

Bob Stewart attributes the creation of The Price Is Right to watching an auctioneer from his office window in New York City, auctioning off various merchandise items.

In 1959, shortly after the quiz show scandal broke, most game and quiz shows lost their popularity rapidly and were canceled. The Price Is Right was an exception; Goodson and Todman had built a squeaky-clean reputation upon relatively low-stakes games. Thus, as the more popular competition was eliminated, The Price Is Right became the most-watched game show in the country, and remained so for two years.

ABC When the series moved to ABC in 1963, three studio contestants – including the returning champion – played. The fourth chair was filled by a celebrity who played for either a studio audience member or a home viewer. If the celebrity was the big winner of the show, the civilian contestant who had the most winnings was considered the champion; it is unknown what would have happened in the event of a shut-out with the celebrity winning.

As Don Pardo was still under contract at NBC, he was replaced by Johnny Gilbert. Coincidentally, both Pardo and Gilbert also had long runs as announcers for another game show, Jeopardy!

When the show moved to ABC, several CBS affiliates took up ABC secondary affiliation to show The Price Is Right (especially if its market lacked full ABC affiliation), in part because of the still-high ratings the show enjoyed in daytime.

Goodson-Todman wanted The Price Is Right to be ABC's first non-cartoon color show, but the network could not afford to convert to color. This meant that the nighttime version reverted to black-and-white.

Afterward After the success of The Price Is Right, To Tell the Truth, and Password, producer Stewart left Goodson-Todman in 1964. Stewart's follow-up to The Price Is Right, his first independent production, was The Face Is Familiar with Jack Whitaker as host. Later, Stewart created other successful shows such as Eye Guess, a sight-and-memory game with Bill Cullen as host, Jackpot! and The $10,000, $20,000, $25,000 Pyramid.

In 1972, Goodson-Todman proposed a reformatted version of the game. In the new version of the game, the auction rounds were eliminated, with every round becoming a one-bid round. The bonus games were reformatted as pricing games, as most involve the pricing of either the prize itself, grocery items, or small prizes under $100. Each winning bidder was removed from the game and replaced with another contestant, all of whom were drawn from the studio audience. A new round, borrowing the Showcase name, brought back the two biggest winners to bid on their own three-prize package, with the top winner choosing to either bid or pass on the first showcase in hopes of a better deal on the second. The pricing games, contestants from the audience, and the bid-or-pass on prizes hidden behind doors were all previously used on another hit game show of the era, Let's Make a Deal, and Goodson-Todman's first choice of host for The New Price Is Right, Dennis James, was Let's Make a Deal's regular guest host at the time. James would end up hosting five weekly seasons of The New Price Is Right in first-run syndication; when CBS picked up the show for daytime, it insisted that the show be hosted by Bob Barker, who hosted 35 seasons of daily episodes (plus three seasons of weekly syndicated episodes after James's retirement and several prime-time specials) until his retirement in 2007, after which comedian Drew Carey assumed hosting duties. Further alterations to the format were made in 1975 when the show expanded to a "fabulous 60-minute" time slot. Various other versions of The Price Is Right have aired over the course of American television history, including a daily syndicated version hosted by Tom Kennedy in 1985 and a radically altered version hosted by Doug Davidson in 1994; the latter was notable for eliminating the central conceit from the original series of bidding on prizes. Counting all incarnations, The Price Is Right has aired for more hours than any other nationwide game show in American television history.

Paul Alter, who directed the original version of the show, became the director of the current version in 1986, replacing Marc Breslow, who had been in that role since its start in 1972; he continued to hold the position until 2000.

Origin