Trivia / The Price Is Right

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• Banned Episode:
  • Bob Barker's fur ban encompasses episodes with fur coats as prizes from the 1972 premiere to the first week of Season 11. The 1972-1980 nighttime run is even worse off with fur coats offered regularly. It remains to be seen whether or not the ban has been lifted following Bob's death in August 2023; the primetime tribute special The Price Is Right: A Tribute to Bob Barker featured clips from the first episode in 1972, which may indicate that it has at least in part (however, clips of that episode that skirt around the offending fur coat have aired while he was alive). Notably, Pluto TV announced in November 2023 that they will be adding 60 Season 1 episodes (either back-to-back owing to the show's half-hour length in its early seasons on CBS or paired with the Bob Barker tribute) but would, not surprisingly, be skipping episodes that had fur coats as a prize.
  • Episode #5512D (December 4, 1984) is speculated to be this. Some theorize it's because modern viewers would see one of its Showcases, which was themed after a Roman slave auction, as being in exceedingly poor taste. Unfortunately for the TPIR fandom, said episode was the debut of One Away.
  • In March 2023, Pluto TV announced that episodes featuring the pricing game Bump will not be streamed. This regrettably includes Johnny Olson's final episode and the first episode where Rod Roddy auditioned. One show with Bump got by on April 3, 2023, but this was because Pluto didn’t have enough time to pull the episode.
• Breaking News Interruption: This happens quite frequently. Because of the separate geographic feeds, however, usually there are different pre-emptions for ET/CT and MT/PT.
  • On occasions where the entire episode is pre-empted in ET/CT, CBS might replace the show with a rerun for MT/PT. One such occasion was February 15, 2011, when the ET/CT feed was completely pre-empted by news of the Libyan Civil War, in connection with The Arab Spring revolutions.
  • The show didn't have such a lucky premiere of its 44th season, as the show's themed "Decades Week" faced an interruption on most days caused by the visit of Pope Francis in the United States. On September 23 the show was interrupted during the fifth Item Up For Bids for a Special Report and returned during the sixth pricing game. On September 24, the show was interrupted at the first Showcase Showdown for a special report on the Pope's speech, that episode never returning to air on the East Coast. The last day of Decades Week was the least lucky, with the entire latter half of the show being interrupted on the East Coast for a third Special Report on the Pope (preempting the premiere of the game Vend-O-Price), once again with the show not returning to air, and then subsequently being interrupted on the West Coast by a Special Report on the resignation of Speaker of the House John Boehner. It's gotten progressively worse since then, as CBS news has taken to launching breaking news interruptions for matters as trivial as Bernie Sanders announcing the suspension of his presidential campaign.
  • On March 8, 2022 CBS interrupted the show after the winner of the fourth Item Up For Bids ran onto the stage for a CBS News Report on Joe Biden banning oil imports from Russia at the height of the Russia/Ukraine conflict. The show did not return to air on the East Coast causing that show's only game win to not be seen.
  • On September 13, 1993 the Season 22 premiere was pre-empted in it's entirety and never aired in 99% of the US due to the Oslo Accords signing (preempting the premiere of the game Cover Up). However, the episode did aired on WIVB-TV and CHCH TV one hour early, thus only a few east coast viewers got to see the episode.
• Channel Hop: Started on NBC, moved to ABC^note though a number of failed clearances meant that more than a few markets got it on CBS instead, reappeared on CBS and syndication seven years after ABC canned it. The 1972-80 syndicated version also had a sort-of Channel Hop in 1977: the contract with the NBC owned-and-operated stations expired and the CBS O&Os picked it up, and instead of renewing Dennis James' contract (which also expired around that time) they had Bob Barker take over as host in nighttime for consistency with the daytime version on CBS.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
  • Price is one of the many sources that violate the Nintendo Style Guide by having the word "Wii" preceded by the word "Nintendo".
    • At least one episode has a Wii U up for bid on Contestant's Row misidentified as a (Nintendo) Wii. (Most other episodes featuring a Wii U as a prize have the console named correctly, though, so it's likely that this was just an honest mistake on George Gray's part.)
  • There are also the numerous sources that refer to the end segment that involves bidding on prize packages as the "Showcase Showdown", even though that's actually the name of the segment with the Big Wheel. The actual name of the end segment is just "The Showcase" or "Showcase Round". Even at least one contestant used "Showcase Showdown" in the wrong context on her T-shirt.
  • Fans and casual viewers alike often have referred to the core bidding portion as "Contestant's Row", "Item Up For Bids" (itself commonly abbreviated as IUFB), or aren't even aware it has a name; the proper, in-show title for the bidding game is "One Bid" (to be fair, this wasn't largely known until after Barker retired).
• Creator Backlash:
  • If Roger Dobkowitz's Facebook page and his appearances on Stu's Show are anything to go by, he isn't too thrilled with the way the show is currently run (not too surprising, given he was fired so Fremantle could take it in a "new direction"). An example of this occurred when Triple Play was won for the first time in eight years on December 21, 2015. Roger was quick to point out that the staff should not treat it as a milestone and that it was shameful the way Drew acknowledged it on the air.
  • While he was still working with the show, director Rich DiPirro's first strike against the staff came when he considered bringing the Plinko sign back as part of a new intro for the game in Season 38. Once management got word of what he was doing, he was told that it was destroyed. Rich was not happy when he heard about this.^note The sign was actually sold to a private collector who put it up for auction in 2023.
  • Bob Barker likely had Finish Line retired because he, a lifelong avid animal rights activist, hated horse racing and didn't like the game's concept. Adding to the mechanical problems the game faced, it didn't have much of a shot. In fact, the game was *identical* to Give or Keep, only with a far more elaborate (and error-prone) presentation.
  • One of the things keeping Barker-era Price reruns off TV screens and out of DVD retailers is Barker's refusal to greenlight shows that offered fur coats as prizes (although Game Show Network screwed up, not once but three times, and aired an episode with a fur). There are certain other episodes Barker refused to greenlight, some of which contain his abandoned habit of letting women pull the $100 perfect bid bonus out of his pocket by themselves (although this routine is featured in several episodes in Pluto TV's rotation).
  • Despite Dennis James spending the first five years alongside Barker, helping to cement the revival's popularity among those who were not able to watch the daytime version, Game Show Network never aired any of his nighttime run (or any of Barker's three nighttime seasons, for that matter). The official reason, given by on-air host Laura Chambers, was that the network felt it pointless since less than 50 episodes did not contain a fur coat/stole; the real number of non-fur shows, according to former Price staffer Scott Robinson in his findings from the show's archives about the 1972-80 nighttime version, is at most five. In 1997, GSN aired a James-hosted episode in tribute following his death, though it was a daytime episode (originally aired December 25, 1974) where he was substituting for Barker.
  • Drew Carey has expressed regret for "Drewcases" from Season 37, claiming they didn't work.
  • Retired pricing games are often this to the staff, most notably the short-lived Telephone Game which was "lame" according to Roger Dobkowitz. Add 'em Up was only in the rotation for two years before getting sacked due to its high difficulty and many of its staff disliking the game. Buy or Sell, Give or Keep and Joker were also disliked by many of the production staff, although all three games lasted at least 13 years each in the rotation (and Dobkowitz had been planning on bringing back Give or Keep prior to his sacking).
• Creator's Pest:
  • Add 'em Up, Buy or Sell, Give or Keep, Joker and Telephone Game were all retired due to the staff disliking the listed pricing games. In fact, Telephone Game's official reason for its retirement was that "it was lame".
  • Bob grew to dislike SuperBall!! and had it retired because of the length of time it took to play the game.
  • He also disliked Professor Price, which only lasted two playings before it was retired. Surprisingly, its two playings were both successful, making it the only pricing game with a 100% (2-0) win-loss record (the short-lived Double Bullseye notwithstanding, which was designed to guarantee a winner).
• Dear Negative Reader: Two years into his tenure as host, Drew opened his now-dormant personal blog and within days (not weeks as was expected), ruthless fans began attacking him over the firing of Roger Dobkowitz and various other things. One took his commentary too far and pushed Drew into disabling comments temporarily. Drew condemned the irrational fans, referring to them as "people that are metaphorically out on the street with their pants down yelling at a telephone pole", or "telephone pole screamers" for short.
• Development Gag: On February 17, 2020, ½ Off was played for a car and $10,000 with each prize hidden inside separate boxes. ½ Off was planned to be played for a car with its keys in one of the 16 boxes. Instead of the keys, the car box had a picture of the car.
• Development Hell: Some pricing games have been subject to this. The most common explanation for pricing games disappearing is that they are "being refurbished" when fans have pointed out other games (such as Any Number and Temptation) returning with brand-new sets in much less time.
  • Barker's Bargain Bar's set was dismantled a few playings into Season 37 because the word "Barker" was in there. The game eventually returned on April 10, 2012, renamed Bargain Game (which had actually been the game's official backstage name since the beginning).
  • Check Game was removed during Season 37 and returned on June 20, 2013.
  • Clock Game was reportedly problematic during its pre-debut rehearsals and very nearly may never have debuted.
  • Credit Card was last played on October 31, 2008 and still has yet to return. The game doesn't appear on the show's official site, priceisright.com.
  • For a different type of example, Do the Math was slated to be one of the five pricing games introduced during the first week of Season 37, a feat planned by Roger Dobkowitz to make up for the lack of new games during Season 36. Thanks to numerous issues (including Dobkowitz' firing) causing Gas Money to be the only game to debut that week, Do the Math wouldn't see the light of day until the Season 42 premiere (September 23, 2013, ironically the fifth anniversary of Gas Money's debut).
• Died During Production: Johnny Olson died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1985 with a few weeks of shows airing after his death.
• Enforced Method Acting: The closing segment to Terry Kneiss' perfect showcase bid had Drew speaking in a tone that all but accused him of cheating. That was genuinely how he and most of the staff felt when they discovered he got the price exactly right. Believing that he would be deemed ineligible to claim his prizes and that the entire segment would wind up being wiped and redone, they let Drew handle it however he wanted.
• Follow the Leader:
  • Goodson-Todman's Say When!! (1961-64) had two contestants selecting prizes from a pool and trying to not go over a target value. 1975's Give-n-Take had a similar format.
  • The primary contest on the 1960s Supermarket Sweep had the three housewives (whose husbands did the "Sweep") guessing the prices of grocery items, with the closest guess scoring the added sweep time. (No "without going over" rule patch.)
  • On It's Worth What? (2011), contestants determined which in a group of antique items (in a series of seven separate games) is most expensive.
• Hey, It's That Sound!:
  • The "incorrect number" sound on Pathfinder was taken from the short-lived show Trivia Trap.
  • The sound effects from Penny Ante and Vend-o-Price could also be heard on The Joker's Wild and the original Double Dare.
  • The theme tune of Family Feud began life as one of several composed car stings.
• Hostility on the Set: Around the time that Dian Parkinson left, the tabloids had speculated that it was due to Parkinson and original Barker's Beauty Janice Pennington feuding. While the fact that the two were rarely teamed up in modeling prizes towards the end of Dian's tenure suggests there was some truth to the two models not getting along; that proved secondary to her allegations that her relationship with Bob Barker was coerced.
• In Memoriam: Key deaths in the show family during the Barker era were acknowledged by Bob in taped segments at the end of an episode:
  • The death of Johnny Olson was acknowledged at the end of the October 15, 1985 episode.
  • The death of executive producer Frank Wayne was acknowledged at the end of the March 23, 1988 episode.
  • The death of show co-creator Mark Goodson was acknowledged at the end of a rerun episode in 1992.
  • The death of Rod Roddy was acknowledged at the end of the October 30, 2003 episode.
  • The death of Barker himself was acknowledged at the start of a rerun episode on August 28, 2023. A tribute special, The Price Is Right: A Tribute to Bob Barker, aired in primetime three days later.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Sixty-seven nighttime episodes and a single daytime show of the Cullen run were aired by GSN, including seven ABC nighttime shows. Between the low survival rate of the daytime version, Barker's "fur ban" which also extended to the Cullen version, and GSN not wanting to feature cigarette sponsors, the range of episodes GSN could air was very limited.
    • The daytime show (February 21, 1957; incorrectly listed in liner notes as March 10) and ABC nighttime finale (September 11, 1964; not seen on GSN and incorrectly listed as September 4) are on the DVD set. Shokus Video has five shows in their compilation volumes ^note (NBC daytime May 31/July 5/July 12, 1957; NBC nighttime finale September 6, 1963 {aired on GSN}; ABC daytime January 4, 1965 {widely and incorrectly listed as 1964}), while nighttime shows from November 26, 1962 and August 28, 1964 are on the trading circuit along with three 1965 episodes sub-hosted by Jack Clark. A daytime show from June 19, 1964 with Johnny Gilbert as sub-host is now on YouTube (intro and first bidding game missing).
    • Three nighttime episodes unaired by GSN (December 25, 1961 to January 8, 1962) surfaced in August 2011 and can be seen here.
    • Buzzr airs a block of Cullen-era shows Saturday mornings and have been running nighttime shows from 1959 through 1961 that GSN didn't run.
    • This 1982 report on game shows includes, among other things, brief footage of an episode before February 21, 1957 (see 0:37 and 2:03); the second clip shows a contestant area which is very different from the more recognized variants — the contestant names are above the displays, and both are shown on straight lines rather than four distinct sections. There's also a solid wall behind the players (who are looking to their left) with the show's logo on it, which suggests a vastly different set.
    • Per this page, the above clips are from a "test episode" produced on November 19, 1956, one week before the show's official debut on NBC. Also, per comments on that page, the set seen in this episode was replaced by the more familiar one by the time of the first for-air show. This full episode plus NBC show #2 from November 27, 1956 are now up on YouTube.
  • All episodes of the current run are intact (September 1972 is when CBS quit erasing tapes), but even though the show has been released on DVD a majority of the run won't be, mostly due to older episodes offering fur coats as prizes and Barker's later membership in PETA. This includes the 1972 premiere, although BCI (which released a box set in 2007) tried pretty hard to get fur episodes, offering to donate to Barker's favorite charities and/or put a disclaimer before the offending shows.
    • A long deleted 2007 Fox News article claimed that Bob Barker was the primary reason why the show was not being rerun.
    • Long-forgotten clips and episodes still turn up from time to time by way of contestants or collectors, such as the debut of Double Bullseye (September 19, 1972); audio of Johnny Olson's audience warmup before #1685D (show aired November 21, 1975); parts of cameraman Rick Tanzi's last show (February 25, 1976); slate, partial opening, and various clips including Card Game (December 27, 1976 — link is unfortunately dead); partial opening, most of Segment 3, and part of Showcase Showdown #1 (1977-78, with red walls on Big Wheel but yellow squares); Three Strikes and a Showcase Showdown (1978, post-yellow squares); an opening, Three Strikes, and Showcase Showdown #2 through credits (1978, post-yellow squares); and the slate and intro from #4904D (April 28, 1983).
    • The show itself pulled out two rarities for its 40th Anniversary, namely the debut of the Rainbow Wheel (September 8, 1975) and the debut of Cliff Hangers (April 12, 1976). While the former has been circulating for years (iffy quality for the first half and terrible quality for the second), the Cliff Hangers debut hasn't been seen since its original airing.
    • Ludia's three Price video games (original, 2010, and Decades) have lots of unlockable video clips, all of them interesting. Decades in particular promised a ton of clips not seen on any official compilations, including the previous two games.
    • Master copies of certain episodes have surfaced, such as the Season 35 premiere in December 2011 and the Season 1 premiere in July 2012. Unfortunately, the original YouTube uploads have since vanished.
    • Partially rescued as of December 2020, when Pluto TV (which already carries Fremantle's Buzzr) struck a deal with Fremantle for a 24/7 channel featuring vintage Barker episodes. However, instead of starting from the show's debut in 1972, they began with the second week of Season 11 in 1982, after the fur ban (though the fact that much of the show's Early-Installment Weirdness had been shaken off by this point helps in this regard). Pluto being owned by Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS) probably helped this happen, with CBS even promoting the channel during Price's first-run episodes. As of December 2023, the run's second-to-last episode is the last one to air while Johnny Olson was alive in October 1985. Currently the end of the run is a one-off Rod Roddy era episode from April 1986, originally meant to coincide with a "Redemption" special where contestants who suffered particularly painful losses would get a second chance. The first new episode dump in 2024 is expected to include Johnny's final posthumous episodes, the announcer auditions, and possibly the very start of the Rod Roddy era.
    • As of June 2023, Pluto opened a new channel with episodes from the Drew Carey era. It began with the premiere of Season 38 (when the show started airing in HD), through the first couple weeks of Season 39 (most of the episodes with J.D. Roberto auditioning to replace Rich Fields as guest announcer).
  • The Dennis James version, partly due to offering a lot of furs, hasn't been seen very much since 1977 minus three prominent examples. ^note (a pair of brief clips in Game Show Moments Gone Bananas {circa 1974 where Dennis trips on the Turntable; circa 1976 with a problematic Clock Game player}, a daytime episode where he subbed for Barker {December 25, 1974; aired twice by GSN in 1997}, and a Lucky Seven playing shown during the 1979 Peter Falk film The In-Laws {which leads to a discussion between the leads about Price}) Only five episodes (including the pitchfilm) circulate, and approximately 30 episodes from 1973-75 were recorded onto audio cassette (heard here and here).
    • The last four minutes of an early-1976 show surfaced in July 2011, which a voiceover at the end clearly marks as being recorded from a local station, but clips of the same episode were also used in an official '76 promo reel. What the hell are the odds?!
    • The aforementioned contestant, Pamela, returned for the show's 40th Anniversary Special in 2012, and a brief clip was shown of her in '76 with Dennis making the briefest of cameos. Three days later, the show's official YouTube channel uploaded clips from the master tape of Pamela winning, which included Dennis talking and signing off by name.
    • Wink Martindale posted clips from #002N (taped August 27, 1972, along with #001N), officially confirming that the syndicated tapings came after the CBS ones, despite the nighttime version having been planned first, and that both editions premiered a week apart.
    • Dennis James himself reportedly recorded his own copies of nearly every episode of seasons 1 to 3 (1972-75) as well as selected episodes of seasons 4 and 5 (1975-77), but the seasons 1-3 recordings were done on Cartrivision, V-Cord and VX tapes, early home VCR formats which have long-since fallen into obscurity. (James must've been a very enthusiastic early adopter of home video recording; he also did this as a means of supplementing his resume with video evidence of his work.)
    • Season 7 of the CBS version (1978-79) does not appear to circulate on YouTube outside of a few clips.
  • The Davidson version hasn't aired on TV since January 1995. Luckily (or unluckily, as some fans might see it), at least half of the run exists on the trading circuit.
• Long-Runners: The CBS version has run nonstop since 1972, giving it the longest contiguous run by far for any American game show. It's also one of the longest-running game shows in the world. The nine years the original series ran was no small feat in itself, considering how critics considered it the end of civilization as we know it. Price is one of two game shows to air first-run episodes in every decade since the 1950s; the other is To Tell the Truth.
• Looping Lines: In Kennedy's Price, Johnny Olson read off the parting gifts at the end of the show, up until his death when Gene Wood replaced him. After Rod Roddy took over, he redubbed Johnny and Gene's voiceover for the Summer reruns.
• Lying Creator:
  • When Rod mysteriously stopped appearing on-camera in Season 31, some fans assumed that it owed to Rod's declining health, while Fremantle Media claimed that they had implemented a worldwide policy to keep all their game show announcers from being seen. However, this claim was promptly debunked when several substitutes appeared on-camera and Rich himself did the same...and by Season 37, Rich and his successors started getting as much face time as Rod did in the early days. It was further debunked in an interview given by Holly Halstrom, who remained friends with Rod even after she left the show — the real reason Rod stopped appearing on-camera was arguments over salary between him and Bob.
  • In 1995, during a taping of the show, someone in the audience asked Barker what happened to Holly. Barker said that "Holly retired". But anyone who has any knowledge of Barker's scandals throughout the 1990s would know the real reason for that.
  • After Dennis James' "There Goes Fritz" incident with the Cliff Hangers game in Season 5 of the nighttime show, that resulted in Janice running offstage crying for the rest of one nighttime episode, many fans assumed that the incident was the reason Dennis was let go from his hosting duties in 1977. The real reason, was that his contract was not renewed and he was replaced by Bob Barker who took over until the nighttime version's cancellation in 1980.
  • In addition to Rich Fields, Lanisha Cole and Brandi Sherwood, Kathy "Fingers" Greco was also fired by Mike Richards. It was announced as her "retirement" (on air & videos posted on TPIR's official website) in order to cover it up so that Mike's reputation doesn't get ruined.
  • Rich DiPirro planned on reintroducing the Plinko sign, but he was told that the prop was destroyed. The sign was actually sold to a collector, but news of this was not made public until the sign was put up for auction in 2023.
• Milestone Celebration:
  • Every x,000th episode features tons of big prizes and special decorations.^note Rather humorously, every single one until #7,500 was celebrated at the wrong time.
  • The show celebrated its 25th, 30th, and 35th Anniversaries with a primetime special. The first (#0001S) used the half-hour format, with the other half filled with clips; the second (#0001LV) was taped in Las Vegas, using the regular format; the third (#023SP) also celebrated Barker's 50 years in television, with a similar format as the 25th-Anniversary Special and a cameo by Adam Sandler.
  • Parodied on the April Fools' Day 2011 episode, where the show celebrated an unspecified 10,000th event. Drew explained that something will happen on The Price Is Right for the 10,000th time, which loyal viewers will immediately recognize as soon as it happens. As with other milestone celebrations, the set was decorated for the momentous occasion, and everyone was in good spirits... but things quickly went awry. The 10,000th event never happened.
  • Season 50 recognized the show's golden anniversary with the pricing game Back To '72, where contestants bid on items that appeared on the show during the very first season with George Gray describing the items exactly as Johnny Olson did. The 50th anniversary was also marked with a two-hour primetime special.
• Missing Episode:
  • Many episodes of the Cullen run, including most of the daytime version, were wiped per standard network practices of the time.
  • The primetime NBC version was aired in color, but all of the circulating prints of that run are in black-and-white. However, a video of someone's home movies from the 1960s is on YouTube, and it includes three-and-a-half minutes of that version filmed off the TV... in color.
  • The 1972 Pilot — no, not the nighttime pitchfilm taped February 16, but rather a dress rehearsal taped August 15 (one day after the set was first put up, and four days before the taping of #0011D) to make sure things would go smoothly when taping began on the 19th (and likely to have something tangible to show to CBS execs). Interestingly, neither Bob nor Dennis hosted this taping...but the person who did has been lost to time, and Roger Dobkowitz doesn't believe any footage of it exists.
  • The episode aired on September 6, 1972 wasn't the original third episode; the intended third episode (the second one taped) went unaired because a contestant was deemed ineligible; the episode also contained a fur coat (as did the first and third tapings), shoving this one further into the realm of "not gonna air anytime soon", although there hasn't been a straight answer as to whether it still exists.
  • The third Dennis James episode (#003N) got replaced as well, this one due to a mistake in the Showcase that there was no satisfactory way to fix. According to one account, the original plan was that, if there was a double overbid, both players would be allowed to make new bids, until there was a winner. That came into play here, and because someone forgot to keep track of which bid went with which Showcase, it supposedly led to Dennis declaring the wrong contestant to have won (there should've been a third bid, according to the "must be a winner" rule, since both players were still over). A replacement was taped at the end of the season, but it remains unknown how the episode wrapped production (or, as with #0013D, if it still exists). When the daytime show premiered, 10 episodes, not counting the unaired #0013D, were in the can. It's highly likely that this incident spawned the current rule where neither contestant wins if both overbid.
  • The Season 22 premiere (#8881D) was pre-empted due to the Oslo Accords signing and never aired on CBS (though it's been alleged that it aired on WIVB-TV in Buffalo, NY an hour earlier than usual, and CHCH-TV in nearby Hamilton, ON apparently aired it an hour earlier as well). It finally resurfaced on YouTube 25 years later.
  • One episode was shelved with a designation of #1513X due to the contestants switching spots in Contestant's Row without anyone noticing; this was to air on September 27, 2000 but, again, the episode aired that day was a replacement.
  • Episode #0102L was originally scheduled to air February 7, 2023, but was pushed back to September 12 due to a trip to Turkey being offered, a country that was devastated by earthquakes on February 6. It got shelved again due to the episode also offering a trip to Maui, with Hawaii suffering from the eruption of Kīlauea that started on September 10. CBS finally aired it by burning it off the next season on November 24, 2023, Black Friday — a day where Price usually does not air a new episode due to college football coverage on CBS starting at 12 PM Eastern/9 AM Pacific, which pre-empts the show on the West Coast. #0102L never aired in the Pacific Time Zone or in about half of the Mountain Time Zone; it did air in the markets the air the show "live" at 9 AM Mountain Time.
  • In its other flavor, episodes prior to the early 1980s were never rerun during Barker's lifetime, with many fans believing it to be due to various bans he maintained. Most commonly cited are episodes up to Season 11 where fur coats were a prize (Barker became involved in animal rights in memory of his wife Dorothy Jo). But for some time, there were also claims that episodes featuring model Holly Hallstrom were also on the "do not air" list because of bitter (non-)relations between her and Barker; Hallstrom testified against Barker at several of his sexual harassment trials, and sided with another ex-model, Dian Parkinson, when the Barker-Parkinson affair blew up. She was unceremoniously dismissed from the show in the fallout, due to Barker's insistence. (Barker vehemently denied Hallstrom's claims.) Now that Barker has passed, nobody knows if the ban has expired or if Barker's will had a clause maintaining an indefinite and/or permanent ban. Regardless, numerous episodes from this "banned" period are on YouTube and in private collections.
    • Many of this changed when, after years of nary a word from neither CBS nor Fremantle (save for a brief aside on the Fremantle-owned Buzzr's FAQ page) regarding said episodes, many of Barker's old episodes would once again see the light of day, thanks to, of all things, a partnership between Fremantle and Pluto TV, with the latter adding a channel airing most every post-fur Barker episode (starting with #4581D, the sixth episode of Season 11) on December 1, 2020.
    • However, Pluto does skip six Season 11 (1982-83) episodes in its rotation, likely due to the tape being too damaged to be watchable: #4633D (October 20), #4733D (December 29), #4775D (January 28), #4784D (February 3), #4853D (March 23), and #4865D (April 1). All but #4853D aired on GSN in the past; of these, only #4865D is available on YouTube. #4733D was online at one point, but its link was removed.
    • For Season 12 (1983-1984), Pluto skipped 11 episodes: #4994D (September 15), #4995D (September 16), #5001D (September 19), #5064D (November 3), #5103D (November 30), #5142D (January 3), #5193D (February 8), #5202D (February 14), #5212D (February 21), #5213D (February 22) and #5275D (April 6). #4994D, #4995D, #5001D, #5064D, #5142D, #5193D and #5212D are available online. #5275D was purged, and only a segment with a playing of Walk of Fame is on YouTube. The other three do not circulate.
    • Pluto skips four season 13 episodes. The first is #5412D (September 25, 1984), which is known to have aired during GSN's Win TV era. The second and third are #5512D (December 4, 1984) and #5523D (December 12, 1984); those unfortunately happen to be One Away's first two playings. The fourth and final skip is #5643D (March 13, 1985); that episode's Race Game playing is available, but not the full episode.
    • For season 14, five episodes are skipped; #5795D (September 13), #5803D (September 18), #5811D/#58XXD (Either an unaired episode or a replacement that aired September 23, it's unclear which they would have shown), #5823D (October 2), & #5825D (October 4). Notably, all but #5823D have the game Bump, and those four were suddenly pulled from airing just weeks before they were to debut on the channel. #5825D did air on April 3, 2023, but this was likely unintentional, as this episode was supposed to air on this day prior to the last-minute exclusions, and did not air again afterwards.
    • Another streaming channel dedicated to the Drew Carey era launched on Pluto on June 1, 2023. Their rotation starts off with #4831K, the season 38 debut from September 21, 2009, and ends at #5255K from October 8, 2010. Only one episode is skipped; #5082K, from March 16, 2010.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: During the Cullen era, the daytime show did a promotion with the Barnum & Bailey Circus. An elephant was brought out on stage... and dropped off a surprise on stage.
  Bill: Tune in on Monday, when we give equal time to the Democratic Party!
• Out of Order: Not always the most obvious, usually manifesting itself in minute set changes that seem to disappear and reappear, sometimes within the week. This also can result in the host making reference to a past event as if it were upcoming, or vice versa (e.g., saying that a contestant is the first to play a new pricing game when, due to another episode being moved, they are actually the second). And in 2003 and 2010's announcer searches, it led to the substitute announcer post frequently changing mid-week. As well as the announcer being shown for a while before they aired the episode in which they were officially introduced as permanently hired - when Rich Fields was hired in the spring of 2004 he aired two shows (April 23 & 26) before being officially introduced by Bob on April 27. Whereas when George Gray was hired in 2011 he was seen for almost two months (starting in late February) before Drew officially introduced him at the beginning of the April 18, 2011 episode.
• The Pete Best:
  • Bill Cullen's tenure from 1956-65 is comparatively lesser-known than Barker's.
  • Dennis James, who had been picked for the revival long before CBS (and as a result, Barker) got involved. It says volumes when Doug Davidson, who did just 80 episodes across half a season, is better-known for hosting Price amongst those under the age of about 40 or so (excluding die-hard game show fans) than a guy who did 200 episodes across five seasons.
• Produced by Cast Member:
  • After Frank Wayne's death in 1988, Bob Barker assumed the role of executive producer for the remainder of his hosting tenure.
  • When the original series moved to ABC and creator Bob Stewart struck out on his own, Bill Cullen was appointed as executive producer.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Both Rod Roddy and Rich Fields were longtime fans of the show and attended tapings, where they asked original announcer Johnny Olson for advice on careers in announcing.
  • Drew Carey is a huge Bob Barker fan, and leapt at the chance to succeed him...provided he didn't have to audition.
  • Fremantle Media staffer Mandel Ilagan, the creator of the pricing game ½ Off, was the founder of the newsgroup alt.tv.game-shows and a contestant on Match Game in 1998 before Fremantle hired him in the early 2000s (he hosted the final rehearsal game of Whammy and gave the rules from memory); nowadays he frequently hangs out with fellow promoted fanboy John Ricci and his group of game-show related people, including Randy West and even Wink Martindale; both also worked on Scrabble Showdown on The Hub.
• Prop Recycling: Price rarely throws their old stuff out.
  • Any Number and the original Bullseye were actually one board, with three four-digit displays and lights with the numbers 1-10. The games only looked different because they had different faceplates. The same prop also got a clock on its top half for the first three playings of Clock Game, and a unique four-sided faceplate for the short-lived Double Digits.
  • Professor Price himself apparently popped up in a few prize displays during Season 6, then languished somewhere until turning up in an early-2000s eBay auction as "Mr. Wiggles".
  • The number display from Pathfinder was also originally used in the now-retired Add 'Em Up.
  • The spotlights used around the Big Doors on the 1986 primetime specials were used in the same role for the 1993 New Price Is Right pilots, then appeared in an October 1998 Showcase where Kathleen played a studio tour guide.
  • The Barker Silver Dollars used in the 1980s Balance Game were reused when a different Balance Game debuted in 2006.
  • The "bonus money" cards used for Clock Game winners on the 1986 nighttime specials occasionally showed up in Barker's Bargain Bar as the "difference" card.
  • The display from Check-Out's giant calculator seems to have been reused for the "change" display in Pocket Change.
  • The "$1,000,000" sign used in the back of the audience for Million-Dollar Spectaculars is now the "$100,000" sign for Pay The Rent's intro.
  • November 11, 2013: When the first digit display on Dice Game was out of service, a number card from Cover Up was taped to it.
• Real Song Theme Tune:
  • The Cliff Hangers music is an actual yodeling song ("On the Franches Mountains") by a Swiss group called the Jura Orchestra, and the theme from The Pink Panther was formerly used in Safe Crackers.
  • In the early 1980s, the original version of the Star Trek: The Motion Picture and a disco version of Close Encounters of the Third Kind would be featured in the "Time Capsule" Showcases.
  • The 1956-61 theme "Sixth Finger Tune", which was used in a show called "Six Fingers For A Five-Fingered Glove".
  • The "Dr. John Barrett Clappinger" April Fools' Day Showcase featured an instrumental version of the song "The Lees of Virginia" from 1776.
• Recycled Set: The set for the 1994 New Price Is Right was also used for the unsold pilot Cash Tornado, produced the same year. Hosted by Jim Perry and announced by Gene Wood, the pilot also used a reworked version of Edd Kalehoff's TNPIR theme as its own theme.
• Schedule Slip:
  • 23 episodes recorded from April to August 1973 and aired from May to October of that year were delayed due to Watergate coverage.
  • Drew Carey tested positive for COVID-19 in November 2022, resulting in taping cancellations and sporadic reruns from that month until February.
• Screwed by the Lawyers:
  • This was the result of Check Game's name change. It was originally called Blank Check, having no relation to the Barry & Enright game show of the same name. Dan Enright supposedly threatened an infringement lawsuit, and the game was taken out of the rotation for two months to accommodate the new name.
  • Safe Crackers originally used the theme from The Pink Panther, which required Mark Goodson Productions to pay royalties for the music. For this reason, the theme was dropped and replaced by a generic cue sometime in January 1992. This song was used on Safe Crackers playings during the 1985-86 nighttime show when Tom Kennedy hosted.
• Screwed by the Network:
  • The original Price on NBC was holding its own in daytime, but the nighttime sponsors were playing around too much with it in other timeslots. It flourished at 8:30 PM Eastern Wednesdays, then in 1961 was moved to Mondays at 8:30 PM. A year later, it was moved to 9:30 PM Mondays where The Andy Griffith Show clobbered it, then again at midseason to Fridays at 9:30 PM. NBC wanted to skew younger than Price sponsors wanted and optioned a sitcom called Harry's Girls, but ABC stepped in and offered more for Price than NBC was (probably half-heartedly) willing to pony up.
  • Both versions moved to ABC, but their new home couldn't afford to air the show in color as NBC had. Further, not every market had an ABC affiliate in 1963, so 48 markets got Price on their CBS station instead. Ratings dropped significantly for both versions, with the nighttime show ousted on September 11, 1964 and the daytime show gone on September 3, 1965.
• Shrug of God:
  • Credit Card hasn't been played since late 2008; while some games have been put on hiatus in the past, this one has gone so long without being played that it's essentially retired. However, the staff has been somewhat careful in choosing its words so as to give absolutely no clue whether the game has been permanently retired — the official explanation is that it's "being refurbished", which falls flat since a good number of pricing games have since been refurbished in far less time.
  • Step Up has been getting the same treatment after its last playing in Fall 2014. When asked about it and Credit Card in April 2016, Drew Carey said "Well there’s always a chance they’ll come back. But don't hold your breath."
  • In October 2011, Sandler stated on the official forums that Bargain Game and Check Game would be "coming soon". Shortly afterward, the forums underwent a major overhaul and these statements were removed. Some suggested that Sandler was lying, but he was proven right on both counts when Bargain Game came back on April 10, 2012 and Check Game returned on June 20, 2013.
  • After a very long hiatus, Card Game returned, with a new computerized design and smaller set that could be played in front of Contestant's Row.
  • Magic # was last played in November 2021. The prop apparently broke shortly after; it was confirmed two years later after the show moved to Haven Studios that it was retired because the staff was unable to find a way to fix the game's prop.
• Technology Marches On:
  • Some of the prizes look very outdated when viewed next to an episode from today, such as the clunky desktop computers in the 1990s versus the extremely slim and portable computers from the new teens. In a different example, a lot of the pricing games have gone through dramatic changes as digital electronics have improved their appearance and eased the difficulty it takes to operate the props.
  • Magic # became a particularly bad offender in the Carey era. It used state-of-the-art technology when it was introduced in 1992, but it stuck out like a sore thumb after new and refurbished pricing games utilized plasma and touch screens. It didn't help that its computer, which was never upgraded throughout its tenure, required a considerable amount of time to boot up prior to tapings. For that reason, the game couldn't be played earlier than third (it was last played second on December 24, 2007). This all came to a head in 2021 when the prop flat-out broke; as mentioned above, its retirement was confirmed by the show's staff in the fall of 2023.
• Throw It In!: Many different production or prop errors get left in for the heck of it.
  • Johnny Olson frequently ad-libbed over portions of the written copy, and some of his ad-libs became permanent with Rod. After Olson passed away, executive producer Frank Wayne watched several tapes of past episodes and wrote down those ad-libs so they could be added to the scripts given to the auditioning announcers.
  • The episode aired March 3, 1989 had two pricing games won due to production errors: one contestant got the top prize of $10,000 because one of the Punch-A-Bunch holes didn't have a slip inside, and another won a car because One Away had a wrong number loaded into it, resulting in an Unwinnable setup.
  • On December 17, 2003, Bob accidentally reversed the order of the Eazy Az 1-2-3 blocks, telling the contestant to put "1" on the most expensive prize and "3" on the least expensive. The contestant won with the changed rules.
    • Another "reverse" incident in Eazy Az 1-2-3 occured on April 2, 2024. The contestant accidentally revealed the price of the "3" block's prize, but this was after she had finalized her decisions. Because the most expensive prize was already revealed, Drew decided to reveal the prices in the reverse 3-2-1 order instead of the usual 1-2-3.
  • On at least three celebratory episodes (including Bob's last), some audience members brought in confetti and threw it despite this not being part of the episodes' plans.
  • Make Your Mark's only appearance in Season 37 had its rules changed mid-taping to match Drew's incorrect explanation of them. The pricing game itself was then canned immediately afterward.
  • The April 2, 2009 episode later that season had another instance of Drew misinterpreting a pricing game's rules. During Race Game, the contestant's final lever pull showed that she had one prize right. Drew declared that the final pull did not count because it was after the buzzer, and that the contestant would instead win the two prizes she had right from her last pull before the buzzer. In actuality, contestants who are still in the middle of a price tag switch when the buzzer sounds are allowed to complete it and pull the lever one final time.
  • On January 5, 2010, during a playing of Switch?, the contestant asked to switch the prices, but Amber did not hear her. Drew pointed to Amber and repeatedly said "switch", but she misheard it as "flip" and revealed one of the prices too early. The contestant would have lost, but because of Amber's mistake, Drew immediately declared it a technical win.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In 1956, Price nearly didn't make it on the air, period. The pilot for NBC was fraught with pending disaster. First the tote machines malfunctioned, then as Bill Cullen's turntable started to revolve he nearly got strangled by his microphone cord. NBC wanted to buy out the show's contract and cancel it right then, but creator Bob Stewart pleaded for a leap of faith — 13 weeks, and if the show didn't click then NBC could cancel it. Stewart was granted his wish, but NBC slotted Price opposite CBS' Arthur Godfrey, then a ratings juggernaut. By February 22, 1957 (the end of the 13 weeks), Price was beating Godfrey and earned NBC's respect. Word is that if NBC had canceled the show, Goodson-Todman would have tried to sell it to CBS, which dropped all big-ticket giveaway shows two years later in light of the quiz show scandals.
  • Bill Cullen only got the job as host in 1956 due to the insistence of Bob Stewart, who even went as far as to visit him in his apartment to convince him to take the job. Cullen was doubtful of his abilitiy to carry a show where people spent half an hour guessing prices, Goodson-Todman were looking into other candidates (including Dick Van Dyke, who turned down the offer for more or less the same reason Cullen almost did, and Dennis James, who later hosted the 1972 syndicated nighttime version) and NBC was concerned about Cullen having no time to rehearse as Pulse (the morning radio show he was then doing at WRCA) ended at 10 AM and Price aired live at 10:30 AM (Stewart's reply was "I'd rather have Cullen with no rehearsal than any other emcee with rehearsal").
  • Cullen stated in a January 23, 1972 interview that he was in negotiations with Goodson-Todman to do the revival in syndication and "We've hit a snag ... the price, so far, hasn't been right for me." At the time, Cullen was in New York as host of Three on a Match, contributor to Monitor, panelist on To Tell the Truth and spokesperson for Korvette's department stores. To do the Price revival would have involved giving up four paychecks to move to Los Angeles (he would, however, finally move there by the late 1970s), and Goodson-Todman didn't have the budget to pay him enough to make up for that. Cullen has claimed in later interviews that the staging would have made it impossible to shoot around his limp even though that part hadn't been ironed out at the time, possibly because it was a more polite explaination than "they didn't offer enough money". ^note  On a similar note, Bill was to have guest-hosted The Tonight Show during the week of July 22, 1963. A dispute between Frigidaire (Price sponsor) and Hotpoint (Tonight sponsor) scuttled the appearance. Arlene Francis filled in for Johnny Carson that week.
  • The pitchfilm, taped a few weeks later, shows that hardly anything is certain except the core concept of winning a One-Bid to play a pricing game, the host (Dennis James), the airing schedule (weekly syndication), and the syndicator (Viacom). Almost everything else either got tweaked (the pricing games became Take Two and Ten Chances, respectively) or were dropped entirely (children bidding on prizes to win them for their parents).
  • Sometime between the pitchfilm and early August, the idea was hatched to use three Showcases per episode, so all onstage players could have a chance at more. This was dropped by mid-August, since it would take too much time.
  • One idea was to sometimes determine who would go up on stage by playing a variant of the original Bullseye with all four contestants on Contestant's Row. Again, the producers realized how time-consuming this would be.
  • The asterisks on the original Contestant's Row displays imply that a "bid-bid-bid-bid-freeze" auction like the original Price was in consideration.
  • When CBS expressed interest in doing a daytime revival in 1972, Bud Grant picked Bob Barker to host. However, Mark Goodson wanted Dennis James to host the daytime edition in addition to doing the nighttime syndicated one. Bob didn't want any part of the show, feeling it could be produced better and wanting to do one of the quizzes CBS was also picking up for Fall '72 (Gambit or The Joker's Wild) instead. Grant argued, "Barker, you will do Price because those other two shows are good, solid game shows that require a traffic cop to run them, and you’re not a cop. You have far more talent!"
  • The extensive list of those who auditioned to replace Bob Barker in 2007 included Doug Davidson (1994 nighttime version), George Hamilton (actor and 1998 Match Game panelist), Todd Newton (Whammy! The All-New Press Your Luck, Family Game Night), John O'Hurley (Family Feud, To Tell the Truth), Dave Price (The Early Show), Marco Antonio Regil (host of the Mexican version), Mike Richards (Beauty and the Geek and TPIR's future executive producer), Mark Steines (Entertainment Tonight), Mark L. Walberg (Shop 'Til You Drop, Free 4 All, Russian Roulette), and Ian Ziering (Beverly Hills, 90210, Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series and ex-husband of former TPIR model Nikki Ziering). Many online fans campaigned for Newton, Roger Dobkowitz pushed for Walberg, and CBS (after originally eyeing Price) were rumored to have preferred Steines, but Drew Carey eventually came onto the radar and got the gig after his hosting of CBS' short-lived primetime game show Power of 10 attracted positive attention (though he at first turned down the offer).
    • Marc Summers (Double Dare, What Would You Do) never even got a chance to audition, with CBS never giving Roger a reason; Summers himself revealed in an interview (starting around 1:13:50) that basically, neither CBS or Fremantle knew who he was!^note he also got kicked out of the King World/Sony Pictures Television pilot Combination Lock around the same time, replaced by Ty Treadway; the pilot, intended to be together with a reboot of The Joker's Wild, didn't end up going to series; it's not certain but replacing him on that pilot may have had something to do with this. Then-announcer Rich Fields never got an audition, either, but that was because Fremantle was planning to kick him out after Season 35.
    • If you're ever curious to see how some of these host candidates would've done on the real show, look for videos of The Price Is Right Live! productions in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, which are scaled down but still identifiable as TPIR. Davidson, Hamilton, Newton, Summers, Regil, and Wahlberg have all hosted runs of TPIR Live! since 2007, as have current announcer George Gray and 2010 announcer candidate J.D. Roberto. As well, Todd Newton hosted the 2005 TPIR DVD game before Bob Barker's departure (but was not seen on-camera), while Davidson and Regil have of course hosted different versions of TPIR with different formats (and in the latter's case, Spanish). Richards ended up hosting GSN's 2012 revival of The Pyramid.
    • Sportscaster Dan Patrick (who had announced his departure from ESPN in Summer 2007) admitted in interviews that CBS asked if he'd like to audition to replace Bob Barker as well, but he turned down the invite. Fans can now see how he does as a game show host on Crackle's Sports Jeopardy!!.
    • There were also short-lived (but highly-publicized) talks surrounding Rosie O'Donnell becoming the new host (partially bolstered by Barker himself in interviews).^note This was right after O'Donnell had left The View (the first time), so she was very available and had very high exposure. O'Donnell and CBS did have talks about the idea, but she wanted the series to relocate to New York permanently, which largely ended any discussion.
    • Similarly, Tom Bergeron (The Hollywood Squares, Dancing with the Stars) claims in his autobiography that CBS offered him the job at one point, but he didn't want to relocate from his home base in the NYC metro area. CBS then discussed relocating the entire show to New York just for him, but he said he didn't want to uproot the show's longtime staff. The fact that CBS was willing to relocate the show for Bergeron, but not for O'Donnell, shows how much they were enthusiastic about having him as host.
  • Season 37 was supposed to have a new pricing game introduced every day on the first week, possibly to make up for the fact that Season 36 had no new games introduced. Thanks to the firing of Dobkowitz and numerous other budget issues with CBS, only Gas Money got to make its debut that week. The game that was supposed to premiere the next day, Do the Math, ended up getting replaced in the lineup by Check Game and wouldn't appear on the show for another five years.
    • Had Dobkowitz not been fired at the end of Season 36, Give or Keep would have been brought back in the rotation in Season 38.
  • After Johnny Olson's death, Bob Hilton almost got the announcing job, but turned it down to host two unsold pilots. Hilton retired from game shows at a fairly young age of 48 in 1991; who knows how long he could've stayed in the biz had he gotten the nod? Would he have become as iconic as Rod Roddy was?
  • Supposedly, Phil Hartman auditioned for the announcer's role after Johnny Olson died. Hartman's only turn as announcer was on the short-lived Pop 'N Rocker Game in 1983. (He also auditioned for the announcer/sidekick role for season 2 of The All-New Let's Make A Deal, but lost out to Dean Goss.)
  • Among those who auditioned after Rod's death, Barker almost hired Art Sanders (a news anchorman at KOMO Seattle) on the spot.
  • When Rich DiPirro redesigned the Plinko intro in Season 38, part of his plan was to bring back the Plinko sign (last used December 5, 2002) in its classic opening style. DiPirro asked if the sign still existed (it did) and requested it be brought to the stage so he could examine it and hopefully clean it up to present his idea to the producers. Once "management" (believed to be Mike Richards) found out about this, they lied to him and told him that the sign was destroyed (it had actually been sold to a private collector).
    DiPirro: "This is second hand information, but it seems the sign existed when I asked for it, but was destroyed with the knowledge I wanted to put it back on the air. ... This moment represented my very first, huge disappointment at the show in so many ways. But, as a fan, most important was that a historic prop was senselessly destroyed..."
  • Penny Ante suffered a similar fate when it got left out in the rain, ruining its already tetchy electronics. The staff had planned to bring the game back to the rotation, but ended up never getting around to it and eventually announced it was retired in Spring 2007. Come 2021, Penny Ante recieved a Spiritual Successor in the form of To The Penny, which recycles the multiple-choice gameplay and penny motif as an all-cash game, and even recycles the formers' iconic sound effect when a contestant chooses to eliminate a wrong price.
  • ½ Off was originally designed to be played for a car with its keys in one of the 16 boxes.
  • Triple Play was devised as "Slam Dunk", and it would have awarded only one of the three cars. The staff did not want to introduce a game where it would be impossible to win every prize,^note This is the case with Any Number, but it is forgivable because the non-car prizes (including the piggy bank) are worth less than $1,000. so Slam Dunk was reworked into an all-or-nothing game.
• Working Title:
  • Coming or Going was going to be called Coming & Going.
  • Gallery Game was in development as Masterpiece.
  • The working title for the Cullen show was Auction-Aire. (Some sources had it listed as The Auctioneer, but Bob Stewart verified it was the former.)
• Written-In Infirmity:
  • Drew had to make several accommodations for a stretch of Season 37 episodes due to foot surgery. Most notably, he spent several episodes walking with a cane, and had the models carry him out on a prize at the top of the show. They also handled some of the pricing game props that he normally would (one of these alterations, turning the trilons in One Away, actually became permanent). In Season 40, he spent several episodes in a sling after receiving shoulder surgery.
  • Bob Barker did this at least once in the late 1980s, hobbing around stage with a crutch. He blamed it on being hugged by (who else) a Samoan contestant.
  • The usual accommodations were made to hide Bill Cullen's limp on the original series. When he was introduced, the shot would be tightly framed on the "price tag" sign to avoid showing him walk as much as possible. During the show, while he would often stand beside the prizes or the contestants, he always moved from one place to another off-camera.

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