When is a $30,000 Plinko win on The Price is Right not really a win? When a little oversight ends up turning the game into a costly blunder for the show’s producers.

The show, which is now taping episodes for its upcoming 37th year, recently returned from a two-week hiatus, and one of the first games played was Plinko, easily the show’s most popular game. Contestants win disks through smart pricing, then walk up the steps of a giant pachinko machine, drop the disks through a network of pegs, and the chips land in slots marked in dollar amounts from $0 up to $10,000. A contestant can win up to five chips, so a $50,000 top prize is possible.

Something very exciting happened during this first taping: the contestant had already won her chips, and began playing. Her first chip went into the $10,000 slot. The second chip went into $10,000. The third chip followed suit and went into the same slot. Three top-prize drops in a row.

But backstage, someone quickly realized something had gone awry, because of a promo shoot during their off-time.

Yeah, yeah: blame the promo people. The story of my life.

It turns out, the Plinko board was used in a promo for an upcoming video game based on the show, and since time is money, they needed to make sure that when the cameras started rolling and the disks started dropping, they’d land in the big money slot. So they hid a wire inside the game so that the discs would always be guided into the big slot. That way, they wouldn’t have to film 100 disks being dropped to wind up with maybe ten or twenty actually hitting $10,000.

And, as you no doubt guessed, someone forgot to remove the wire when they were done.

Pesky promo people.

Then, as Carey tells it to ET, a staffer came running over and stopped the game in mid-play so that the board could be set right again.

I’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall of that studio, because they had lots of ‘splainin’ to do! But to give them credit, they came up with a solution that didn’t penalize the contestant and made what you’ll see when this memorable episode airs be truly authentic.

Not bad for a day’s work as a contestant on a game show, right?

So they had to reshoot the pricing game and let the contestant drop all-legitimate chips. But because of the error, they still payed her the $30,000 she “won” to begin with.

Between getting the Vegas wheel to Los Angeles and shelling out thirty grand over a production error, things have suddenly got a lot more expensive. And somehow, I doubt this is what they had in mind when

Christopher Knight, who will forever be known as Peter from The Brady Bunch, has a new job this fall. He is hosting a new game show version of the board game Trivial Pursuit.

Let’s review a little history, shall we?

The Brady Bunch, which premiered in 1969, ended its original ABC run in 1974.

Ten years later, in 1984, Trivial Pursuit, the board game, hit its peak. Its peak, mind you.

Ten years later, in 1994, Wink Martindale was hosting the first television game show based on the board game. It premiered in 1993, lasted until 1995, and was largely forgotten. Mercifully.

Ten years later, in 2004, Roger Lodge hosted ESPN Trivial Pursuit. It lasted a whopping five episodes.

I can certainly see why they didn’t wait until 2014 to launch this program: at the rate they’re going, it might not have lasted through the first commercial break.

In what has to be the most-blown surprise of the year, President Bush will make a “surprise” appearance on NBC’s Deal or No Deal on Monday.

The purpose of the appearance, which was taped at the White House in advance of actual game play, is so that Bush can thank an Iraqi war veteran for serving the country. The veteran, contestant Captain Joseph Kobes, is hoping to pay off his parents’ home. He is a Purple Heart and Bronze Start recipient who completed three tours of duty in Iraq.

The fact that Bush took the time to tape the message that will appear on a game show will no doubt get the Bush haters all riled up just like those silly correspondent dinners. (These same people will play dumb, of course, the next time a president of their party does anything remotely lighthearted during any kind of negative national situation.)

But let’s be clear: whether this vet supported the war or not, he felt it was his duty to serve three tours there. He deserves at least a million bucks in my book.

The only thing that confuses me is why NBC wouldn’t hold this episode until the following Monday: May sweeps begins Thursday of this week.

On Friday night’s edition of The Price is Right Million Dollar Spectacular, something happened that has never happened before: someone actually won a million bucks.

The show featured two opportunities for a contestant to win: during one of the six pricing games, perfect pricing would have earned a contestant the seven-digit top prize, but that one wasn’t won.

The second opportunity came in the Showcases. Traditionally, if a contestant bid the closest to his showcase’s actual retail price and was within $250 of the actual price, he’d win both showcases. For this special, if the winning contestant was within $1,000 of the showcase’s retail price, he won both showcases plus a million-dollar bonus.

Here’s the video of the big win, including the brief credits before CBS cut to those annoying split-screen credits courtesy CBS, which apparently had other people’s postings taken down in favor of its own “creditless” version:

I’m sure that if I were a contestant, I wouldn’t complain about a million dollar bonus. But as a fan of the show, tacking on a million bucks just seems a bit unnecessary to me…as if ‘Price’ is just tossing that out there because a million-dollar top prize seems to be the latest fad. At least now, a well-done game show is offering that prize for a change.

For the non-diehard ‘Price’ fans, I point out that the endgame of the show is the Showcase round. The “Showcase Showdown” is the part with the famous Big Wheel, during which it is decided which two contestants will move on to that final round. For a show that has been on the air for 35 years (and featuring the one-hour format with the Showcase Showdowns for the last 32 years), it’s amazing how many newspaper articles that discuss the show get the Showcase and Showcase Showdown confused.

If you ever have a chance to attend a taping of The Price is Right, I highly recommend it. Not because you have a chance to win cash and prizes, but because it’s just an incredible experience.

One of the things that makes it so amazing is the spirit in that studio, when 320 people start cheering like there’s no tomorrow. To call it a party atmosphere is an understatement of epic proportions. And new host Drew Carey is issuing an interesting challenge to people who visit to keep that “magic” alive even when the red lights go off:

This little inspirational message was delivered during a commercial break before the final showcase round.  Do you dare give it a try in your own life?

Watching television with my dad is the ultimate test of my patience. And I don’t have much to start with.

Dad is one of those channel changers. Any time a show we’re watching goes to commercial, he grabs the remote and starts surfing to other channels. Invariably, he will stop on something that interests him, and watch that until it goes to a break. Then he’ll click the remote until he finds yet another show to watch.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

By the time a half hour is up, you’ve watched a few minutes of about six different shows and you never make it back to the first one (and that’s usually the only one you wanted to see).

The other thing he likes to do is to complete the sentences or answer the questions of any person speaking on television, as if he is a walking encyclopedia. I’ll admit that my dad has a lot of knowledge of sometimes useless-information. Some of the things he knows isn’t useless at all, but it’s just that it’s not particularly useful to Mom and I.

On New Year’s Day, I was at their house, and at one point, the channel-changing stopped on an episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? with Meredeth Viera. I’ll have to paraphrase the question, but this is as close as I can remember:

Which organ of the body, whose name means “anger,” was often blamed for morose feelings?

A. Spleen
B. Liver
C. Pancreas
D. Appendix

I wasn’t sure of the answer, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t C or D. My guess would have been B. My dad immediately said B. As the contestant, a recent college graduate, sat there thinking about the question, my dad became a bit more insistent.

“It’s the liver!”

Still not hearing him, the contestant decided to use a lifeline to call a friend. The friend wasn’t sure, either, despite my dad repeating, more loudly, that the correct answer was B.

Not comfortable gambling the $8,000 she had already won, she decided to use her only remaining lifeline, the 50/50, which removes two wrong answers.

“She’s not going to do well,” Dad said in disgust. “She doesn’t know anything.”

When the computer removed two wrong answers, only the Spleen and the Appendix were left.

Oh, yes. Mom and I enjoyed that beyond words.

(And for those of you wondering, Spleen was the correct answer.)

If he were still alive (he died at age 81 in 1999), game show great Gene Rayburn would have been 90 today.

Rayburn was host of Match Game, a goofy, racy, laugh-fest that ran for nine years on CBS in the 1970s and early 1980s.  Match Game, other than The Price is Right, was my all-time favorite game show.  (Third place would go to the original What’s My Line? for those of you who were dying to know.)

Match Game was one of the few bright spots on the GSN (formerly Game Show Network, now, apparently, just three letters) lineup in an ocean of lousy poker shows and interactive crap.  (Match Game is generally among the highest rated show on that lineup, which should tell them something.)  Even though Comcast decided to quietly move GSN to the next tier up, which would require me to pay more money to them, I still have some of Rayburn’s antics on tape.  Thank goodness.

Rayburn always claimed his antics on the set were all because of the game’s “weak format.”  It was a show about fill-in-the-blank questions with celebrities suggesting their own answers and contestants trying to match as many as possible.  “It needed to be goosed up,” Rayburn told an interviewer shortly before his death, “and my way was with comedy.”  Rayburn’s decision was not popular at first with the legendary Mark Goodson, the host added.  He spoke of memos to the producer in which Goodson complained, “‘What’s Rayburn doing?  He’s getting laughs!  He’s getting laughs!’  Goodson thought the most important thing was the game,” Rayburn recalled.

But the show became the number one daytime game show for a number of years, even beating The Price is Right for a few years, and Goodson (who owned both) apparently changed his mind.

After all, it’s not the questions anyone remembers about Match Game; it’s moments like this:

Happy Birthday, Gene.  You’re still missed.

It’s time for another YouTube clip.

If you’ve ever watched The Price is Right, you’re surely familiar with “Race Game.” If you’re not, here’s how it works: a contestant is shown four prices and four prizes. They must race to place the four price tags in front of the correct prizes before the clock runs out, and they can keep making changes until they’re either out of time.

Simple, right?

One more detail: they have 45 seconds to get the prices on the right prizes. Except in this particular playing from the early to mid 1980s:

Barker’s ad lib about the contestant not having enough time was priceless.

Game show host Alex Trebeck suffered a mild heart attack Monday night and is recovering at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, according to news reports.

It has been a difficult few months for the Jeopardy family. The programs creator, Merv Griffin, passed away in August. On Monday, Roger King, the man who helped put the show on the syndicated map as head of King-World, died of a stroke. It’s a good thing that in this particular case, it didn’t happen “in threes.”

News reports say that Trebeck will stay in the hospital for a few days for observation and further tests. Some sources stress that the heart attack was “mild.” At least one insists that Trebeck is “fine.” I commented that I don’t think anyone who just suffered a heart attack of any size can reasonably be called “fine,” since even a mild heart attack is often a warning sign that real trouble could be around the corner if changes aren’t made.

I’ll confess that I am not a fan of Jeopardy. It is one of the most boring game shows I have ever seen. If I had been the guy who had to sit through the pitch of that show to decide whether to put it on the air, it would never have seen the light of day.

But Trebeck is great as the host of that show. I don’t mean that as a slight or to suggest that I find him boring; on the contrary, he balances the “high-brow” intellectualism with subtle, playful humor, and I can’t think of a host that would be a better fit for that format. I wish him a speedy recovery.

I had noticed something missing lately from Tivo’s offerings: classic game shows, like those typically found on GSN (which used to be Game Show Network and now goes only by initials).

For the past week or so, apparently, GSN has been MIA. I called Comcast to ask WTF, though not in those specific terms, and PDQ after pressing the button indicating a “problem” with my service, a recording came on telling me that as of November 16, GSN had been moved to the digital tier at channel 179.

To continue receiving it, the recording explained, I would have to upgrade my service. (Translation: I shell out more money and they’ll give me the channel I’ve been getting for less out of the goodness of their hearts.) Continue reading “Comcast’s Quick Switch”

Depending on where you live, you’ll be getting a healthy helping of The Price is Right on television today.  CBS is running up to three episodes in place of their normal soap lineup, until the NFL game comes on later this evening.

If you’re in the Eastern time zone, the three shows (reruns from earlier this season) play back to back starting at 12:30pm.  In the Central and Mountain time zones, you’ll get one episode, followed by your midday news, then the two remaining shows.

Unfortunately for game show fans in the Pacific time zone, ‘Price’ doesn’t play at all today because of the timing of the kickoff of the game.  I’d recommend an extra slice of pumpkin pie to ease your suffering.

This may be the first real look many people across the country have gotten at Carey’s hosting style since taking over the role from Bob Barker on October 15th.

Pay close attention to the pocket flaps on his suit coats.  For some reason, Carey seems obsessed with rubbing them (as shown in the photo).  It looks like a nervous habit, which is a nice argument for a corded microphone (so you can hold the cable in your other hand) like the one Barker used for the last 35 years.

That’s D for Drew, of course.

If you’re a game show fan like me, and particularly a fan of The Price is Right (like me), and you can’t wait until tomorrow’s 36th season premiere of the show, CBS has posted a clip on YouTube.

There’s something “spoilerish” to a degree, because the pricing game being played in the clip and the contestant’s success therein is given away, but partially. By the time the clip ends, you don’t know the full outcome, but you know that this contestant is definitely in a position to set a new record for winnings in that pricing game on the daytime version of the show.

So now that you have been warned, watch at your own risk (and/or enjoyment), here.

Even though Bob Barker’s final episode of The Price is Right aired back in June, his real final airdate is tomorrow.  That’s because that final episode replays for the last time before Drew Carey takes over as host on the show’s 36th season premiere next Monday.

People were in line for up to five days outside CBS Television City for the chance to see Barker host one last time.  The 83-year-old retired after fifty years on national television and more Emmy Awards than any other single performer.

So be sure to set your Tivo for tomorrow morning to see Barker in action and the proverbial torch moving a step closer toward a new runner.

I’ll still watch the show, most likely, unless I’m unable to get past Carey’s Martha Stewart-like laugh.  They have redone the show’s logo, albeit a modest change; they have redone the show’s classic set, albeit keeping the retro look that will make it instantly familiar; and they have redone, note for note, the show’s classic theme.  This last modification, the story goes, was to render it in stereo.  I’m no audio expert, but I suspect that there were perfectly acceptable ways to take original studio tracks of the original recording, make it stereo, and fool all but the most sharp-eared of listeners.  And how many people are going to get that upset about a “fake stereo” rendition of a game show theme?!?

The good news, if there is any for long-time fans of the show upon seeing Barker hang up the mic, is that most of the other elements of the show that have become so familiar over the years are staying put.  So in many ways, it will be the same fun hour it has always been.

Even though I suspect it will be very different.

Halie Swan and her family recently traveled to Los Angeles for a taping of NBC’s Deal or No Deal. As a contestant on the show, Halie won $50,000.

If you’re reaching for your remote control so you can program Tivo to record it for you, you can set the remote back on the table. (Or, if you’re like me, wedge it back in between the sofa cushions.)

You won’t be seeing Swan’s appearance, because the producers of the show decided not to air it.

The show was to be part of the kickoff of the new season of ‘Deal,’ but apparently because Swan won a “measley” fifty-grand, the producers felt it wasn’t exciting enough.

The good news is that Swan still gets the money and still has the memories of spending time with 20 of her family members during the process of winning the cash.

In the local newspaper article that covered her trip, Swan’s dad says that they were disappointed that the episode wouldn’t be shown, but he was quick to add that $50,000 is nothing to gripe about. Yet at the end of the article, Halie says they’d probably think twice before auditioning for another game show.

Really? If I’d won $50,000, I’d be looking to make game show appearances my new career.

Still, I do think it’s a little strange that DoND would decide not to air the show at all. Continue reading “Show Says ‘No Deal’”