But what next?
Bob Barker is going to retire in June. This, we know. Producers have said that the show will continue without him. This, I’m curious about. The Price Is Right has been on the air longer than I’ve been alive, and in that time it has remained nearly unchanged. The sets are the same, the graphics are the same, the colors (good lord the colors!) are the same. Sure, they’ve added a new game here and there, but for the most part what you have is a creation of the 1970s, vacuum sealed and void of tampering. In an age when everything is suppose to be cutting-edge The Price Is Right has always been blissfully ignorant, and because of that it has thrived. When you tune in you know exactly what you’re going to get. In fact, surprise is the last thing a show like that needs. This is dovetailing a bit on “MagneticMediaFeds Daytime Television Expose” but really one could argue that the average daytime TV viewer is the type of person who has a routine. A routine for every day of the work week, and they need those days to be as tuned as a swiss watch.
Which then leads to the big question: how the hell do you have The Price Is Right without Bob Barker? Will they retool? Retooling will kill the show. It simply cannot be retooled. What the producers will have to do is find a television personality who is old. Very old. Like in his late-sixies, early seventies, old. That person shouldn’t be Barker, but should be Barkeresque. Someone like Regis, but NOT REGIS. Is Wink Martindale still alive? This is the only way the show can work. No new sets, no new graphics, and for the love of god do NOT get rid of the color “Harvest Gold.”
Tags: Daytime Television
November 3rd, 2006 at 4:24 am
I always liked Dane Cook’s joke that Bob Barker actually died in ‘89, and is now just being pulled around by strings.
Somehow I expected Bob Barker to still be hosting it long after I’m dead (dare I say forever?). I’m sure that as soon as he passes through the pearly gates, God will have an exact replica of the set waiting for him so that, even in the afterlife, there is a Price is Right…
…and currency, for whatever reason.