The New Price is Right
Host: Bob Barker, Tom Kennedy
Announcer: Johnny Olson, Rod Roddy, Rich Fields
Premise: Contestants bid on merchandise items, the
closest winning the right to play a bonus game for more
prizes. The top winners competed in a Showcase game,
where the winner took home even more loot.
1972-1975 rules
Rules: The show opened with2 Johnny calling
four contestants to contestant's row: "John Doe, come on down! You're the next contestant on 'The Price is Right!"
Contestant's Row
The four players then get one bid on a merchandise item, for example, a new dishwasher. The first bid goes to the first player called down to play, or the one who was called to replace a winner. Whoever is closest without going over comes onstage to play a "pricing game." If all are over, everyone gets another chance. All items that are up for bid are rounded off to the nearest dollar.
If a player manages to bid the exact price of the item, he or she wins a cash bonus; $100 for many years, but now that bonus is $500.
The Pricing Games
The mainstay of the show. After each "one-bid" item, the winner gets to come up onstage to join host Barker to play a pricing game. The player could win merchandise prizes, trips, cash, or even a new car if the contestant wins. Here are three of the several dozen pricing games on the show:
Cliff Hangers: The player is shown three small merchandise items, costing under $100. The player would then bid on those items one at a time. After that, a small mountain climer would ascend a cliff, moving one step for each dollar that the bid was off. So, if the blender costs $34, and the player bids $25, then Hans takes nine steps up the mountain. After three items, if Hans still hasn't fallen off the cliff, the contestant wins a bonus prize, worth thousands of dollars. The mountain has 25 steps, so the player can miss all three items by a total of $25 or less.
Double Prices: The player is shown a decent prize, and a pair of prices. The player must choose the actual retail price from the options in order to win it. On the nighttime show, the contestant was shown two items, and could win none, one or two of the prizes.
Money Game: The player is shown a brand new car, or truck, and a board with nine pairs of numbers. Two of those pairs make up the actual price of the vehicle. One at a time, the player chose numbers from the board. If the player managed to pick both halves of the price, he won the car. Otherwise, each wrong pick was worth that much in cash; four wrong choices ended the game.
Showcase
From 1972 to 1975, the two top winners competed in the showcase game. The top winner of the day is presented a showcase of prizes, and may either bid on the whole thing, or pass that showcase to the opponent and bid on the next one. After both contenders bid on their showcase, the actual retail prices are shown, and whomever is closer, without going over, wins their showcase. If both are over, no one wins anything in the showcase game. After a few years, players who were within $100 of their showcase, didn't go over, and won the contest, won both showcase on offer. That margin is now $250, but it's not as easy since showcases can now be worth from $10,000 to over $40,000.
When "The Price is Right" expanded to one hour in 1975, they had six pricing games, and the winners of an elimination contest would compete in the showcase.
The Showcase Showdown
The players for each half were lined up by winnings, lowest first. In turn, each spins a wheel with money amounts from 5 cents to a dollar. The idea is to spin $1.00 in one or two spins, without going over. The one who is closest moves on to the showcase. If there is a tie, those tied spin again.
At some point, players who spun $1.00 won a $1,000 bonus, then even later had the chance to spin for $10,000 by landing on the $1 space again. If two players tied at $1.00, the bonus spin was also a tiebreaker.
Even later still, the adjacent 5 and 15 cent spaces became green, and were worth $5,000 for a bonus spin.
Over the 32 years of the program, The Price is Right has aired several Primetime Specials typically offering big prizes and huge cash amounts.
In 1985, a syndicated version of "The Price is Right" starring Tom Kennedy was shown. The half-hour show reverted to the 1972-1975 format, with the two top money winners competing to win the showcases.