If the bid falls within $250 of the actual retail price, they win both showcases. Again, the one who bids closer to actual retail prize value without going over wins. At the wheel, the highest spin amount without going over $1 goes to the Showcase, where two contestants bid.
Win or lose, they get to spin the wheel in their half of the show during the Showcase Showdown. If they bid closest to the prize’s actual retail value without going over, they play for a Showcase prize.
Show producers select contestants from the audience before taping the lucky ones hear the shriek of a lifetime-“COME ON DOWN!”-and take a place in Contestant Row to bid on prizes. The show’s complex choreography looks simple on screen. (An evening edition of the show netted a contestant more than $1.15 million.) In its nearly 30,000-square-foot warehouse on the CBS lot, the show hoards millions of dollars in prizes to give away, including about three dozen cars at any given moment. The show has given away millions and millions of dollars worth of merchandise, the largest one-day payout being more than $260,000 in October 2019, to contestant Mike Stouber. It’s not just a game show, it’s our cultural wallpaper. They tune in from everywhere: doctor’s waiting rooms, car-repair centers, college campuses, and home offices. Classic mid-morning couch-potato fare, the show has about five million viewers a day. It’s been on the air ever since, from the same studio on the CBS lot in Los Angeles: Bob Barker Studios, named for its long-time host and “Happy Gilmore” scene-stealer. I t premiered in 1956, but “The Price is Right” went dark until CBS rebooted it in 1972. Most car shows revolve around egos and superegos. “The Price Is Right” has genuine enthusiasm for new cars that doesn’t bury itself in caliper sizes or model-year post-ups or the smoky burnouts that make most car television look like hormonal teenagers given too much budget and too much leeway.
Who doesn’t respond to its bright lights, shocking colors, happy loud voices, and free new stuff-especially the big-ticket items like cars? And if that car’s a 4-speed Dodge Journey, well, so what? “The Price is Right” may shower contestants with everything from ramen noodles to round-the-world cruises, but under the veneer of the longest-running, most popular game show in history lurks a great car show. They’ll tell me how they do it-and then I’ll be seated in the audience for the best car show on TV: “The Price Is Right.” A half-second later I realize I almost took out the reigning queen of spokesmodels, Rachel Reynolds.īefore I do any more damage, I slip into a room off stage, tucked behind a studio between those belonging to “The Bold and the Beautiful” and “The Young and the Restless.” Across the table are people who love to give away dreams every weekday. I almost run right into a woman wrapped in a kelly green bathrobe and flawless makeup. An electronic audience of monitors and cameras ignores my every move, thank goodness, because I proceed to knock over a potted plant on a platform with a prize package worth thousands of dollars. Mic-ed up men and women whirl around a narrow hallway like second-hand sweeps on chronometers, pivoting in 270-degree spins around cars parked mirror-to-mirror and dormant game-show contests waiting to be wheeled on stage. Inside Studio 33, the commotion bears down with its own air pressure. I forcibly pull my hand down from an instinctive clutch at invisible pearls. I step instead through the glass doors of the star’s entrance named for Carol Burnett and fight being star-struck. A ribbon of super-excited people hoots and hollers as it funnels through the studio’s main entrance.