97 Fun Facts About Price is Right

Who was named host of the syndicated nighttime Price Is Right when the show returned in 1972?

Dennis James was the producers' choice for daytime too, but CBS insisted on Bob Barker, so James got the weekly nighttime show, staying until 1977.

Who was The Price Is Right's original announcer, from its 1972 premiere until his death in 1985?

Johnny Olson also warmed up the studio audience before each taping and played characters in the Showcase skits; he was still the show's announcer when he died in October 1985.

The Price Is Right's 1972 CBS premiere, hosted by Bob Barker, fell on which U.S. holiday?

Labor Day, September 4, 1972: CBS launched three new game shows back to back that Monday morning, and this is the only one of the three that has stayed on the network ever since.

The Big Wheel arrived in 1975 alongside which change?

Hour-long episodes: with six players a show reaching the stage instead of three, the wheel was brought in to cut each trio down to a single Showcase finalist.

Which pricing game was the first ever played on the 1972 CBS premiere?

Any Number opened the 1972 premiere and is still in the rotation; it can't be lost outright, because calling digits always completes one of its three prices, even if only the loose change.

Which catchphrase does The Price Is Right's announcer shout to call contestants from the audience?

'Come on down!' rings out nine times an hour: four names open the show, then one more follows each of the first five pricing games to refill Contestants' Row.

Bob Barker closed each Price Is Right episode from the 1980s on by urging viewers to do what?

Spay or neuter their pets: Barker's sign-off was 'Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered,' and Drew Carey kept the line when he took over.

Which Palm Springs TV weatherman became The Price Is Right's announcer in April 2004?

Rich Fields was chief meteorologist at a Palm Springs station when Bob Barker announced his hiring in April 2004; after leaving in 2010 he went back to forecasting, this time on Los Angeles TV.

Hitting exactly $1.00 on the Big Wheel wins cash and what else?

A bonus spin: land on $1.00 again and it adds $25,000 on a regular show, up from $10,000 before 2008, so one contestant can bank $26,000 before the Showcase.

Which game-show creator, later behind The $10,000 Pyramid, devised the original 1956 Price Is Right?

Bob Stewart got the idea from watching an auctioneer at work in New York and first called it The Auctionaire; he also created To Tell the Truth and Password.

What happens when a Big Wheel spin fails to make one full revolution?

It is not counted and is redone: the wheel has to travel all the way around at least once, so a contestant can't simply nudge it a few spaces toward the $1.00.

In which Price Is Right game does a figure advance one step for every dollar a guess is off?

Cliff Hangers gives its little mountain climber 25 steps of slack across three small prizes; one dollar more and he tumbles off the peak, taking the main prize with him.

Which future Breaking Bad star overbid on his Showcase as a Price Is Right contestant in 2000?

Aaron Paul, announced under his real name, Aaron Sturtevant, ran to the stage shouting that Bob Barker was his idol, reached the Showcase and then overbid by just $132.

In what Los Angeles studio was 'The Price Is Right' primarily taped for its first 51 seasons?

Television City, CBS's Fairfax District complex, housed the show in Studio 33 for 51 seasons, until a $1.25 billion redevelopment by the lot's new owner pushed production out in 2023.

Who hosted the original version of The Price Is Right from 1956 to 1965?

Bill Cullen fronted both the daytime and prime-time editions until 1965; he was in the running for the 1972 revival too, but that job went to other hosts.

Which pricing game has a contestant place four price tags on four prizes in 45 seconds?

Race Game gives the contestant 45 seconds to place four price tags on four prizes, pulling a lever to learn how many are right before racing back to fix the rest.

Which word did The Price Is Right drop from its title in June 1973?

New: the 1972 revival was first billed as The New Price Is Right so that nobody would mistake it for the 1956-65 original.

Bob Barker's final show aired the day he won his last what?

Daytime Emmy: Barker's farewell aired on June 15, 2007, and CBS repeated it in prime time that night as the lead-in to the ceremony, where he won as best game show host for the 14th time.

In 1987 Bob Barker surprised Price Is Right viewers when he stopped doing what?

Dyeing his hair: in October 1987 Barker let it go grey on air, something TV hosts of the day almost never did, and kept the natural look for his remaining 20 years on the show.

Which announcer, known for his sequined jackets, was the voice of The Price Is Right from 1986 to 2003?

Rod Roddy stayed until shortly before his death in October 2003; diagnosed with colon cancer in 2001, he spent his last years urging viewers to get screened early.

Which company behind many classic game shows created the 1972 version of 'The Price Is Right'?

Goodson-Todman Productions kept its double-barrelled name until 1982, three years after Bill Todman died, when Mark Goodson bought out his partner's heirs and put only his own name on the shows.

After whose death in 1981 did Bob Barker devote himself to animal-rights campaigning?

His wife, Dorothy Jo, died in October 1981; the DJ&T Foundation he later set up to fund low-cost pet clinics carries her initials.

In 2015 Price Is Right model Manuela Arbeláez made headlines by accidentally doing what?

Giving away a car: in the game Five Price Tags she revealed a tag before the contestant had picked it, it turned out to be the right price, and the win had to stand.

In How I Met Your Mother, which character goes on The Price Is Right believing Bob Barker is his father?

Barney Stinson gets his wish in the 2007 episode 'Showdown', with Barker playing himself, but loses his nerve on stage and never tells the host what his mother told him.

Which pricing game has contestants drop chips down a pegboard for cash?

Plinko hands over one chip free and up to four more for pricing small prizes; each can land on anything from $0 to $10,000, so five perfect drops would pay $50,000.

Which wrestling show did Bob Barker guest-host in 2009, two years after retiring?

WWE Raw built the night around 'The Price Is Raw', a send-up of his old show, and the company's year-end awards named Barker its guest host of the year.

In which Price Is Right game is every digit of the displayed car price just above or below the real digit?

One Away shows a car price with every digit one off; after the first guess the contestant learns only how many digits are right and gets one chance to fix the rest.

Bob Barker's $5 million gift bought Sea Shepherd a ship, named after him, to disrupt what?

Japanese whaling: the MY Bob Barker was itself a retired Norwegian whaler, and its existence only became public in 2010 when it helped track down the whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean.

Who became the permanent announcer of 'The Price Is Right' in April 2011?

George Gray won the job after months of on-air tryouts in which he rotated with other guest announcers; a decade earlier he had hosted the syndicated Weakest Link.

Which Drew Carey Show character took over The Price Is Right for April Fools' Day 2010?

Mimi, played by Kathy Kinney, named herself executive producer for the day and replaced the announcer with a man in a monkey suit.

The Price Is Right's 54th season, in 2025, took it past the 53-year run of which Chilean-born variety show?

Sábado Gigante, Don Francisco's Saturday marathon, began in Chile in 1962, moved to Univision in the United States in 1986 and ended in 2015 as television's longest-running variety show.

How did the pandemic change The Price Is Right for its 2020-21 season?

It taped with no studio audience for the first time in nearly 50 years, on a redesigned set with a wider Contestants' Row; a crowd of about 50 returned the following season.

In which Price Is Right game can a contestant keep four gifts or risk them all on a car's price?

Temptation shows four gifts whose prices supply the digits of the car's price; the player may walk away with all four or gamble them, and a single wrong digit loses everything.

Which Price Is Right game has a contestant build a car's price from two of nine two-digit numbers?

Money Game shows nine two-digit numbers; the contestant picks ones for the front and back halves of a car's price, and every wrong pick is paid out as cash at face value.

What must a contestant do to win a prize in Contestants' Row on The Price Is Right?

Bid closest without going over: the four players bid in turn on one prize, and if all four overbid, the bids are wiped and they start again, capped below the lowest bid.

Which Price Is Right game hides the hundreds digit in the prices of three increasingly expensive prizes?

Golden Road starts from a grocery item under $1 and climbs through three-, four- and five-digit prices; one wrong hundreds digit ends the trip, though prizes already won are kept.

Which former Name That Tune host fronted the nightly syndicated Price Is Right of 1985-86?

Tom Kennedy was born James Narz and changed his name before following his older brother, Jack Narz, into game-show hosting; his five-a-week Price Is Right lasted a single season.

What happens to a contestant whose two Big Wheel spins total more than $1.00?

They are eliminated: the second spin is optional, so a contestant sitting on a middling score has to weigh standing pat against the risk of busting.

A 2017 documentary revisits a 2008 Price Is Right contestant who did what?

Bid the exact price of a Showcase: Terry Kniess did it on a show taped in September 2008; the film's subject, superfan Ted Slauson, says he fed him the number from the audience, which Kniess denies.

What extra reward does an exactly right bid earn in Contestants' Row?

A $500 cash bonus: the host pays out on the spot for a bid that is right to the dollar, five times the $100 it earned before 1998.

Which game show had Bob Barker been hosting since 1956 when he took over The Price Is Right in 1972?

Truth or Consequences came first: its creator, Ralph Edwards, hired Barker in 1956 after hearing his radio show, and Barker kept hosting it alongside Price until 1975.

In which Price Is Right game does a contestant break through paper-covered holes on a board to find cash?

Punch-a-Bunch awards up to four punches on a 50-hole board; the slips are then read one at a time, and the player must keep each amount or throw it back for the next.

Which future game-show star never made it out of Contestants' Row as a Price Is Right contestant in 1980?

Vanna White was a 23-year-old model when she was picked from the audience in June 1980; two years later she was turning letters on Wheel of Fortune, and in 2021 she returned to Price as a guest model.

What nickname did The Price Is Right's prize models go by during Bob Barker's 35 years as host?

Barker's Beauties was the popular name from 1972 to 2007; it left with him, and the Drew Carey era simply calls them the models.

Which Price Is Right game gives 30 seconds to price two prizes on nothing but 'higher' and 'lower' from the host?

Clock Game starts its 30 seconds on the first bid; the host may answer only 'higher' or 'lower', so players fire off bids as fast as they can speak to close in on both prices.

Which pricing game has the contestant walk a five-by-five grid of digits to spell out a car's price?

Pathfinder has the contestant step across a five-by-five grid of digits to trace a car's price; a wrong step is survived by correctly pricing one of three small prizes.

What happens when both Price Is Right finalists bid more than their Showcases are worth?

Neither wins: any overbid disqualifies that player whatever the rival did, so two overbids leave both with only what they won earlier in the show.

In which Price Is Right game must a contestant stop a slowly rising window when it covers the prize's price?

Range Game allows one press of the button: the range finder climbs a scale of possible prices from the bottom, and stopping it too early or too late loses the prize.

Bob Barker's on-screen brawl with Adam Sandler's character is in which 1996 film?

Happy Gilmore casts Barker as himself, Happy's pro-am partner, and it is the game-show host who wins the fistfight; the scene took the MTV Movie Award for Best Fight.

Drew Carey came to The Price Is Right after nine seasons of a sitcom set in which city?

Cleveland is Carey's hometown, and he stood up for it off screen too, telling the crowd at the Browns' 1999 return that anyone who had ever told a Cleveland joke could 'now officially shut up'.

The Price Is Right asks its audience to wear street clothes, unlike which costume-filled CBS sister show?

Let's Make a Deal audiences began dressing up to catch the host's eye and be picked as traders, and the habit stuck; Price fans make do with hand-decorated T-shirts.

Bob Barker joined the Naval Reserve during World War II to train as what?

Fighter pilot: Barker left college in 1943 to train, but the war ended before he was given an active-duty assignment, so he never flew in combat and went back to finish his degree.

A Showcase bid within $250 under the price wins what?

Both prize packages: the 'double showcase win' has been on offer since 1974, and in 1998 the margin was widened from $100 to $250.

In the Showcase Showdown, which contestant spins last?

The one with the highest winnings spins last, a real edge: the last spinner knows exactly what score has to be beaten, while the first must guess when to stop.

Drew Carey's signature crew cut dates from his years in which military branch?

Marine Corps: Carey enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve after leaving Kent State University and spent six years as a field radio operator, coming out with the haircut and the horn-rimmed glasses.

In The Price Is Right's Hole in One, what does pricing grocery items in the right order earn?

A shorter putt: each item placed in rising price order moves the contestant a line closer to the hole, and a miss is not the end, because the host then reveals the game's full name, Hole in One or Two.

Where did Drew Carey publicly announce in 2007 that he would succeed Bob Barker?

Late Show with David Letterman kept the news in the family: it was CBS's own late-night show, and Carey broke it there on July 23, 2007, three months before his first episode aired.

In The Price Is Right's Lucky Seven, what does a contestant pay back each time a digit guess is off?

Dollar bills: the player starts with seven, pays one for every number a digit guess is off, and must still hold at least one at the end to 'buy' the car.

In one Price Is Right car game, the third prize is a cash amount under $10, displayed inside what?

A piggy bank holds the small-change prize; the contestant calls digits one at a time and wins whichever of the car, the middle prize or the piggy bank has its price completed first.

Which casino card game inspired the retired pricing game whose grocery multipliers doubled as card values?

Blackjack: in the retired game Hit Me the contestant built a hand against the house's, earning cards by spotting the secret multiplier (1 to 10) applied to each grocery item's price.

Which company produced 'The Price Is Right' throughout the 2010s?

Fremantle, called FremantleMedia until 2018, got the show by inheritance: it is the renamed Pearson Television, which bought the company that owned Price in the late 1990s.

British regulators made ITV's 1980s Price Is Right drop its wheel round because the round lacked what?

Skill: the Independent Broadcasting Authority ruled that spinning a wheel for a place in the final was a gamble that had nothing to do with knowing prices, so the producers had to put a pricing round in its place.

At Bob Barker's request, old Price Is Right episodes offering which prize are kept out of reruns?

Fur coats: once Barker took up animal rights the show stopped offering furs, and the channel that reruns his era still skips the early episodes that gave them away.

In his book about The Price Is Right, producer Stan Blits calls which popular belief a myth?

Contestants are picked at random, most viewers assume; in fact staff interview the audience in small groups before the taping and choose the nine players from those chats.

Who traded jobs with Drew Carey to host the 2014 April Fools' Day episode?

Craig Ferguson, once Carey's boss Mr. Wick on The Drew Carey Show, hosted Price on April 1, 2014, the day after Carey had taken over Ferguson's Late Late Show.

Which CBS game show was Drew Carey hosting when he was picked to replace Bob Barker?

Power of 10 lasted only from August 2007 to January 2008, by which time Carey had already begun his far longer run on Price.

Which car, priced at $285,716, was offered in 3 Strikes during 2013's Big Money Week?

A Ferrari 458 Italia Spider more than doubled the previous record, a $112,845 Tesla Roadster offered in 2010, but the contestant struck out and it stayed in the studio.

Doing what in the past year bars a Price Is Right contestant?

Playing another game show within a year rules a contestant out; so does being under 18, though until 1988 teenagers and children could sit in the audience.

Which retired game offered $100,000 for stacking six grocery items?

Pay the Rent had players stack six grocery items in a model house, mailbox to attic, each level worth more than the last; they could stop and bank less, but one level priced too low lost it all.

The Price Is Right's 30th Anniversary Special in 2002 was taped in which city, away from Los Angeles?

Las Vegas hosted the 2002 special at the Rio casino resort, and the trip had a sequel: Harrah's went on to stage The Price Is Right Live! as a touring casino show.

Before CBS revived it in 1972, the original Price Is Right premiered in 1956 on which network?

NBC aired the original from November 1956 until 1963, when the show jumped to ABC for its last two years; NBC also ran a weekly prime-time edition.

Which streaming service launched a 24-hour 'The Barker Era' channel in December 2020?

Pluto TV, the free streamer owned by CBS's parent company, launched the channel on December 1, 2020, starting with 1980s shows, some of them unseen since they first aired.

From 1991 to 2008, nearly every car offered came from which group, at Barker's insistence?

Detroit's Big Three: as executive producer, Barker insisted on cars from GM, Ford and Chrysler from 1991, during the Gulf War, until after his 2007 retirement; imports returned under Carey.

Bob Barker spent most of his youth on which reservation, where his mother taught school?

Rosebud, in South Dakota, was home for most of Barker's boyhood; the family later moved to Springfield, Missouri, where he went to Drury College on a basketball scholarship.

What was the title of Bob Barker's 2009 autobiography?

Priceless Memories, written with Digby Diehl, brought Barker back to the show for the first time since retiring: in April 2009 he returned to plug it and gave copies to the audience.

Which card is wild in The Price Is Right's Card Game?

The ace is wild: number cards add $100 times their value and face cards $1,000, but an ace can raise the bid by any amount and may be played at once or saved for later.

Which Price Is Right game gives 35 seconds for five higher-or-lower guesses, then reveals the right ones first?

Hot Seat carries the player past five prizes in a motorized chair; right guesses are revealed first, each raising the cash, so the tension is when to quit before a wrong one wipes it out.

Which Price Is Right game lost Bob Barker's name from its title when it returned to the lineup in 2012?

Bargain Game is the renamed Barker's Bargain Bar: two prizes are shown at marked-down prices and the player picks the bigger bargain; it returned with a new set and name in April 2012.

Which model, hired under Bob Barker in 2003, was The Price Is Right's second-longest-serving by 2025?

Rachel Reynolds, a former LSU track athlete, has passed 20 years on the show, a mark only one other model has reached, and once modeled wedding wear on air with her husband, ex-major-leaguer David Dellucci.

Which Young and the Restless actor hosted the revamped syndicated Price Is Right of 1994?

Doug Davidson, Paul Williams on The Young and the Restless, fronted a 1994 revival that dropped Contestants' Row altogether; it was gone within five months.

Price Is Right superfan Ted Slauson, the subject of a 2017 documentary, worked as what?

A math teacher, Slauson spent decades memorizing prize prices and, from the audience, shouted them to contestants, which the show's rules allow.

In which Price Is Right game must a contestant remove the one digit that doesn't belong in a price?

Squeeze Play shows the price with one extra digit slipped into the middle; the first and last are always right, and once the player pulls a digit the rest slide together to show the result.

Which Price Is Right producer is credited with inventing its famous pegboard-and-chips game?

Frank Wayne was the show's executive producer from the 1972 premiere until his death in 1988, when Bob Barker added the job to his own; his best-known invention arrived in 1983.

Which Price Is Right game hides two prizes behind a lock that opens only when the smaller prize is priced right?

Safe Crackers shows the three digits of the smaller prize's price on dials; spin them into the right order and the giant safe swings open on both prizes.

In The Price Is Right's Rat Race, mechanical rats run around a track shaped like what?

A dollar sign: each good price guess lets the player back one of five colored rats, and first place wins the car, with second and third paying smaller prizes.

The Price Is Right's second announcer flew where several times a year for his custom silk jackets?

Thailand: he had the jackets made up in bright Thai silk, a look Bob Barker encouraged until it became a staple of the show, and he also served as an official ambassador for Chiang Mai.

Which other game show premiered on CBS the very same morning as the 1972 Price revival?

The Joker's Wild led off CBS's new game block that morning, and it was the show Bob Barker said he would gladly host; the network talked him into taking Price instead.

Who hosted the first British version of The Price Is Right on ITV from 1984 to 1988?

Leslie Crowther won the job over singer Joe Brown after both recorded pilot episodes; Bruce Forsyth's turn came only in 1995, when ITV brought the format back under his name.

Which ABC show did Drew Carey host for years before taking over The Price Is Right?

Whose Line Is It Anyway came to ABC in 1998 while Carey was still starring in his own sitcom on the same network, so for years he fronted two prime-time shows at once.

In The Price Is Right's tic-tac-toe game Secret X, where on the board is the hidden X always placed?

The center column hides the secret X, and the player's own X's may go only in the outer columns, so a win has to run across or diagonally, never straight down.

The Lion's Share, added to The Price Is Right in 2025, is sponsored by which company?

BetMGM, whose logo is a lion, put its name to the game: five of the 40 balls in the wind chamber are worth $100,000 each, and five more wipe out everything won so far.

In 2012 The Price Is Right ran an online contest to find its first what?

Male model: Rob Wilson won the web series Male Model Search and stayed on, and a second search in 2014 brought in James O'Halloran.

In Contestants' Row, economists say the smart last bidder tops a rival's bid by exactly how much?

$1 over a rival's bid claims every price above it and leaves that rival needing an exact hit; economists who studied the show found it the rational move for a late bidder.

Which retired game, built around an animatronic puppet, was played only twice?

Professor Price, an animatronic puppet who kept score on his fingers, asked trivia questions whose one-digit answers helped build the car's price; played only twice, it was won both times.

In 2007, which magazine named The Price Is Right the greatest game show ever?

TV Guide gave it the title in 2007, a long way from 1973, when the show's own nighttime host shrugged that critics would 'always look down their noses' at game shows.

Which Price Is Right model ran off in tears when a 1976 host joked 'There goes Fritz!' during a game?

Janice Pennington's husband, the mountaineer Fritz Stammberger, had vanished on a climb the year before; the host, who did not know, had simply picked a name for a figure on the game board.

Which future Scooby-Doo and Dead to Me star won a fireplace as a Price Is Right contestant in 1994?

Linda Cardellini was 19 when she won the fireplace in her first TV appearance, five years before Freaks and Geeks; she told The Daily Show in 2013 that she still had it.