Priceless Memories - Bob Barker [13]
I have always said that game shows within the television industry are like the stock market. There are times when they are enormously popular. Several shows within the genre will flourish, and programmers will be flooding the market with new game shows. Then there are times when game shows slump, popularity wanes, and the networks pull back. But like the stock market, after a while, the game shows surge back in popularity.
Goodson had talked to me at one time about doing another show called Beat the Clock for syndication. For me that was a problem because I was doing Truth or Consequences in syndication and my contract stipulated that I could not do another syndicated show. I didn’t want to leave Truth and I couldn’t do both, so Mark and I couldn’t get together on Beat the Clock.
But a few years later, in 1972, Mark contacted me about doing a network show. Contractually there would not be a problem—although my contract for T or C prohibited me from doing another syndicated program, I could do a network show. Mark wanted to bring back The Price Is Right on CBS, and he wanted me as the host. We met, and he told me about his ideas for various games he wanted to do on the show and how he wanted to structure the format. Mark told me he thought I would be perfect for the show and asked me if I was interested. I thought it was a great idea. After all, it was the kind of audience participation show I had been doing all my life, and I did not have to leave Truth or Consequences.
Before The Price Is Right came back on the air, audience participation shows had lost some of their luster. In fact, CBS had not had a game show on the network for four years. However, both Mark Goodson and I were confident that The New Price Is Right, as it was called then, would be very successful. Mark had fine-tuned the show to make it much faster moving, more audience friendly, and more dynamic all around. Also, the show was designed to give me every opportunity to interact with the contestants and the studio audience. It would have the feel of a live event—with more games, more variety, and, of course, bigger prizes.
It was still a gamble, I suppose, but those of us involved thought we had a winning formula. I started doing The Price Is Right on September 4, 1972. The longest and most rewarding ride of my career was under way.
As it turned out, I did leave Truth or Consequences about three years later, but for the first three years that I was on Price—1972 through 1974—I did both shows. I was on a half hour a day with Price, and a half hour every night with Truth. By 1975, we had taped enough Truth shows for a year of syndication. These shows had been seen in only four markets. In a smart move, they just stopped production, used the backlog, and made nothing but money for a year with no production costs. During that year, Price went from its half-hour format to a full hour.
Truth or Consequences wanted me to do the show again, but Sol Leon, a legendary agent with the William Morris Agency who was representing me at the time, advised me not to do it. He said that with an hour in the daytime and a half hour at night I’d be overexposed. I took his advice, and we passed on continuing with Truth or Consequences. Also, my decision was influenced by the fact that some of the people with whom I had worked were gone, the most important one being Ed Bailey, the producer. Bobby Lauher, one of my favorite writers on the show, had died as well, and Charlie Lyon, a dear friend, had retired.
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Mark Goodson was a smart businessman, a generous soul, and the one who brought me to The Price Is Right. I did hear a few years later, however, that Mark wasn’t the only one who wanted me to do The Price