The end of a very long road

[SteveR]

This holds true for most, if not all, of the regular posters here.

Every day of our lives has had at least this one constant -- Bob Barker on weekday television, whether it be ToC or TPiR.

Today is the last day of that constant.

I know it's not earth-shaking or anywhere close to new, just a quirky thing that caught my interest.

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'SteveR\' post=\'166489\' date=\'Oct 12 2007, 11:13 AM\']
This holds true for most, if not all, of the regular posters here.

Every day of our lives has had at least this one constant -- Bob Barker on weekday television, whether it be ToC or TPiR.[/quote]
Most, but not all.  Many of us are older than 35, and among that group, some didn't get the syndicated ToC where they live.

[daveromanjr]

I was thinking the same thing.  I'm off from work today and had it on when I was having breakfast and I realized that, for the first time Monday, Bob won't be on TV in the morning after this.  I'm not exactly a huge fan of Bob Barker but it still fells weird.

[chad1m]

Shame that we don't get cable through the televisions in my school anymore - I'm eating lunch in a classrom and it would be cool to see the final minutes of Barker. Oh, well... I guess life moves on.

[SteveR]

OK. I'm lucky. Not so much to be 45, but that I live in DC, where we got ToC -- and I remember being floored when I saw they were giving away a house.

Just checking, was ToC always a daily show?

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'SteveR\' post=\'166498\' date=\'Oct 12 2007, 11:02 AM\']
OK. I'm lucky. Not so much to be 45, but that I live in DC, where we got ToC -- and I remember being floored when I saw they were giving away a house.

Just checking, was ToC always a daily show?
[/quote]
With Barker, yes.  Ralph Edwards, Jack Bailey and Steve Dunne hosted the three failed attempts to do the show in prime time as a weekly series.

In fact, Barker is the only host that has made "T or C" work on television.  My theory is that the show didn't work on TV because the stunts was always more devious and tortuous in the minds of radio listeners than they were in the flesh (or on the screen)--the old "theater of the mind."  Unlike his predecessors (and Larry Anderson--can't comment on Bob Hilton because I never saw his version), Barker put more of the focus on the contestants and their personalities than the stunts themselves.  That's why his version outlasted all of the others--and why I would argue that his work on "T or C" surpassed his more popular work on "TPIR."

[tvmitch]

Today is the final day that Barker has at least had some national presence on weekday television since 1956. Not all of us might have seen him dating back that far, he was seen daily on the majority of American TV for the last 51 years. Quite a feat.

[DrBear]

Granted, some of this is age...but I really used to look forward to T or C at 5:00 (back in the day when stations didn't put news in that hour in the Midwest). I never had that feeling with TPIR...I think you're right about Barker doing better work on the earlier show, and I think part of that may have been that it varied from day to day much more than TPIR did.