A Few Thoughts About TPIR

[CarShark]

Let me just preface this by saying I like the show as it is. I love Drew's silly entrances. I like the looser atmosphere. I like the more modern music. The green screen is nice...when they execute it well and have moving images. The Showcases...well...I liked them in the beginning, but now they're just strange. Anyways...

A couple days ago, someone posted a clip of the January 6, 2003 episode of Price. IMO, it's a pretty good one. It's not THE best, but it has special importance to me because it's the first episode of the show that I've ever watched. I had just gotten my tape recorder as a gift, so I decided to tape it since I had never watched it before. I liked it a lot, so I watched it over and over again for two weeks, and kept taping for a year after that.

So a contestant named Maricella won the first IUFB plus $500 for a perfect bid. (She called it "gas money".) She followed Bob to the turntable and collected her bonus. Bob pointed to one of the doors, Maricella bent forward, and saw it open to...a trip to Alaska. As the appropriate music played, I saw the most dejected look on a contestants face I'd ever seen. Especially since she hadn't even played the game yet. Then I saw her mouth "I wanted a car." I thought that was odd, but didn't think much of it. Until it happened again before Cliff Hangers. And again before Squeeze Play. A polite but pained smile and a look of utter confusion. I was starting to wonder what I liked about this show so much.

Where I'm going this is connecting it to another thread right here, where I mentioned that Let 'em Roll was played first. I mentioned that I liked that pricing games were being moved out of slots where they "belong" into new ones, when Steve said that the show was only going to start with car or cash games. I was confused, because I was only thinking in terms of variety, but again I didn't think much of it.

Now that I've seen a couple weeks worth of shows, I can say that I do still like seeing games coming up first when they traditionally haven't. However, I also think I'm feeling the show starting to shift from being about several elements (the crazy contestants, affable host, funny announcer, beautiful models and varied games) to being one about CARS! and CASH! and BIG WINS! It feels like any segment without those three elements is lacking. Like they're just the bits between the parts of the show people actually care about. Outside of the Showcases, there doesn't seem to be much interaction between Drew and anyone else, save for some staged IUFB skits and his usual "Alakazam" and "dangerous to Switch". I don't know if it's a function of having less time or not. The prospect of not having to play Squeeze Play and Double Prices seven times a month just to fit six games in is one of the reasons I'm semi-excited about the rumors that the show might go from 6 games to 4.

Did I miss the part where the show became Carey's Cash 'n Cars Comedy Cavalcade? I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much into this. Maybe I should'nt look at these clips while I'm studying for a psychology test. Is the show starting to focus on the big prizes at the expense of everything else? If the audience likes it, is it really such a bad thing?

[Steve Gavazzi]

I'm not sure how you can really make an "if the audience likes it" argument at this point, though -- so far, the ratings indicate that people don't like a whole lot about the show these days (the ratings, as far as I know, are the lowest they've ever been), and this particular change only took effect permanently this week.

Every complaint I've heard about the show from casual viewers centers around Drew Carey just being too different from Bob Barker -- and with that in mind, I'm not sure how they intend to improve things by changing the show to fit Drew instead of the other way around.  Bob would always be able to get things back on track quickly if a contestant didn't get what he wanted; Drew has gone so far as to insult the prizes on the air.  You mentioned several important elements of the show besides the prizes that are important, CarShark; it seems to me that if Drew would start reemphasizing those instead of trying to rely entirely on cars, cash, and jokes that are only funny to him, the whole operation would be a lot better off.

[TroubadourNando]

Based on what I've seen over the past month, I'm giving it until the end of the year, and if things don't change even a little, I'm simply going to stop watching.

[J.R.]

Meh, I've never cared about the prizes myself.

Aside from the lame Showcase gags, I'm not too bothered by the direction the season's going really.

[Fedya]

Frankly I like when Drew insults the prizes that don't have a fee-plug brand given.  (Obviously, you can't insult the sponsors.)  I remember seeing a basketball-shaped deep fryer (I think that's what it was) as one of the small prizes in Cliff Hangers, and Drew was going off on it.  After all, who would want one of those?

Of course, I'm also the one person who hates Plinko....

[chad1m]

[quote name=\'Fedya\' post=\'201774\' date=\'Nov 16 2008, 09:34 PM\'] Frankly I like when Drew insults the prizes that don't have a fee-plug brand given.[/quote]Eh, I like when he jokes about the combinations in the one-bid (a grill coming with a supply of laxatives, for instance) but the making fun of the prizes just rubs me a bit wrongly. I mean, if I'm a sponsor and you see him cracking wise about some of the items, I might not want to have my items plugged because they might get ripped by Drew.

[abba]

I really hope the show will remain to have 6 games.

[Jimmy Owen]

I can recall Bob Barker dissing prizes on the air, specifically the first edition of EOTVGS when it came up during a one-bid of books.  After the description, Bob asked Janice if it had a picture of TPIR on the cover.  Janice pointed to the pic of Cullen Price. When confronted with the fact that it was not his version, Bob then walked over to the display, ripped the book from the wall and tossed it to the floor.

As far as declining ratings, "The View" may be more appealing and relevant to women these days than "Price."  During the weeks preceding the election, what happened on "The View" made the news quite often.

[CJBojangles]

[quote name=\'Fedya\' post=\'201774\' date=\'Nov 16 2008, 10:34 PM\']Of course, I'm also the one person who hates Plinko....[/quote]
I assure you, you're not alone.

[Steve Gavazzi]

[quote name=\'Jimmy Owen\' post=\'201785\' date=\'Nov 16 2008, 11:47 PM\']As far as declining ratings, "The View" may be more appealing and relevant to women these days than "Price."  During the weeks preceding the election, what happened on "The View" made the news quite often.[/quote]
I don't know...that might be one contributing factor, but for what has traditionally been the #1 or #2 show of the daypart to suddenly be facing what I believe are the lowest viewership numbers it's ever had...it's hard to believe that that isn't at least partly the fault of Price itself.

And it also doesn't explain how the Friday night broadcast managed to lose 35% of the audience from its lead-in, which was the #1 show that whole night.

[Dbacksfan12]

[quote name=\'Fedya\' post=\'201774\' date=\'Nov 16 2008, 09:34 PM\']Of course, I'm also the one person who hates Plinko....[/quote]You're not alone.  I dislike the game too.

I don't know...that might be one contributing factor, but for what has traditionally been the #1 or #2 show of the daypart to suddenly be facing what I believe are the lowest viewership numbers it's ever had...it's hard to believe that that isn't at least partly the fault of Price itself.

Isn't daytime (and syndie) down across the board?

[TimK2003]

One thing that I noticed on the Friday show was that they pretty much followed the daytime version as far as scheduling the commercial breaks (unlike the Million Dollar Specials when they sometimes went from one game to the next without a commercial).

Did this particular primetime show have less commercial time than it's Million Dollar predecessors?

The only reason why I ask is that it seemed that even though they took some extra time in the show open, the $2000 bonus prizes for those who won their way up and the extra few seconds on the military band, they still played a good selection of pricing games (not all quickie games), and still did not look like it was rushed and/or heavilly edited.

And I also liked maintaining the "one from each branch" format in contestants row.

[Jimmy Owen]

I thought the "primetime" episode was meant to be a stop-gap so CBS wouldn't have to air "The Ex-List."  It was a daytime show plunked (plinked?) into primetime.

The TV listing book from my paper as well as the national TV Guide magazine didn't have the programming change, so many may have not known "Price" was even gonna be on.

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'Steve Gavazzi\' post=\'201789\' date=\'Nov 17 2008, 12:25 AM\']I don't know...that might be one contributing factor, but for what has traditionally been the #1 or #2 show of the daypart to suddenly be facing what I believe are the lowest viewership numbers it's ever had...it's hard to believe that that isn't at least partly the fault of Price itself.[/quote]
I just don't think we can use the ratings to prove anything one way or another about this ongoing debate.  "At least partly the fault of Price itself"?  Sure, maybe.  But we don't know whether business-as-usual with a competent but not-Barker host (a Todd Newton, to use one popular example) would be doing any better.  Yes, casual viewers tell me the same thing about Drew not being as good as Bob.  But I have to believe they'd say the same thing about anybody who took that gig.

The ascendancy of The View is definitely a factor.  When Price topped the daytime ratings, it really didn't have much in the way of network competition.  Now it faces off against one of the most buzzed-about shows on television.

With the possible exception of The View, network daytime ratings are falling everywhere.  While we fret about what's going on with TPIR, other fans are fretting about the future of their precious soap operas in general, and one or two of them very specifically.  We may simply be looking at the beginnings of a fundamental change in how daytime television works.

Tweaking the games and making the show more Drewish may very well be like arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  However, I'm just not so sure that the iceberg could have been avoided.

[Steve Gavazzi]

[quote name=\'Modor\' post=\'201804\' date=\'Nov 17 2008, 06:32 AM\']Isn't daytime (and syndie) down across the board?[/quote]
Yes, but even so, Price's rating relative to the other shows was generally unchanged or sometimes even up.  Since Drew came in, though, it's down significantly.

[quote name=\'TimK2003\' post=\'201807\' date=\'Nov 17 2008, 09:28 AM\']One thing that I noticed on the Friday show was that they pretty much followed the daytime version as far as scheduling the commercial breaks (unlike the Million Dollar Specials when they sometimes went from one game to the next without a commercial).[/quote]
Simple reason for that -- as Jimmy correctly pointed out, it was a daytime show.