Long Discontinued Game Show Practices (that Lasted Longer Than You Thought)

[WilliamPorygon]

That's no different than the Idiot Stack that Tomarken would go to on PYL if there weren't enough spins handed out to be interesting.

I suppose that's a fair point too.   

[TimK2003]

Without going into specifics, Bob/Drew had/has a way of knowing where the car and master keys are before walking to the locks, although the specific method is different for each host.

It's up to the host to decide which key the contestant should try first, and because it's so rare for a contestant to find both the car and the master keys, it isn't surprising that in the heat of the moment, he wouldn't remember to do the nonintuitive thing and have the contestant use the master key first. I'd be willing to bet that there's at least one episode out there where Bob did that, too.

I wonder if the "which key to try first" question boiled down to how the show was on time by that point. If the show was running long, go right to the master key and catch up by a minute or two....Need to stretch?  Save the master key for last and milk the suspense for as long as you need to.

[Steve Gavazzi]

Elaborating a bit on Price's mid-show bumper:  It was cut because the show, not for the first time, lost 30 seconds of program time to ads, and they were getting close to the point where they thought it might start screwing up the format if they didn't find some unimportant stuff to make shorter.  Off the top of my head, around the same time, they also cut about half length of the music on the closed-captioning plugs, stopped doing the ticket plug on Tuesdays and Thursdays, changed Safe Crackers to start with Door #2 already open, and stopped writing full-length copy for non-sponsored groceries.

[aaron sica]

Elaborating a bit on Price's mid-show bumper:  It was cut because the show, not for the first time, lost 30 seconds of program time to ads, and they were getting close to the point where they thought it might start screwing up the format if they didn't find some unimportant stuff to make shorter.

Not just the when, but the WHY, from someone that I know would know. Another mystery solved. Thank you!!

[Mr. Armadillo]

TL;DR: If the keys were assigned randomly, each one would win the car 40% of the time, but they're not, and Key #1 wins the car over 80% of the time, though nobody outside of g-r would realize it

Right. I'm just completely baffled that S&P lets that stand when it's so easy to rent a monkey to pull pool balls out of a bag.

The one that surprises me is that they're allowed to present the stack of range cards in Card Game with the $5,000 card on the bottom (or is it top? I don't remember) almost every time.  You could argue that someone presented with a stack of cards has a reasonable expectation that said stack has been shuffled, but they're clearly hiding the $5,000 card where contestants would never draw it. 

In the 201 playings of Card Game with the current range deck (which is only seven cards), the $5,000 card has been drawn a total of 13 times (as opposed to the 29 you'd expect by random chance).

[BrandonFG]

I thought J! runners-up stopped getting physical consolation prizes sometime in the late-90s. According to Wikipedia, the show didn't start giving away $1,000 and $2,000 until May of 2002.

[nowhammies10]

I thought the range for a Double Showcase Win wasn't changed from "less than $100 away" to "$250 or less away" happened somewhere around the time that the turntable changed from the purple/red/orange to the Hollywood mural design. Turns out the change happened four years earlier, on the first show of the '98-'99 season.

Likewise, I thought the Contestant's Row perfect bid bonus had changed to $500 earlier than it did.  That change also occurred, per Steve's timeline, in November of '98.

[Neumms]

I thought J! runners-up stopped getting physical consolation prizes sometime in the late-90s. According to Wikipedia, the show didn't start giving away $1,000 and $2,000 until May of 2002.

“Physical consolation prizes” made me titter.

When did Barker stop inviting female contestants to reach in his pocket for the perfect-bid reward?

[JasonA1]

I thought J! runners-up stopped getting physical consolation prizes sometime in the late-90s. According to Wikipedia, the show didn't start giving away $1,000 and $2,000 until May of 2002.

Just for fun, I wanted to see what the last set of consolation prizes were. As it turns out, the 2001-2002 season started with a regular pattern of trips for 2nd place and merchandise prizes for 3rd place (like a camera package, golf clubs, etc.). But shortly thereafter, trips started to go to 3rd place as well, with the last week of consolation prizes awarding a nice big trip to both 2nd and 3rd place contestants.

It all left me to wonder if they wanted to make the change much sooner, but could only do so after they burnt through all the agreed-to placements for trips.

-Jason

[aaron sica]

When did Barker stop inviting female contestants to reach in his pocket for the perfect-bid reward?

I don't have an exact date, but as an aside, on Kennedy's version, he just handed it to them.

[NickintheATL]

When did Barker stop inviting female contestants to reach in his pocket for the perfect-bid reward?

I don't have an exact date, but as an aside, on Kennedy's version, he just handed it to them.

IIRC, it stopped happening around the time of the Dian fiasco. This was also around the time Bump was retired as well.

[Mr. Armadillo]

I thought the range for a Double Showcase Win wasn't changed from "less than $100 away" to "$250 or less away" happened somewhere around the time that the turntable changed from the purple/red/orange to the Hollywood mural design. Turns out the change happened four years earlier, on the first show of the '98-'99 season.

Interesting.  I would have guessed that happening way earlier than 1998.

[parliboy]

Interesting.  I would have guessed that happening way earlier than 1998.

IIRC, the show had a season with zero DSWs, and the change was made subsequent to that.

[calliaume]

Just for fun, I wanted to see what the last set of consolation prizes were. As it turns out, the 2001-2002 season started with a regular pattern of trips for 2nd place and merchandise prizes for 3rd place (like a camera package, golf clubs, etc.). But shortly thereafter, trips started to go to 3rd place as well, with the last week of consolation prizes awarding a nice big trip to both 2nd and 3rd place contestants.

It all left me to wonder if they wanted to make the change much sooner, but could only do so after they burnt through all the agreed-to placements for trips.

Does anybody remember when Jeopardy! changed the rule so that the departing and returning flights for their consolation prize trips could only be from Los Angeles?

[WarioBarker]

I thought the Contestant's Row perfect bid bonus had changed to $500 earlier than it did. That change also occurred, per Steve's timeline, in November of '98.

It should be noted that the Kennedy version upped it to $500 pretty early on.