Isn't everything colorless when the electricity's off in a room without windows? 
Not when your colours come from paint instead of lights.
I do not understand how you are not getting this...the audiences have changed. people have changed. Its still a novelty for some to go to the show, but for many- not so much. The live audience, much like the watching audience and ratings, are down but still up at the top because things have changed. The show adjusted accordingly. Its not really a bad thing.
And I do not understand why me having an opinion to the contrary about how
I would like to see the show produced (not speaking of
which way to produce the show makes the most sense financially) is such a problem for you. I get that things have changed, and I get that the production company and the network are going to cater to audience trends. They have their preferences, and I have mine. Theirs is the one that ultimately gets on the air.
They're also limiting the tickets as best as they can because they don't want to have to turn people away. If I traveled 3000 miles across the country with what I thought were tickets to the show only to get turned away because I showed up at the time on the ticket and not 17 hours beforehand, I think I'd be a little more than disappointed.
I agree that going to the taping with a ticket that guarantees admission is probably something preferred by everybody, but my point was that historically demand for tickets always outstripped supply of available seats by a huge margin. It says to me that if they believe 170 seats is now sufficient, then not too many people are being turned away in the sense that they wanted to get tickets but couldn't (for I guess if they were, they would be snapped up in seconds upon becoming available). A quick check of the website as I write this shows plenty of tickets available for upcoming tapings in 2.5 weeks and beyond, so if you're not getting even 170 people clamouring for tickets each day anymore, then it's a sad reality that people have lost interest in attending the show in person (a trend that started before they reduced the audience size). I suppose you could surmise various reasons reasons for that (I'd like to know how much of it is the compressed taping schedule where they're trying to fit in three shows a day and the simple fact there are fewer calendar days now on which you can attend a taping).
The show hasn't acknowledged the old-timey and super outdated specific phrasing that Barker used in many years. They did however do a primetime special in February where they invited 20 "superfans" including yours truly. Superfan is now the show sanctioned title. It's also a phrase that makes sense at first glance and doesn't need to be explained every time it gets abbreviated.
No offense, but this seems unreasonably harsh towards a term that was organically developed as a result of the show's longevity, and really, it surprises me a bit that the new regime never attempted to capitalize on this in official merchandise such as t-shirts and the like.
Superfan is pretty generic, but "loyal friend and true" was a term unique to Price.
You nurse your wounds and make the best out of a bad situation... My point is that 15 years is way too long to let that firing live rent free in his head.
Agreed, but I what I surmise could be part of the reason for the strong resentment all these years later is that nothing more has come along, and likely nothing ever would for a producer near retirement age. One might say he should never have expected anything to "come along" (whether he actually did or not, I don't know) and to be more enterprising, and I agree. If you want a job, you do what you can do get one; but if nobody wants anymore what you're selling, then you either sell something else or give up. He doesn't appear to be starving by having taken the latter, but it was an ending without closure. His career did not end on a positive note, and I think that's what's bothering him more than anything else.
