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June 15, 2007  He opened his last price tag and said, "The actual retail price is....," with the same fervor as he did at the end of his first episode on Labor Day 1972. The hair had long since turned snow white. The voice was a fraction thicker. The contestants wore shorts and flip-flops rather than skirts and high heels. Yet, to a fourth and perhaps a fifth generation of television viewers, Bob Barker was stlil Barker.Fifty-one years after he stepped through the curtain in Burbank as Ralph Edwards' hand-picked choice to host a revival of "Truth or Consequences," Bob Barker ended his run as host of "The Price Is Right" as the most enduring performer in television history. Friday's final "Price" with Barker was arguably one of the ten most anticipated walkoffs ever in broadcasting. The former Missourian's swan song was dissected and reflected upon at a level rivaling Walter Cronkite's last "that's the way it is" on the CBS Evening News or Johnny Carson's last night on "The Tonight Show" after nearly 30 years. The irony of it all is had it not been for the quiz scandals in the late 1950s, Barker may not have run the television marathon more successfully than any other performer. In 1959, after three years on the air, NBC canceled "Truth or Consequences" after it was creamed in the ratings for a year by "Dotto" and "Top Dollar." Four weeks later, after NBC's own "Tic Tac Dough" was placed under the microscope of federal investigations into quiz shows, "Truth or Consequences" was quickly revived. When Barker took on the role as host of "The Price Is Right" 35 years ago, it was considered a risk for CBS. The network had been out of the game show business for four years and had no recent track record of success. On top of that, "The Price Is Right" was a brand name that belonged to Bill Cullen, who emceed the original "Price" into a prime time and daytime hit on NBC in the fifties and sixties. "Price" without Cullen was considered unthinkable by its early era loyalists. That quickly changed. Viewers were unprepared for what packager Mark Goodson had done to their favorite. Instead of four contestants at a table onstage bidding on four prizes in a half-hour, the new "Price" featured a faster-moving "games-within-the-game" format. As Barker said in a 1976 interview with Tom Snyder on NBC's "Tomorrow," "If you don't like what we're doing right now, wait about four or five minutes and you may like the next thing." The audience did. The free-wheeling structure which also cemented the phrase "come on down" as part of American culture was tailor-made for Barker. His years of radio and "Truth or Consequences" were a classroom for working one-on-one with audience contestants. For a short stint onstage with Barker, the contestant became the star of the show. Barker knew how to make them the centerpiece. "I listen to what contestants have to say," Barker said in that same 1976 interview with Tom Snyder. A classic Barker sequence came in a 1981 "Price" pre-game interview. A student from the University of South Carolina was called to the "Price" Contestants' Row: Barker: What are you studying at the University of South Carolina?In 1975, Barker turned the television industry on its ear again. CBS experimented with a series of one-hour "Price Is Right" shows, a length which had not been tried with a game show since television's pioneer days. Not only did it work, the hour "Price" was a better show than the half-hour "Price." Barker had more opportunities to interact with the audience and his contestants. Barker demonstrated his moxy more than once a decade later. In 1986, he made the gutsy move to let his hair turn white on the air, despite CBS's objections. The networks preferred their emcees to keep the Grecian Formula in a huge stock. Barker's viewers loved the transition, proving the suits wrong. A year later, as an animal rights activist, he resigned from the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants as emcee after 20 years when the producers refused to stop awarding fur coats to the winners. Through his longevity, Barker has been a survivor. The loss of his beloved wife Dorothy Jo in 1981 nearly sent his life into an emotional tailspin. Yet, he continued to do "Price" when others may have walked away. His squeaky-clean image took a hit in the last decade with lawsuits brought largely by the show's former models and past "Price" employees charging wrongful terminations and sexual harrassment. "If those had happened 20 years ago, Barker may not have survived them," author Wesley Hyatt says in next week's Part 2 interview with TVgameshows.net. "Bob now has too much credibility with the audience and they weren't going to buy into all of those charges." Retirements in show business often take different routes. Some are oxymorons. Frank Sinatra tried retirement in the mid-'70s and promptly un-retired 18 months later. Cronkite left the Evening News anchor desk in 1981, fully expecting to maintain a prominent reporting role. Dan Rather wouldn't have it. Carson was the rare bird. When he walked away, he truly walked away and left us with the fleeting memory of the Friday night he left the stage on NBC in 1992. In his television career, Barker has outlasted ten presidents, the rransition from 45 RPM records to 8-track tape players to cassettes to CDs to blu-ray DVDs, and the eras of Elvis, the British Invasion, disco, heavy metal and hip-hop in music. He's given away enough in cash and merchandise during 51 years to build a small skyscraper in any American city. "The Price Is Right" may have the oldest demographics in television but we continued to watch, more often than not, because Barker was there. He was the constant when everything from our hairlines to our midriffs changed. Some of us who were watching as junior high-age kids when it started now have grandchildren. Through all of it, Barker has been there as that ounce of diversion when our personal worlds were on the verge of collapse. Something was appropriate about Barker's final episode. Other than one of the most expensive daytime prize showcases in the show's history and a wad of confetti falling from the rafters at the beginning, the hour was treated just like any other day. At the end, aside from a brief personal thanks to his audience, Barker reminded us again to "have your pet spayed or neutered." This September, CBS will have a new face walking onstage as the front man for "The Price Is Right" but that will not be Barker's replacement. To replace Barker would be the equivalent of Pillsbury supplanting its doughboy with a stick figure. Television historian Stu Shostak said on a show I did with him two weeks ago, "That person will be filling the shoes of the man who was the greatest at the kind of game show he did that ever lived. The audience will decide very quickly if they like or don't like the new host. If they don't like him, they're gone and 'The Price Is Right' will be too." At Robert MacNeil's retirement dinner, Jim Lehrer said: "I now know how Abbott felt when Costello left, how Brinkley felt when Huntley left, how Sears felt when Roebuck left, and, of course, how Dan Rather felt when Connie (Chung) left." Nearly five generations of television viewers now know how they felt when Bob Barker left.   Miss Francis' gowns by Bonwit Teller © Copyright 2006 TVgameshows.net. All Rights Reserved. |
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