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Bob Barker dies at 99

Maybe I'll end up finding "young Kelly" on an '80s TPIR clip somewhere. Often you'd see the pages and their red suits on camera, standing in the back of the audience. ;)
My oldest recording (personally) that I've found of TPIR was a partial 1987 episode, just before Bob went to gray hair. A contestant from Yakima got to come on down and won on Clock Game. I have a few episodes from December 1989-January 1990 in storage, along with another from April of 1990. All of these were estate sale finds on VHS!

I'll have to find that Priceless Moments book. Unfortunately, none of the nearby library systems have that book. I recently found David Brinkley's autobiography and it's a great read. The episodes with fur coats are probably the hardest to find in the trading circuit because Game Show Network did not air those in the mid to late '90s as per Barker's request and his long-time stance on animal rights. GSN dropped TPIR in 2000.
 
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I saw something on Inside Edition the other day that Bob's girlfriend of 40 years, Nancy Burnet, had been making plans for a big 100th birthday bash for him. It's almost a coincidence that both Betty White and Bob Barker were close to making 100 before God called them upstairs.
It's been said that Bob Barker is probably grinning somewhere, because he lived so close to being 100 without going over (a sentiment that fans of the show should appreciate :))
 
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If it goes for $500, I'll bid $501. You know, like what 75% of contestants try to do (and sometimes succeed at) on TPIR. Stealing the bid. ;)

I can't remember when that $1 bid trend started on TPIR. Back in the '90s, perhaps?
 
I second that. I was cracking up at that Ten Chances blooper that they showed. I wish they would have shown more of his animal activism efforts, but the focus was on Price - and undoubtedly so.
Not shown were Vanna White's walk down to Contestant's Row and Yolanda's wardrobe malfunction in '77 as she "came on down and they came on up", I believe Bob said. A few of those clips I had never seen before.

Thank you, Drew Carey, for sharing these memories with us tonight. Some good memories came roaring back...when life was simpler. AKA, summer vacation and/or sick with the flu from school!
 
Yesterday driving down Route 322 outside Philadelphia I chanced to see one of those rotating LED billboards as it "turned" to a "page" paying tribute to Mr. Barker. It showed Bob's smiling (B&W) portrait (before he went gray), his birth and death years, and the word "PRICELESS" in the TPIR logo font. RIP Bob.
 
If it goes for $500, I'll bid $501. You know, like what 75% of contestants try to do (and sometimes succeed at) on TPIR. Stealing the bid. ;)

I can't remember when that $1 bid trend started on TPIR. Back in the '90s, perhaps?
I remember once when a contestant bid $1, thinking that the other three had overbid. But right before Bob read the actual retail price, the chimes sounded, meaning that one of the other three contestants had bid exactly right! Well, not to let a moment pass unnoticed, he said, "wouldn't it be funny if (so-and-so, who had bid $1) was the one who got it right!"
 
Well before that. In the mid 80s, a contestant bid $2 in response to an earlier $1 bid and Bob Barker made mention of it being the first time anyone had (at the time) bid $2 in response to the $1 bid.
I don't remember that, but I remember that a contestant had bid $1501, to which another had bid $1502. Those "cute bids" don't work, unless you get to bid last!
 
You'd think he'd know how hard to spin the wheel. I've seen him do it for people before.

I didn't watch the show that many times but I did enjoy that.

Somehow my local affiliate forgot to cancel the list of shows to air on Thursday night. It was still the old list.
 
I was having my car inspected this morning; the place where I take it has the TV tuned to the Barker episodes on Pluto TV. They had one with something I'm sure has happened more than once but I had not seen it until now: a woman bid $1 on her showcase. She must have guessed that her opponent, who bid $25,000, had gone over. Sure enough the $25,000 bid was too much and our $1 bidder won her showcase.
 
That was a very good special (tribute to Bob Barker.). And I don’t remember the last time I saw a broadcast network show run all the ending credits on a full screen.

A lost art, IMO (a variation being when the credits are shown against a slideshow of scenes from the episode).
 
Alzheimer's disease is the cause of Barker's death. Apparently, he had been secretly fighting it for years before he left us. My grandpa had dementia and Alzheimer's and it was a sad last few years for him. Seeing things that weren't there, losing memories of people, etc.

 
That was a very good special (tribute to Bob Barker.). And I don’t remember the last time I saw a broadcast network show run all the ending credits on a full screen.

A lost art, IMO (a variation being when the credits are shown against a slideshow of scenes from the episode).

I mean, there is a current labor strike ongoing in the industry. How much of that memorial episode was 'in the can'?

I'd be willing to go with quite a bit of it.

Could there have been some 'special dispensation' granted by the union to allow the production to be completed and aired so soon after Bob's passing?

I'd be willing to go along with that. Full screen ending credits may have simply been a "Thanks!" toward the unions (and their members...) for allowing the production to be completed and aired as the labor dispute continues.
 
I mean, there is a current labor strike ongoing in the industry. How much of that memorial episode was 'in the can'?

I'd be willing to go with quite a bit of it.

Could there have been some 'special dispensation' granted by the union to allow the production to be completed and aired so soon after Bob's passing?

I'd be willing to go along with that. Full screen ending credits may have simply been a "Thanks!" toward the unions (and their members...) for allowing the production to be completed and aired as the labor dispute continues.
I imagine they had the clips in the can and just brought Drew in to do the stand ups.
 
I wonder where CBS keeps the TPIR tape archives? Especially since Television City was sold off, and the Pluto TV contract to show early-mid '80s episodes with Johnny Olson. We should be lucky that Price is Right's 1972 revival went to CBS - and NOT to NBC or ABC, who both showed the old Bill Cullen version. NBC and ABC were still erasing and wiping daytime game shows until nearly 1980! CBS had abandoned that practice years prior, and that's why we have entire archives of daytime Joker's Wild and early TPIR to enjoy for years to come.

I do wonder, if quad tapes of Wink Martindale's Gambit are hiding in a storage closet waiting to be archived. Only five episodes seem to exist from the daytime run on CBS, even though they had stopped wiping around that time. And the NBC 'Las Vegas Gambit' was I think, the last show that the network wiped, for the most part.
 
Could there have been some 'special dispensation' granted by the union to allow the production to be completed and aired so soon after Bob's passing?
Not sure how this would have been impacted by the strike as game show hosts (and daytime soap actors) are covered by a different contract which is why TPIR is current in production for new episodes for the fall.
 
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