The New Price Is Right (1994 game show)

One of the most significant format changes for The New Price Is Right was the elimination of the long-standing One Bid game, which had been the way to determine who got to come on stage to play a pricing game. Instead, when an audience member was called to “come on down”, that person was immediately brought on stage to play. A total of three pricing games would be played in one program, while the prior syndicated series offered four.

In keeping with a more modern theme, the set designers decided to eschew the bright colors used on the set for the daytime series in favor of using a black stage floor, darker lighting, more muted colors such as silver, purple and gold, a giant wall of video screens, and in some cases a revamp in presentation (see below).

As part of its desire to make the show more modern, as well as to appeal to a younger demographic, the producers made it a point to bring in prize models who were more youthful than those on the daytime series, who were all in their forties. The women they selected, all with connections to the then- hit television series and pop culture phenomenon Baywatch, were less than thirty years of age. Playboy Playmate Julie Lynn Cialini was the youngest of the three, at only twenty-four. Actress Ferrari Farris was the second oldest, coming in at twenty-seven. The oldest was model Lisa Stahl, who was twenty-nine. By comparison, the daytime series at the time was just starting to feature younger prize models; in addition to forty-plus year old Holly Hallstrom and Kathleen Bradley and fifty-plus year old Janice Pennington, the daytime Price Is Right brought in twenty-three year old Gena Lee Nolin for the 1994-95 season (it would not be until the 2000s when the daytime series started employing younger models on a regular basis).

Edd Kalehoff created an entirely new set of music cues, 286 in all, for the series.[3] The traditional Price Is Right theme was used but, like almost everything else involved in the production, it also received an update; the theme was recorded with a faster tempo and a jazzier sound with a saxophone lead as opposed to synthesizers. While the show did not last long, some of Kalehoff’s cues managed to find their way into the music played on the daytime series in the years that followed.

Like the previous syndicated editions, the producers of The New Price Is Right had a significantly larger prize budget to work with. They managed to take advantage of this to a significant level, such as offering more opulent prizes like expensive foreign cars (unlike the daytime series which at the time was strictly offering American makes). This even carried over to pricing games, as ones that traditionally used grocery items instead used merchandise prizes; in the cases of games that already used those prizes for pricing purposes, the values were increased as well.

• Barker's Markers: The name was changed to "Make Your Mark" the single time it was played on this version of the show, as Bob Barker was not the host of this version. This name was adopted on the daytime show in 2008 when Drew Carey became the host.
• Clock Game: Instead of using the prop the daytime series used, the game positioned the contestant in front of the video wall where the prices for the items in question were displayed for the audience to see. In addition, a digital clock was used to keep the time. The contestant was provided a $1,000 range in which to guess the price of each prize. The game frequently used prizes with four-digit prices. On some occasions a third prize was awarded as a bonus for winning (a rule change which was adopted on the daytime version in 2009).
• Hole in One: The item selection process was changed. Instead of the contestant choosing items one at a time and revealing their values afterward, the price for each item was revealed after it was chosen and only placed in line if it was more expensive than the one before it.
• Plinko: While the top prize remained the same at $5,000 per chip for a potential total of $25,000, two configurations of slots were utilized (one of which featured two $2,500 slots in place of the $100 slots). In order to earn chips, the higher/lower guessing format used in games like Punch a Bunch was used due to the merchandise items’ values exceeding $100.
• Punch a Bunch: During some playings, Davidson pulled the slip out of the hole as soon as it was punched. The contestant then decided to keep the money or punch another hole. On the daytime show, the slips are not revealed until the contestant has made all of his or her initial punches.
• Superball: the contestant no longer had to wait until all three prizes had been played to roll. Instead, once the contestant guessed correctly, he/she was given the corresponding ball and rolled it up the ramp.
• 3 Strikes: The first number was lit at the beginning of the game and the number could repeat elsewhere in the price. Four chips representing the remaining numbers in the price were then placed into the bag with three strike chips. These rules were used for a brief period on the daytime show from 2008–2009.

Keeping with the theme that The New Price Is Right was different than its daytime counterpart, the series employed the Showcase Showdown to determine who played for the Showcase. No other thirty-minute TPIR series had done this before; in fact, the round was only introduced due to the original series’ expansion to sixty minutes and the accompanying changes in its format. In all previous thirty-minute shows, the two contestants who won the most in their respective pricing games and One Bids played for the Showcase.

The producers, in another effort to separate their series from the daytime series, conceived a new Showcase Showdown game. The Price Was Right was a reworked version of the One Bid game from the daytime series and played in the same manner.

The three contestants from the day’s pricing games stood at the foot of the stage behind lecterns. Davidson would then direct them to watch the big screen on stage, where a commercial from the past was played. The contestants then were asked how much they thought the item being advertised cost in the year the commercial aired, and the one of them who was closest to the actual value of the item without going over won the right to play the Showcase.

In the event that all three contestants gave guesses that were more than the value of the item, all three bids were erased and they were reminded of the lowest guess before trying again. There was also no bonus given if a contestant guessed the exact value of the item.

Some early episodes of The New Price Is Right used the traditional Showcase Showdown method of spinning “the mighty Price Is Right wheel”, as Burton Richardson referred to it, instead of The Price Was Right; the research staff had not been able to find enough information on old commercials and products when production started.

The round was conducted as it was on the daytime series, but the highest winner spun the Big Wheel first. The contestant closest to one dollar after all three had spun won the right to play for the Showcase, and ties were broken with a spin-off. The contestants still won $1,000 for accumulating exactly one dollar and earned a bonus spin for up to $10,000 more.

Since there was only one contestant playing for the Showcase, the manner in which it was conducted was changed. Instead of placing a bid on it, as the original series did, the contestant played a modified version of the pricing game Range Game.

The game board used for the Showcase was a much larger version of the one used on Range Game, with a starting value of $10,000 at the bottom of the board and the top value set at $70,000. The hash marks on the range each represented an increase of $1,000.

During the commercial break leading out of the Showcase Showdown, the contestant was given a choice of seven random price ranges to choose from, ranging in value from $4,000 to $10,000. After the Showcase was presented to the contestant, Davidson would reveal the value of the range that he/she selected; this was represented by a rangefinder covering that amount, which was placed at the bottom of the range board.

The game then proceeded as a normal round of Range Game would, with the rangefinder climbing slowly up the board and the contestant watching it go. Once the contestant was certain that the value of the Showcase was covered by the rangefinder, he/she pulled a lever to stop it. The value of the Showcase was then revealed, and the contestant won the Showcase if it fell inside the selected range, in addition to anything else he/she won along the way.