Bob Barker Takes a Bow
Coming on down will never be the same again.
Daytime-television icon Bob Barker taped his last episode of The Price Is Right Wednesday, capping a 50-year broadcasting career—35 of them spent on the classic game show—surrounded by die-hard fans, some who traveled thousands of miles and camped out by CBS Television City to ensure a seat for the silver-haired emcee's final bow.
(Although a few of the people lined up outside pondered whether there might be a super-special prize or a brand-new car for every audience member on what promised to be a particularly memorable day, anyway.)
"I'd rather win a couch from Bob Barker than a million dollars from Howie Mandel," NASA engineer Mark Dub, who flew in from Houston, told the Associated Press outside the studio. "He's part of American culture."
Sherry Diamond-Dalton, a former double Showcase winner from Orlando, told USA Today, "Now I realized why some of us cry when the contestants win the cars. It isn't the prizes—it's the moment."
A standing ovation and a shower of colorful confetti greeted Barker as he trotted into the studio.
Having already been feted by CBS with two prime-time specials—both of them ratings winners, attracting a collective 28 million viewers—Barker promised beforehand that today's hourlong taping would be "just another show."
Cash may have been won and prizes may have been doled out (and there was definitely some yelping and jumping and mad cheering) and Barker answered questions from the studio audience during commercial breaks and signed off by saying, "Help control the pet population, have your pets spayed or neutered. Goodbye, everybody."
But Happy Gilmore's animal-friendly nemesis then took a moment to address the crowd after the cameras had stopped rolling for the last time.
"I thank you, thank you, thank you for inviting me into your home for more than 50 years," Barker said. "I'm truly grateful, and I hope that all of you have enjoyed your visit to The Price Is Right."
Barker told the AP before the show that, while he'll miss it and the people he works with "terribly," and that he knows "I will have periods after I'm once retired when I'll think, Boy, I wish I was going over there to do The Price Is Right,' " he has no regrets about his decision to retire.
"Isn't that strange? I expected to have second thoughts," he said. But he admitted, "How many 83-year-old men get up every morning knowing that they're going to have a standing ovation sometime during the day?"
Barker, a radio man originally, got his start in television in 1956 hosting the game show Truth or Consequences, which he helmed until 1975.
Barker announced in October that he'd be wrapping things up in June, and here we are. When he broke the news, he had only missed three episodes—back in 1974—since The Price Is Right's premiere on Sept. 4, 1972.
Meanwhile, the episode taped today is scheduled to air June 15. And that will be all, folks.
While Barker is, as he told KFWB radio, moving on to "sleeping until noon, then golf all day—come on down," the Price will go on, although under whose skinny-miked tutelage, no one knows.
Rumored to be in the running are Entertainment Tonight's Mark Steines; actors and Dancing with the Stars alums George Hamilton and John O'Hurley; and E! personality Todd Newton, who also hosts a live stage version of The Price Is Right at Bally's in Las Vegas.
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