‘THE PRICE IS RIGHT LIVE’ IS COMING TO TOWN!

I can hear the voice of the late Rod Roddy (former announcer for The Price is Right): “Cleveland, Ohio, come on down!”

The Price Is Right Live stage show is coming to Playhouse Square’s KeyBank State Theater on Thursday, September 19! The show will include all of the television program viewers’ favorite games, including Plinko and Cliffhanger, a Showcase Showdown, and, of course, no Price Is Right iteration can be complete without the Big Wheel!

The Price Is Right has been a staple on television for 52 years! (It is, hands down, the longest-running game show in television history!) With a target audience that includes adolescents on summer break from school, retirees, stay-at-home parents, people playing hookey from work, savvy consumers, and anybody else near a television at 11:00 AM, The Price Is Right is legendary!

For folks unfamiliar (assuming such people exist), the televised version features contestants who are selected from the live studio audience to “bid” (aka guess prices) of consumer products (without going over), who then have the opportunity to play a game that includes more price tag guessing to win BIG prizes that range from household appliances, vacations, and even brand new cars! Contestants are then eligible to spin the Big Wheel, where they are given two spins and need the sum of the landing spots to total less than one dollar, with the highest score being selected to participate in the final Showcase Showdown, where a plethora of prices of high value are at stake. Lucky contestants can take home quite a haul (along with a hefty debt to the Internal Revenue Service).

The Price Is Right Live does a great job of simulating the television program. Contestants are randomly selected to participate, similar to the televised game show, and they play for real prizes.

TV personality Todd Newton, who studied under former host the late, great Bob Barker (who hosted the show from its inception in 1972 through 2007 before retiring and passing the stick microphone to Cleveland native Drew Carey), has hosted a variety of television programs over the years and is now hosting the Price Is Right Live! He phoned CleveRock ahead of the Cleveland date to give us the scoop about the upcoming show!

I told Todd at the outset that I was a big fan of the show until I later discovered that the program is just an hour-long commercial for various products.

“You could do your homework by going grocery shopping,” he said, laughing. “That’s how you do it.”

I asked Todd if The Price Is Right Live is true to the classic program that is so beloved.

“I tell people that coming to see The Price Is Right Live, that it’s a lot like going to see your favorite band in concert and knowing that they’re only going to play the greatest hits,” Newton said. “We know what games people want to see, so all the favorites will be there. We will most certainly have Plinko. We will most certainly have Cliffhanger. The Big Wheel, of course, will be there, but all the other games are on a steady rotation to keep things fresh and exciting. We come to Cleveland once a year or so, and we always have great audiences. It’s just a really great city. Drew Carey has brought a lot of awareness of the show to the city, so we want to keep it fresh and exciting for you. Your favorites will be there, and then we’ll rotate in some of the others that will unquestionably result in great prizes. That’s what people want, and that’s what we want to deliver. Another question people always ask is if they get to keep the prizes or is this just a stage production? And the answer is, of course, they get to keep the prizes!

A friend of mine was once a contestant on the show and got to play Golden Road, a game that Mr. Newton is very fond of.

“Sometimes people ask me if there’s one game I could play as a contestant, which one would it be? And I always say Golden Road. That’s where the big prizes are, “ he revealed. “Secondly, that would’ve been the game where I would’ve been able to spend the most time on camera with Bob. So I think that’s great.”

[videopress p7rh86VG w=1920 h=1080]

Newton also discussed the origins of the live-touring version.

“The fact that you grew up watching the show, that was the entire reason that Mr. Barker created this live version of what is unquestionably America’s favorite game show. 23 years ago, Bob Barker created this show that’s coming to Cleveland,” Newton said. “So that, and these are his words, not mine. I could never articulate it as well as he did. He was a master orator, but he said he wanted to create, ‘A little bit of Hollywood to take out across America for folks across America that couldn’t make it to Hollywood.’ He understood that people had families, careers, and obligations and that maybe they couldn’t pack up and come to Los Angeles to try to play their favorite game. So he created this live version of the show to go out across the country and throughout Canada to give people the chance to play Golden Road and Plinko, and spin the Big Wheel, and make it to the Showcase and win these prizes. And thanks to Bob and, of course, thanks to great audiences, we’ve had the privilege of doing this for over two decades now.”

Barker was such a television icon and a huge part of American culture! (Drew Carey is no slouch, either.) Barker’s all-around badassery can never be duplicated, but Newton was asked if he draws inspiration from his time observing Bob in person and on TV.

“Excellent question! I’m so grateful that I can say that I was mentored by Bob Barker 25 years ago. I was hosting a show on Game Show Network called Whammy, the all-new Press Your Luck, which was produced by the same people that produced The Price Is Right,” he said. “When I was put in that position, I wanted to be the very best game show host I could be. I’m a big believer in coaches and mentors and modeling after people who are doing what you want to do really, really well. And I would go to tapings of The Price Is Right every week or so, and then I would start going twice a week, and then three times a week. He was generous enough to kind of take me under his wing and teach me how to do this the right way, and the right way is to play this game through the eyes of the contestant.”

What a cool job that this guy has. I wonder where hosting The Price Is Right Live was on career day at my high school. I must have missed that table. Newton wouldn’t want to be doing anything else and never takes this opportunity for granted.

“I get to do this every night. I get to stand next to the Big Wheel every night, and I never take it for granted. But I also realize that for the contestants, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They’ve been watching this wheel or watching people play these games for decades now; over half a century. The fact that they’re up on the stage in front of a couple of thousand people with all the lights and the nerves, just are jittery for me when I play it through their eyes,” Newton said. “It’s like Christmas after you have children. The holidays are really cool and exciting again; birthdays are really cool and exciting again. So I want this to be everything that they’ve dreamed it would be. And I learned that from Bob. Bob taught me that every contestant has a story and a reason for being there. Every contestant has a different way; a different appreciation for The Price Is Right. For me, it was watching it with my grandmother. I have those special memories of watching it with my kids now. I took that from Bob. I also grew up watching people like Johnny Carson, who allowed his guests to be the real stars of the show. He never tried to steal the limelight. So, I incorporate that into the live show. I’m in my fifties now, so there’s half a century of Todd Newton in there, too. You kind of pour all these ingredients into the blender, and you get this wonderful game show host concoction that hopefully, people really enjoy. Hopefully, it enhances the experience a little bit for them.“

Newton lived my dream of meeting Bob Barker, and they were friends and colleagues. Barker is one cool cat on TV, so I asked him if the legendary host acted any differently when the cameras stopped rolling.

“I have yet to meet another person in all of my days and all of my travels that was so elegant, and so articulate, and so distinguished, and such a gentleman,” he said. “And the way he carried himself, that smile that he had; he was just so polished. Yes, he was exactly that way off-camera. If you have dinner with him or if you are sitting in his dressing room just talking about life or game shows, he was the same. A lot of people don’t know this, but in his dressing room, he had a director’s chair, one of those cloth folding chairs on a wooden stick, and on the back of the director’s chair, he had the letters WGMC, which stood for the world’s greatest master of ceremonies. I would often be in his dressing room after a taping, talking about different ways that a game could have gone. That’s one of the keys to hosting game shows. You never predict how a game is going to go because you’ll be trapped in that corner if it goes in a different direction. We would talk about that, and he would ask me, ‘How would you have handled this particular contestant?’ Things of that nature. And just seeing him sitting there in his expensive suit, with that perfect silver hair, and the gold ring on his finger, you just look at this man, and the word ‘iconic’ is so overused today, but never was it more appropriate than when it was being used to describe Bob Barker. He was everything that everyone wanted him to be and so much more.”