The Price Is Right (TV Program)

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    America Came on Down, and Bob Barker Was Thrilled Every Time

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    At the helm of “The Price Is Right” for 35 years, Barker eased many sick days with his knack for turning silly games and giddy contestants into fun television.On YouTube, fans have posted multiple compilations of contestants summoned to come on down to the podiums of “The Price Is Right.” They are screaming, they are hyperventilating, they are fully freaking out. All this before they have even bid on a luggage set, a roll-top desk, a home stereo system.Bob Barker, the show’s longtime host, who died Saturday, was the still point in this delirious world. He joined the show in 1972 — an original version had run from 1956 to 1965 — and stayed on its Television City stage for 35 years. Eventually the stage was named for him. Over the decades, his ties narrowed, his collars shortened. His tan remained the finest that the sun or, just possibly, the aestheticians of Burbank, Calif., could provide, even as his hair went from brown to gray to white. His eyebrows were twin carets, inserting pleasure or gentle mockery into a scene. He had the gift, which great hosts have, of making inane, repetitive games feel risky, exciting. Each new contestant, tens of thousands of them during his tenure, seemed to delight him.I watched “The Price Is Right” like a lot of us probably did: at home, sick, when nothing else was on and I couldn’t convince my mom to drive to a video store. I associate the show with the scents and flavors of those days — mentholated cough drops, chicken Cup O’ Noodles, children’s Robitussin. Woozy on phenylephrine, I followed games like Plinko, Bullseye, Cliff Hangers, in which bids sent a yodeling mountain climber up a cardboard slope. I could have sworn I’d hallucinated that last one. I had not.Reliable, consistent, even courtly, Barker smiled through it all. And at the end of every episode, he reminded us to spay and neuter our pets. He wanted us to choose responsibly, to bid judiciously. He saw us through inflation, recession, bubble and boom and bust. He was America’s dad. Then its granddad. Had a sexual harassment suit by Dian Parkinson, one of “Barker’s Beauties,” gone forward, he might also have been seen as America’s lechy uncle. (The suit was eventually dropped, though other women received payments after suing the show for sexual harassment, racial discrimination and wrongful termination.)There’s a frenzy, a late-capitalist absurdity to “The Price Is Right,” which continues under the gleeful ministrations of the comedian Drew Carey and requires little in the way of knowledge or skill, beyond a vague sense of what things cost at the supermarket. (An unusually dark aspect of the Carey era: a new game called Pay the Rent.) The show supports the very American notion that everyone deserves something for nothing — or at least, something for knowing the price of a box of raisins and having the upper body strength to spin a wheel. A show in which men made the rules and did the talking while women posed in short skirts, that feels an unfortunate kind of American, too.Contestants lucky enough to come on down won prizes that some of them could not have afforded otherwise, prizes that they may not have wanted and. cars excepted, probably did not need. People populated that studio audience because they weren’t at work, because work couldn’t substitute for the excitement of being on television. Most jobs would not give them an RV just for nudging a number higher or lower. There are reasons that it is America’s longest running game show.If we watched the show in the Barker years, if we watch it now, that likely means that we weren’t at work either. The hunger for wealth, for merchandise, can feel like a fever. So it makes sense that this is what we tuned into when we were sick, when we were low, when we had slipped, owing to illness or age or some other factor, out of the workday world.Barker worked hard. No one could deny it. He seems to have been paid handsomely for his labor. (The models who caressed all that stereo equipment, not so much.) He was calm while the contestants had hysterics, smooth while they behaved erratically. If he wanted a new car, no yodeling would be required, no frenzy. He understood his position, his reputation, and could happily satirize it in side projects like his cameos in “Happy Gilmore,” “The Nanny,” and “How I Met Your Mother.”So raise a glass — or a plastic cup of cough syrup — to a man who knew his own worth. More

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      Bob Barker, Longtime Host of ‘The Price Is Right,’ Dies at 99

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      The winner of numerous Emmy Awards, he was almost as well known for his advocacy of animal rights as he was for his half a century as a daytime television fixture.Bob Barker, whose warmth and wit as the host of “The Price Is Right” for nearly four decades beckoned legions of giddy Americans to a stage promising luxury vacations and brand-new cars, died on Saturday at his home in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles. He was 99.His death was announced by a spokesman, Roger Neal.Mr. Barker, who was also a longstanding and prominent advocate for animal rights, was a fixture of daytime television for half a century — first as the host of “Truth or Consequences,” from 1956 to 1974, and, most famously, starting in 1972, on “The Price Is Right,” the longest-running game show on American television.He began his 35-year stint as host of “The New Price Is Right,” as it was then known, when it made its debut on CBS as a revised and jazzed-up version of the original “The Price Is Right,” which had been on the air from 1956 to 1965. (The “New” was soon dropped from the name.) He was also host of a weekly syndicated nighttime version from 1977 until it was canceled in 1980.Mr. Barker with Janice Pennington, left, and Anitra Ford — two of the models known as Barker’s Beauties, whose main function was to display the prizes — on the set of “The Price Is Right” in 1972.CBSAlmost a decade before he retired in 2007, Mr. Barker estimated that during his tenure more than 40,000 contestants had heeded the announcer’s familiar call to “come on down!” and collected some $200 million in small and large prizes, from beach blankets to Buicks, by guessing the prices of various objects.Mr. Barker won 14 Daytime Emmy Awards as host of “The Price Is Right” and four more as executive producer (as well as a lifetime achievement Emmy in 1999). He once said that the show had lasted as long as it did because “all our games are based on prices, and everyone can identify with that.” He added, however, that he personally never knew the price of anything, and that if he were ever a contestant on such a show he would be “a total failure.”Mr. Barker was widely known for his longstanding dedication to the cause of animal rights. He quit as master of ceremonies for both the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants in 1988 because they gave fur coats as prizes. He also protested the mistreatment of animals by their trainers on the sets of various movies and television shows. He ended every installment of “The Price Is Right” by saying: “Help control the pet population. Have your pet spayed or neutered.”Almost a decade before he retired in 2007, Mr. Barker estimated that during his tenure more than 40,000 contestants had heeded the announcer’s familiar call to “come on down!” and had collected some $200 million in prizes, from beach blankets to Buicks.Photographs by Getty Images and Associated PressRobert William Barker was born on Dec. 12, 1923, in Darrington, Wash. His father, Byron, was a power line foreman who in 1929 died from complications of injuries he had received in a fall from a pole several years earlier. Shortly thereafter, his mother, Matilda (Tarleton) Barker, took a job teaching in Mission, S.D, on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.“Cowboys tied up their horses at hitching rails,” Mr. Barker recalled of those years. “It was like I was growing up in the Old West.”Mr. Barker in a publicity photo from 1956, the year he began hosting “Truth or Consequences.” For two years he was seen on both that show and “The Price Is Right.”Elmer Holloway/NBCU, via Getty ImagesWhen Mr. Barker was 13, his mother married Louis Valandra, a tire salesman, and they moved to Springfield, Mo. He received a basketball scholarship to Drury College in Springfield but dropped out to enlist as a Naval Aviation cadet when World War II broke out.He was waiting for a combat assignment when the war ended, and he was discharged as a lieutenant junior grade. He returned to Drury, majored in economics and graduated summa cum laude in 1947.Even before he earned his degree, Mr. Barker had begun his first radio job, at KTTS in Springfield, where he was a disc jockey, a news writer, a sportscaster and a producer. After college he worked at WWPG in Palm Beach, Fla., and KWIK in Burbank, Calif.In 1945, he married Dorothy Jo Gideon, his high school sweetheart, who once explained the secret of their marriage this way: “I love Bob Barker. And Bob Barker loves Bob Barker.” She died in 1981, and Mr. Barker never remarried.Mr. Barker is survived by his half brother, Kent Valandra. Mr. Barker’s longtime friend Nancy Burnet, a fellow animal rights activist who had been overseeing his care — and about whom he wrote in his autobiography, “Our relationship has gone on for 25 years, off and on. Mostly on.” — is an executor of his estate.Mr. Barker with his wife, Dorothy Jo, and their dogs in 1977. He was widely known for his dedication to the cause of animal rights.CBS, via Getty ImagesMr. Barker’s big break came in 1956 when the producer Ralph Edwards heard him on KNX, a Los Angeles radio station, and asked him to audition for “Truth or Consequences,” a long-running game show (it had begun on radio in 1940) on which contestants were required to perform wild stunts. He got the job, and he and Mr. Edwards became lifelong friends.Mr. Barker was still the host of “Truth or Consequences” when he was offered “The Price Is Right” in 1972, and for two years those jobs overlapped. For a long time after that he was among the busiest people on television, with duties that also included hosting the Rose Bowl parade and the Pillsbury Bake-Off for most of the 1970s and ’80s.He occasionally showed up in movies as well, almost always as a comically exaggerated version of himself. His most memorable appearance was in the 1996 comedy “Happy Gilmore,” in which he gleefully engaged in a brawl with the title character, a boorish hockey player turned golfer played by Adam Sandler.Mr. Barker occasionally showed up on the big screen, usually as a comically exaggerated version of himself. His most memorable appearance was with Adam Sandler in the 1996 comedy “Happy Gilmore.”Universal PicturesTo many viewers “The Price Is Right” was, as one critic put it, among television’s last “islands of wholesomeness.” That image was challenged in 1994 when Dian Parkinson, who for almost 20 years had been a model on the show — one of the so-called Barker’s Beauties, whose main function was to display the prizes — sued Mr. Barker for sexual harassment.Ms. Parkinson, who had left the show the year before, said she had sex with Mr. Barker because she thought she would lose her job if she didn’t. In response, Mr. Barker acknowledged that he and Ms. Parkinson had had a relationship for a number of years, beginning in 1989, but insisted that it had been consensual.“She told me I had always been so strait-laced that it was time I had some hanky-panky in my life,” he said, “and she volunteered the hanky-panky.” Ms. Parkinson withdrew the suit in 1995 because, she said, she lacked both the emotional endurance and the money to pursue it.Mr. Barker announced his retirement in October 2006. “I will be 83 years old on Dec. 12,” he said at the time, “and I’ve decided to retire while I’m still young.”His final episode as host of “The Price Is Right” was taped on June 6, 2007, and shortly shown twice on June 15: first in its regular daytime slot and again in prime time.Mr. Barker’s chair sat empty after the taping of his final episode of “The Price Is Right” in June 2007.Damian Dovarganes/Associated PressAfter an extensive search, the comedian Drew Carey was chosen as Mr. Barker’s successor in July 2007. In an interview with The Times, Mr. Carey called Mr. Barker a “legend” and praised him for the “empathy” he showed contestants.“He wants them to win. You can hug him,” Mr. Carey said. “He went from being your dad and your uncle to your grandfather.”Mr. Barker returned to the show as a guest in 2009 to promote his autobiography, “Priceless Memories,” and again in 2013, to celebrate his 90th birthday, and 2015, as the unannounced guest host, an April Fool’s Day gag. He promised to come back when he turned 100.“People ask me, ‘What do you miss most about “Price is Right”?’ And I say, ‘The money,’” Mr. Barker said in a 2013 interview with Parade magazine. “But that is not altogether true. I miss the people, too.”Richard Severo, a Times reporter from 1968 to 2006, died in June. Peter Keepnews and More

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      She Wrote the History of ‘Jeopardy!’ Then She Changed It.

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      The reporting of Claire McNear, a journalist who had written a book on the game show, helped end Mike Richards’s hopes of succeeding Alex Trebek as its host.Two days before the journalist Claire McNear published her book, which was billed as a “definitive history” of “Jeopardy!,” its beloved host, Alex Trebek, died of pancreatic cancer, thrusting the game show into a period of uncertainty unlike any its staff had ever seen.McNear’s 2020 book, “Answers in the Form of Questions,” had argued that “Jeopardy!,” a television staple that first premiered in 1964, was on the precipice of significant change, with some key figures who had helped shape the show for decades stepping back.But the loss of Trebek in November raised a new existential question for the show: Could “Jeopardy!” continue to be a success without its trusted, even-keeled captain, who had been its face for more than 36 years?For McNear, one of the most critical chapters in the show’s history had just begun.Nine months later, McNear’s report for The Ringer on the man who had been chosen to succeed Trebek — the show’s executive producer, Mike Richards — would change the course of that history.McNear had listened to all 41 episodes of a podcast that Richards had recorded in 2013 and 2014, when he was executive producer on “The Price Is Right,” and discovered that he had made a number of offensive and sexist comments, including asking two young women who worked on the podcast whether they had ever taken nude photos, and referring to a stereotype about Jews and large noses.Days after the story was published, Richards, 46, resigned from his role as host, saying that the show did not need the distraction. Sony, which produces the show, said he would remain as executive producer. (Mayim Bialik, the sitcom star who had been tapped to host prime-time “Jeopardy!” specials, will temporarily take over weeknight hosting duties.)In an interview, McNear, 32, who writes about sports and culture for The Ringer, discussed her personal relationship to “Jeopardy!,” the impact of her reporting and the show’s future. The conversation has been edited and condensed.McNear Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesEvery “Jeopardy!” fan has their own early memories of the show and a story of what drew them to it. Why did this show become so important to you?I was never one of those superfans who would watch every single night and know all the statistics and the pantheon of all the greatest players. I had watched it with my parents growing up, but I was not one of those hard-core people. It wasn’t until my fiancé and I moved in together, about five years ago, that we got cable — it was the first time I had cable since I was a little kid. And I remember having this light-bulb moment: “Oh my God, we can record ‘Jeopardy!’ every night.” And because of my day job, I started getting to write about it.Two weeks ago, the big hosting announcement dropped: Richards had been chosen. Knowing what you knew about him at the time, what was your reaction to the decision?As I had started to write about “Jeopardy!” more and watch it more seriously, I learned more about the world. I met the fans; I met the people who make the show. And I kept hearing things from people close to the show: that the host-search process might not have been as aboveboard as the way that it was being described publicly, and a number of staff members had fairly grave concerns about him. I wanted to know more about his past and his genesis as a television personality because he had been really open about the fact that, in addition to producing, he wanted to host.What led you to his podcast?He has talked about it in interviews but also, literally, it’s listed — or at least it was — in his official Jeopardy.com bio, that he hosted a comedy news show as a college student called “The Randumb Show.” And I tried to find as much as I could about that show, but it was all taped in the ’90s. It did lead me to the podcast with the exact same name, which is the one that he hosted as the executive producer of “The Price Is Right.”So you’re sitting there listening to these episodes. At what point do you start to become unsettled by his comments?It became extremely clear to me very quickly that those things were kind of dotted throughout the episode: He uses sexist language; he uses ableist language; he uses ugly slurs and stereotypes. There’s a lot of stuff that we did not transcribe in the story that is in there and paints this broader picture of what “The Price Is Right” was like as a workplace. And he was the co-executive producer at the time — he was the boss, and he was mostly just talking to his employees.How long did it take to listen to all 41 episodes?What I will say is it was not a terribly glamorous reporting process. I live in Washington, D.C., and there was one point a couple weeks ago where my air-conditioning broke overnight. And so I spent the whole next day sitting in my living room with an ice pack on my stomach, listening to Mike Richards’s podcast episodes. It was not like what they show in the movies.You wrote in your book that when Trebek first started as host in 1984, fans were actually wary of him following Art Fleming’s run. Do you think fans would accept any new host of “Jeopardy!” with enthusiasm right now?I think Sony was always going to be in a difficult place because it’s not going to be Alex Trebek. Fleming was this sort of genial, affable, friendly guy who was very upfront about not knowing the answers to any of the clues and he was just happy to be there and he needed the sheet in front of him. And then of course, Alex Trebek cultivated this image that he could probably beat all the contestants on any given night. He was this very erudite figure who got all his pronunciations just so. There were fans that didn’t like that at first because they loved the Art Fleming version of the show. I think that does speak to the fact that “Jeopardy!” fans might struggle with a new host — any host — but there’s certainly a history of people coming to admire even a very different host of “Jeopardy!”Trebek always said that it’s the game, not him, that kept viewers coming back. With all you’ve seen over the past eight months, do you think that’s proving to be true?It’s important to note that as much as there has been all this change at “Jeopardy!,” there are also a lot of things that are exactly the same as they have been for years. A lot of the people who work there have been there for decades and spent their entire professional life making “Jeopardy!”The “Jeopardy!” machinery is mostly intact and unchanged. But I think there is a great amount of sadness and fear among “Jeopardy!” fans and among the “Jeopardy!” staff that this whole episode with Mike Richards has damaged this universal appeal that it’s had for all these decades, that it was this totally neutral space that was not partisan. It was never flashy; it was never trying to get in the headlines or be the thing that you debated over dinner. And now it very much is, and it’s possible that when they do bring in a permanent host, people will talk about it a bunch at the beginning, and then it will just kind of settle back down to being the same old “Jeopardy!” But it’s possible that it’s lost that sheen of being unimpeachable. More

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      ‘Like Choosing a Pope’: How Succession Got Messy at ‘Jeopardy!’

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      The decades-old game show, TV comfort food for many, has been rocked by drama over who would replace the late Alex Trebek.When Ken Jennings arrived at the “Jeopardy!” studios in November for the first day of his audition to become the new host of the long-running quiz show, he found a gift waiting for him: a pair of Alex Trebek’s cuff links, along with a handwritten note from his widow, Jean.Mr. Trebek, the “Jeopardy!” galaxy’s central star, had died of pancreatic cancer three weeks before, setting off a frenzy in Hollywood: one of the greatest jobs in television was available for the first time in 37 years.For some members of the “Jeopardy!” crew, the cuff links validated their assumption that Mr. Jennings, a genial Utahn who rose to fame in 2004 after winning a record 74 consecutive games, had been Mr. Trebek’s preferred successor. (“Jeopardy!” producers had arranged for a phone call between Mr. Jennings and Mr. Trebek two days before he died.) But “Jeopardy!,” while a beloved cultural icon, is also a lucrative asset of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and in the television industry, sentiment only goes so far.“Jeopardy!,” whose first iteration began in 1964, is one of TV’s last bastions of comfort food, a place where politics don’t matter and the real world is easily digested in just-the-facts bites. Then its succession drama got messy. After a cattle call of guest hosts, including Anderson Cooper, Robin Roberts, Aaron Rodgers, LeVar Burton and even Dr. Mehmet Oz, the announcement of the winner sent fans into a tailspin. The new weekday host would be Mike Richards, the show’s obscure executive producer and the man initially charged with finding Mr. Trebek’s replacement.Mr. Richards, it seemed, did not have to look very far.Critics accused Mr. Richards of rigging the contest à la Dick Cheney, who led the vice-presidential search for George W. Bush. Old lawsuits surfaced from Mr. Richards’s previous job, at “The Price Is Right,” involving his treatment of female staff members. (He denies wrongdoing.) After Sony said the “Big Bang Theory” actress Mayim Bialik would host the show’s prime-time spinoffs, her past skepticism about vaccines recirculated. (Her team said “she is not at all an anti-vaxxer.”)Mike Richards, the show’s executive producer, was named Mr. Trebek’s weekday replacement.Carol Kaelson, via ReutersUnder the retro, feel-good surface of “Jeopardy!,” the succession battle is a story of television’s dwindling real estate in American life and the strenuous efforts to occupy one of its remaining desirable plots.“It is a little like choosing a pope,” Mr. Jennings said, in his first interview since the new hosts were announced. “If you don’t watch ‘Jeopardy!,’ you don’t understand, but people take this very seriously.”In an age of atomized audiences, “Jeopardy!” still averages 8.8 million viewers a week, according to Nielsen — not quite “NCIS” territory, but roughly comparable to a network evening newscast. Its audience skews older: Last year, about four viewers out of five were over age 55.And the job itself is, as any Hollywood agent would tell you, a pretty sweet gig.When the “Jeopardy!” cast and crew gather on the Sony Pictures stage in Culver City, Calif., they film five 30-minute shows in a single day, the equivalent of one week of syndicated television. The host works roughly two days a week, two weeks a month — and toward the end of his tenure, Mr. Trebek’s salary was estimated at $16.5 million. Sony would not disclose Mr. Richards’s compensation, but several people familiar with internal discussions said it was significantly less.There are other perks to being the face of a show that is still watched by a broad audience on local network affiliates, a rarity as the nation divides into ever-more-partisan extremes and as traditional TV is supplanted by niche streaming services.“It’s appointment television, which is rare,” said George Stephanopoulos, the ABC News anchor, who guest hosted for a week. “It’s the kind of thing you can watch with your whole family.”Plus there is the reflected glow of always having the right answers.“It’s absolutely iconic,” said Rick Rosen, the TV superagent at Endeavor. “Everybody knows the show and has played along with it. And it’s not the type of show where you’re just a genial host — there’s a perception of intelligence that goes along with it.”Unlike his rivals, Mr. Richards, 46, had a deep background in game shows. Born in Burbank, Calif., he started his career as a stand-up comedian and went on to host game shows like the mid-2000s concoction “Beauty and the Geek.” He hosted and produced numerous series on the Game Show Network before auditioning to replace Bob Barker on “The Price Is Right.” Drew Carey got the job, but Mr. Richards was brought on as executive producer; his successful 11-year tenure revived the wilting franchise into a hit.By “Jeopardy!” standards, though, he was a newcomer.He started as executive producer at both “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” in May 2020, replacing Harry Friedman, who oversaw both shows for 25 years. Mr. Richards overlapped with Mr. Trebek on set for only 15 shoot days before the host stepped aside, 10 days before he died.Sony said that while Mr. Richards initially led the hunt for Mr. Trebek’s replacement, he moved aside after he emerged as a candidate.But as executive producer, Mr. Richards retained a key role in selecting which appearances by each prospective host would be screened for focus groups, whose reactions weighed heavily in Sony’s decision-making, according to three people familiar with the show’s internal deliberations. The other supervising “Jeopardy!” producers were excluded from that process, the people said.Asked about Mr. Richards’s role, Sony referred to a memo from its TV chairman, Ravi Ahuja, who told staff that after the company began considering Mr. Richards as a potential host, “he was not part of” the selection process. The ultimate decision was made by Tony Vinciquerra, the chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment.As questions mounted, Mr. Richards sent a memo to “Jeopardy!” staff that was distributed by Sony’s publicists.“The choice on this is not my decision and never has been,” Mr. Richards wrote. He said the “Price Is Right” litigation — which included an allegation that he made insensitive comments to a pregnant employee — “does not reflect the reality of who I am.” (Sony said it had “spoken with Mike about the issues raised in these cases and our commitment to maintaining a workplace environment where our employees are respected and supported.”)Mayim Bialik was announced as a co-host.Carol Kaelson, via ReutersOn Thursday, Sony announced Mr. Richards and Ms. Bialik as co-hosts, although for now, only one prime-time special featuring Ms. Bialik is scheduled. “What started out with my 15-year-old repeating a rumor from Instagram that I should guest host the show has turned into one of the most exciting and surreal opportunities of my life!” Ms. Bialik said in a statement.Mr. Jennings, who remains a consulting producer at “Jeopardy!,” praised Mr. Richards’s performance. “Mike was the only person up there with any game show hosting chops, and it showed,” he said.Some fans argue that a relatively bland, little-known host was always a better outcome than a celebrity. “The game is the star, and the contestants are the stars,” said John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary magazine and a 1987 quarterfinalist in the “Jeopardy!” Tournament of Champions. “The host should be a secondary figure.”For his part, Mr. Jennings agreed. “What was great about Alex was we didn’t know anything about him: He came into our homes every night and he hosted ‘Jeopardy!,’” Mr. Jennings said. “Today, it’s very hard to find a broadcaster whose priors and opinions you know nothing about.”Mr. Jennings, who guest hosted six weeks’ worth of shows, said he harbored no hard feelings about the outcome.“I knew ‘Jeopardy!’ was in a spot this year, and I mostly wanted them to have a smooth transition,” Mr. Jennings said. “I was not going to lobby for that job in the media, ever. I was not going to plant stories about what a promising young candidate I was. I wasn’t interested in doing any of that. I am a company man.”Marc Tracy More

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      Museum to Create a National Archives of Game Show History

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      The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, N.Y., will house the archives, which it hopes will include set pieces, audience tickets, press photos and other memorabilia.“Showcase Showdowns” and “Daily Doubles” of yesteryear will no longer be relegated to just reruns.A museum in Rochester, N.Y., announced on Wednesday that it would serve as the home of a first-of-its-kind National Archives of Game Show History to preserve artifacts and footage from programs like “Jeopardy!” “The Price Is Right” and “The $25,000 Pyramid.”The archives will be housed at the Strong National Museum of Play, which is undergoing an expansion that will add 90,000 square feet to its space and that it expects to be completed by 2023.Curators at the museum already have some ideas about what types of artifacts would make an ideal centerpiece and are asking for items from collectors.“The wheel from ‘Wheel of Fortune’ would be iconic,” Chris Bensch, the museum’s vice president for collections, said in an interview on Wednesday. The museum, he said, would gladly accept the letter board, along with a dress from the show’s famous letter-turner, Vanna White.Museum officials said there was a void of preservation groups dedicated to game shows. They represent a key aspect of television and cultural history in America, from the earliest panel shows and the quiz-show scandals of the 1950s to big-money mainstays of evening television.“It is something we feel uniquely qualified to do,” Mr. Bensch said of the museum, which opened in 1982.The archive’s creation is part of the broader expansion at the museum, which is being supported by a $60 million campaign. The cost of the archive is yet to be determined.Several marquee names have already lined up in support of the project, according to the museum, which said that the archive’s co-founders are Howard Blumenthal and Bob Boden, the producers of “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” and “Funny You Should Ask.”The museum, which is already home to the World Video Game Hall of Fame and the National Toy Hall of Fame, has found another key ally: Ken Jennings, the record-setting “Jeopardy!” champion.“There’s like a pleasant nostalgia to game shows for generations of Americans,” Mr. Jennings said in an interview on Wednesday.Calling the preservation effort overdue, Mr. Jennings said that people were starting to realize the importance of game shows the way they did with other great 20th century art forms like jazz and comic books.“I think it’s the game show’s turn,” he said.In a statement released through the museum, Wink Martindale, the veteran game show host, said there was a certain urgency to the preservation effort.“Without this initiative, many primary resources relating to these shows, as well as oral histories of their creators and talent, risked being lost forever,” he said.The museum, which welcomed nearly 600,000 visitors in 2019 before the pandemic, said it was seeking to acquire everything from set pieces and audience tickets to press photographs.“It deserves a place where it can be preserved, a place where scholars, media and the general public can access it,” Mr. Bensch said.The museum is not limiting its focus to those in front of the camera. Officials said contestants, television crews and audience members would play an important role in preserving the history of game shows.“There are so many significant folks who have shaped this industry over the years,” Mr. Bensch said. “They deserve a chance to tell their stories. We also have plans to do video oral histories with key people so we will capture their stories directly and share those with the world.”It seems the museum has a lead on an artifact.“If they want a necktie I lost on ‘Jeopardy!’ with,” Mr. Jennings said, “they’re happy to have it.” More