It might be different now, but I'm pretty sure back in the Bob Barker era contestant selection wasn't random. The entire audience had to introduce themselves to the producer one by one and answer his questions about where they were from, what they did, and if they were there with anyone. The people selected were fairly attractive and charismatic. The selection also leaned toward people who came with larger groups. I assume so they could get camera shots of cheering and helping during the games.
Yep, it's still like that now, too! I was on The Price is Right a few months ago, and I got called to "come on down" to be a contestant.
Before the show, producer Stan Blits greets every member of the audience while they're waiting in line. He chats with each audience member (for about 20 seconds) to gauge their liveliness & enthusiasm. As he's chatting with each person, he gives a subtle hand signal to an intern who is standing behind him with a notepad. For each audience member who he thinks might make a good contestant, the intern writes down the person's name on the notepad.
After the audience is seated, he continues to refine the list by standing on the side of the stage and observing the potential contestants in their seats. He checks to see which ones are still energetic and cheering while they're sitting in the audience too.
Given your comment, I wonder if there's an interesting list of people who have been on the Price is Right. For example, one person I can think of is Aaron Paul (Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad) who said: "It looks like I'm on some serious crack. I downed about six cans of red bull because I knew they wanted people with energy. It worked, but I could not sit still. It was not healthy."
The contestant selection for the Price is Right television show isn't random. You're spot on, a producer selects the contestants based on a quick interview with each audience member before the show. Even if the selection process has changed recently this story is from 2008. The article is wrong. And this website appears to be spun click traffic farming site, way to go Hacker News.
Agreed! My step-uncle, an actor and extremely outgoing guy, managed to impress the producer enough to get into the small selection pool of contestants and get on the snow. He won a bunch of stuff, but had to turn it down because he had no space for a bunch of random merch and didn't want to pay taxes on it. It can actually be a big burden on these shows that don't do cash prizes.
TV shows are always like this. Random would mean that really tall people or really fat people would get on, which would look weird — people look bigger on TV, and most TV people tend to be smaller.
Yeah it was like you say. My cousin was on Price is Right. He came with a group of 20, and they were guaranteed that at least one of their group would be in contestants row.
Short version: TPIR used to recycle prices/products, so with studying it is easy to guess prices of products on the show. Many contestants and avid fans know this, and one of them got extra lucky in the showcase showdown by guessing the exact price, at about 1/1000 odds (after accounting for common sense and attentiveness) , which is likely to happen eventually for a daily show like TPIR. (Or possibly he was cheating or plain lucky after all. The article claims that showcases are generally $24k, and the winner's was $23743, but the opponent had a $30k showcase and bid it within $550 accuracy)
Now they randomly vary the products/prices slightly, as they should have done all along.
Here's a little psychological trick I always wanted to try, if I ever got to the showcase showdown on TPIR. Suppose the other contestant passes the first showcase to me, and I believe it is the lower valued of the two showcases. I bid one dollar. If the other contestant is not paying attention, they just might bid two dollars on their showcase. That strategy works on contestant's row when everyone is bidding on the same item, but it will fail during the showcase showdown, because my bid of one dollar will be closer to the actual price of my showcase than their bid of two dollars will be to the actual price of their showcase.
I don't know if I would have the guts to really try it but I think it might actually work (assuming the host didn't interfere and tip off the other contestant).
> Now they randomly vary the products/prices slightly, as they should have done all along.
That's less than clear to me. It may be judged that the risk of this was low enough (it went on for decades without this happening!) that it was worth the risk to make the show more appealing to viewers (it seems to me like a shift, as they say, to products likely unfamiliar to the show's core audience might make the show less appealing).
Showcases are generally $24,000, but one showcase is typically more valuable than the other. There may have been a bit of memorization by both players!
Also of interest, the less 'predictable' nature of the show made me completely loose interest in it when they modified the format.
I felt like the old format rewarded the contestants for studying and knowing the answers, even if unintentionally by just buying stuff in their life. The luck element was more about where / when you got selected and how well other contestants used their advantages.
I didn't watch, but followed along on (IIRC) a Diplomacy discussion forum of all places; it seemed clear that Richard was playing an extremely strategic game, even deliberately sandbagging an endurance contest when it was down to 3 players, knowing that the woman who won it would have to eliminate the other, much more popular male contestant to have a chance to win the vote of those who'd already been dispatched.
My show that I've "solved" is cutthroat kitchen. In this show, you don't need to be the best cook until the final round. Before that the object is to "not lose".
The solution - buy the sabotages. Give the sabotages to the cook with the most money. Taking everything personal and retaliating hurts your chances of winning because it increases your chance of losing the round -- and if your retaliee loses, the remaining contestants have way more money than you. Caring about how much money is in your hand also hurts your chances of winning because you become less likely to buy the sabotage.
> Caring about how much money is in your hand also hurts your chances of winning because you become less likely to buy the sabotage.
I haven't seen the show, but if you buy all the way to zero, what's the point of playing then? Is there a prize besides the amount of money you keep? Because if I won and only walked home with $100, it would seem like a waste of time.
It does seem like a good strategy on that game would be to intentionally not win though, as you don't want to come across as a strong cook until the very last round.
>buzzing in when he didn't know the answers to prevent other contestants from winning money
Can anybody explain this part of Arthur Chu’s Jeopardy strategy? Don’t they still get the chance to answer? Or is his strategy that he’ll figure it out within the allotted time?
Also was anyone else unimpressed by the main character in the articles uncanny ability to predict weather in Las Vegas? Let me guess, it will be hot.
Also how did he win a Southeast Regional Emmy for working in Las Vegas?
> Can anybody explain this part of Arthur Chu’s Jeopardy strategy? Don’t they still get the chance to answer? Or is his strategy that he’ll figure it out within the allotted time?
As I recall, he went hunting for Daily Doubles to take them off the board and away from other players who might be able to answer them. Only the finder gets to pose a question for those.
>> buzzing in when he didn't know the answers to prevent other contestants from winning money
> Can anybody explain this part of Arthur Chu’s Jeopardy strategy? Don’t they still get the chance to answer? Or is his strategy that he’ll figure it out within the allotted time?
No, others didn't get the chance to answer for Daily Doubles. He would take away daily doubles when possible and bet low on categories he didn't know the answers.
> Also how did he win a Southeast Regional Emmy for working in Las Vegas?
The article doesn't say he received those while working in Las Vegas. He got them in Atlanta.
I've no idea what's going on on this page, but my iPhone got really hot and Firefox (on my desktop) warned me that the page was running slow. The profiler on Chrome hung when trying to profile the page and I had to kill the tab in task manager.
Sites like that is why I JS whitelist sites on mobile and blacklist on desktop. I'm glad that most sites still work well because the day I'm forced to spin up my fan to read a news article is the day I'll have to reconsider using the web.
[+] [-] scrubby|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] larrymcp|8 years ago|reply
Before the show, producer Stan Blits greets every member of the audience while they're waiting in line. He chats with each audience member (for about 20 seconds) to gauge their liveliness & enthusiasm. As he's chatting with each person, he gives a subtle hand signal to an intern who is standing behind him with a notepad. For each audience member who he thinks might make a good contestant, the intern writes down the person's name on the notepad.
After the audience is seated, he continues to refine the list by standing on the side of the stage and observing the potential contestants in their seats. He checks to see which ones are still energetic and cheering while they're sitting in the audience too.
[+] [-] colmvp|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hxta98596|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acjohnson55|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spooky23|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jedberg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulcole|8 years ago|reply
This esquire article adds a layer of intrigue about a guy signaling from the audience and helping everyone on that episode win.
[+] [-] fjsolwmv|8 years ago|reply
Now they randomly vary the products/prices slightly, as they should have done all along.
[+] [-] ambrosite|8 years ago|reply
I don't know if I would have the guts to really try it but I think it might actually work (assuming the host didn't interfere and tip off the other contestant).
[+] [-] paulcole|8 years ago|reply
This article is much more thorough:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a7922/price-is-right-pe...
[+] [-] emodendroket|8 years ago|reply
That's less than clear to me. It may be judged that the risk of this was low enough (it went on for decades without this happening!) that it was worth the risk to make the show more appealing to viewers (it seems to me like a shift, as they say, to products likely unfamiliar to the show's core audience might make the show less appealing).
[+] [-] anthony_romeo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mjevans|8 years ago|reply
I felt like the old format rewarded the contestants for studying and knowing the answers, even if unintentionally by just buying stuff in their life. The luck element was more about where / when you got selected and how well other contestants used their advantages.
[+] [-] RobbyMcCullough|8 years ago|reply
http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win
Particularly relevant to the Jeopardy contestant that buzzed in when he didn't know the answers to block others from getting the cash.
[+] [-] macintux|8 years ago|reply
I didn't watch, but followed along on (IIRC) a Diplomacy discussion forum of all places; it seemed clear that Richard was playing an extremely strategic game, even deliberately sandbagging an endurance contest when it was down to 3 players, knowing that the woman who won it would have to eliminate the other, much more popular male contestant to have a chance to win the vote of those who'd already been dispatched.
[+] [-] paulcole|8 years ago|reply
But this isn’t how Jeopardy works. If you get the question wrong, I still get the opportunity to get it right.
Can you explain this in more detail?
[+] [-] guywithaphone|8 years ago|reply
The solution - buy the sabotages. Give the sabotages to the cook with the most money. Taking everything personal and retaliating hurts your chances of winning because it increases your chance of losing the round -- and if your retaliee loses, the remaining contestants have way more money than you. Caring about how much money is in your hand also hurts your chances of winning because you become less likely to buy the sabotage.
Bidding strategy is also interesting.
[+] [-] kevmo314|8 years ago|reply
I haven't seen the show, but if you buy all the way to zero, what's the point of playing then? Is there a prize besides the amount of money you keep? Because if I won and only walked home with $100, it would seem like a waste of time.
It does seem like a good strategy on that game would be to intentionally not win though, as you don't want to come across as a strong cook until the very last round.
[+] [-] paulcole|8 years ago|reply
Can anybody explain this part of Arthur Chu’s Jeopardy strategy? Don’t they still get the chance to answer? Or is his strategy that he’ll figure it out within the allotted time?
Also was anyone else unimpressed by the main character in the articles uncanny ability to predict weather in Las Vegas? Let me guess, it will be hot.
Also how did he win a Southeast Regional Emmy for working in Las Vegas?
[+] [-] eropple|8 years ago|reply
As I recall, he went hunting for Daily Doubles to take them off the board and away from other players who might be able to answer them. Only the finder gets to pose a question for those.
[+] [-] IncRnd|8 years ago|reply
> Can anybody explain this part of Arthur Chu’s Jeopardy strategy? Don’t they still get the chance to answer? Or is his strategy that he’ll figure it out within the allotted time?
No, others didn't get the chance to answer for Daily Doubles. He would take away daily doubles when possible and bet low on categories he didn't know the answers.
> Also how did he win a Southeast Regional Emmy for working in Las Vegas?
The article doesn't say he received those while working in Las Vegas. He got them in Atlanta.
[+] [-] JoshMnem|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] stevewillows|8 years ago|reply
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/412/...
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