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."
Six cans of Red Bull is about 480mg caffeine (assuming six 250ml cans at 32mg/100ml caffeine). Not exactly recommended (and may be unpleasant), but it shouldn't be a serious risk to the average person either (it's about the same as three strong cups of coffee).
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.
> All contestants’ names are randomly drawn prior to start of show. If a person selected as a contestant is a non-ticket holder, they will be brought inside the venue by producers to await their turn as contestant.
Even if, as you say, this citation is too recent and reflects some more recent change, and the selection wasn't literally random, he'd still have to somehow be chosen, which doesn't seem entirely within his control.
That link is not to the Price is Right TV show. The "Price is Right" brand has a traveling live theater production as well called Price is Right Live. Tickets to that cost money. Tickets for the real TV show in Los Angeles are free. Thanks for playing.
Let me add to the amazement by pointing out that there even seems to be "Price is Right fanfiction" out there [0].
Tho it's hosted on angelfire and the texts are saved as word documents, which is either really odd or really smart, depending on the intentions of the creator.
You "corrected" someone out of ignorance who knew your correction was wrong. I think you need to swallow your pride rather than complain about their being condescending; feeling humiliated is your brains way of learning to be more careful in the future.
I expect I made a mistake here too, that would be normal in this sort of conversation.
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.
You're missing the biggest reason: advertising. Getting your product on the show is great for brand awareness and probably costs quite a bit, plus free products.
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.
I once went with a group of 20 that was registered in advance and nobody from our group was called (but I think we were guaranteed seats and didn't have to wait in line). I think the 20+ group thing is an urban legend, the producers can really choose whoever they want. However the way the show is done, if a person has a big cheering section that is good for the show, so I imagine if you come in a group your chance of getting selected is a lot higher than if you come alone.
If memory serves correctly they interviewed us in groups of 5, and for the group I was in the whole "interview" lasted about 3 seconds. They lined us up, looked us over, then passed us on. Still quite a fun experience, and though I didn't get called I was still terrified the whole time I might get called so the adrenaline was running.
Yes. I was there with a group of 30. They dismissed most of us in seconds, but took longer to talk with a few of our liveliest members. The one they talked the longest with got called as a contestant.
My 85 year old grandfather didn't commit suicide, but he was taken for every penny of his meager life savings by the Jamaican lottery scam. My dad discovered what was going on, called the police, but was told there was nothing they could do. My grandfather firmly believed and probably still does that he had won the lottery and was just waiting for a payout. We basically had to revoke his phone privileges to keep him from giving them more money, because he was so convinced. He does't have Alzheimer's or dementia. The scammers are just very convincing.
I really think there is some other maybe even unidentified kind of mental issue going on with this kind of scam. I say that because I know of some people who are locked into the Iraqi dinar scam and simply cannot see what is going on in spite of being otherwise ostensibly smart and intelligent people. Maybe it's "greed" , but it seems to me that it's more of a vulnerability due to hopes and dreams not matching topic sophistication.
The first is the sunk cost falacity / escalation of commitment ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment ) - if you've already given the scammers $500, your choices are either to admit that you've been scammed and will never see that money again. The alternative is to convince yourself that you really are going to get the money (and you haven't been scammed) if you just send them a little bit more...
The second factor is that at a certain age most people begin to lose their judgement. You don't have to have full on dementia, just slightly less good judgement than you had when you were younger, in order to fall for on of these scams.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/your-money/as-cognitivity-... - "As Cognition Slips, Financial Skills Are Often the First to Go". Interestingly, financially savvy people who actively manage their money are at a much higher risk of losing everything to bad decisions at an older age.
I don't think it's greed. I think it's hope. Most of the people I know who fall for these scams are not any dumber or greedier than other people I know. They do seem to be much more optimistic and positive though.
Think if this same person has late stage cancer and believed they were gonna make it despite all odds it would be an inspiring lifetime movie. But unfortunately I think these are the same people who also believe that a Nigerian prince needs them to transfer some money before they will be handsomely rewarded against all odds.
I agree. In my grandfather's case, he was keeping this all a secret because he wanted to surprise his family with financial help from his "windfall." Something I think he always wished he could do, but never had the money to do.
Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. - John Steinbeck (disputed)
Lots of otherwise reasonable people are willing to delude themselves for a shot at a windfall.
My mother is in her late 70s and my father died a couple of years ago, I think just short of his 89th birthday. They grew up in a different world, where a handshake meant something and overnight wealthionnaires who won the lottery or got rich doing something online that many older people cannot fathom or whatever was just not a Thing that was going on.
My dad grew up on a farm, in a log cabin with a dirt floor. He remembered those phones I have only ever seen in black and white movies (http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=old+party+line+phone&FOR...). He was able to tell me those phones were a party line, something I had never known. In other words, one phone line serviced the entire town. Anyone with a phone could pick up when it rang and potentially listen in on your call. There was no expectation of privacy.
He just could not keep up with the rate and level of change in his last years. The world had changed too much and he no longer wanted to try to understand. It was just not the world he grew up in.
People also were less likely to be college educated back then. There are ways in which they genuinely lacked the sophistication we just assume people are supposed to have.
My parents were/are very good hearted people and the way the world has changed just does not fit with how they related to it for so much of their lives. This is probably true for a great many other elderly people.
Then "handshake" bit is rose colored view of the past. Scams were incredibly common in the past. Real estate, diamond and gold jewelry, and even the original "snake oil" and patent medicines, and all the classic "confidence man" scams.
I was not saying no one ever got burned. But life was different back then and it can make it hard for an older person to figure out how to judge things today. It is very similar to moving to a different culture. Culture shock is not evidence of incompetence. It just means the context is vastly different from what you are used to, which is throwing sand into your gears. It is kind of disrespectful to assume older people are all just incompetent and stupid and not account for the fact that the world today is dramatically different from the one in which they grew up.
