Host With the Most: The Cult of Bob Barker

Unless there's an uncanny streak of new-car winners, "The Price Is Right" is relatively cheap to make. More important, it is one of the easiest, happiest things on television to watch.

Just the sound of it feels, somehow nostalgically, like being in bed with the flu. ("Come on down!" roars the announcer, Rich Fields -- who replaced the late Rod Roddy in 2003, who replaced Johnny Olson in 1986 -- as you beg some 7Up and toast to stay on down.) There is the sound of it starting at 11 a.m., over those gooey-warm CBS airwaves, just when the day is still technically young and yet already somehow wasted. It feels like skipping class again and again, the MWF 10:30 section of Lit 125: The Emerging Self.

It is the sound of human, couch-bound torpor (hospital waiting rooms; snow days!) mixed gleefully with supply-side economics. (Something d-o-o economics, voo- doo economics. Bob Barker, it should be noted with each Grocery Game, graduated summa cum laude in economics, on a basketball scholarship, from Drury College in Missouri, Class of '47.) You win by knowing the stuff that matters -- the going price of soup, of baby wipes, of pain relief. Also there is wonder, exaltation, a new pool table, his-and-hers Jet Skis, this beautiful living room set. All this can be yours. If . . .

The Great American Audience

"I look at our audience as a microcosm of what America should be," says Roger Dobkowitz, 61, the show's longtime producer. "Of all the reality shows out there now, we're the most real. We enjoy our contestants being as real as they are. And what are they doing? They're doing their best. The audience really comes together and is proud of each contestant for doing the best they can. Nobody's trying to make somebody lose. It brings tears to my eyes to talk about it. . . .

"When a contestant loses a game, they're still so happy to be there. It's like something they've accomplished. It becomes this badge of honor -- they came to Mecca, they got up onstage, they met Bob Barker. They're not there for greed."

See them with blankies and plastic patio chairs, zealously staked out along the CBS compound at Fairfax and Beverly. Assistant producers come out sometime around noon and interview each ticket holder for possible contestanthood. Everyone gets that big, honey-yellow name tag with her or his name Sharpied in all caps upon it: ELISE. JACOB. RAJEAN. ANDREW. LESONYA. JOYCE. ASSAD. MELISSA.

Someone explain all the sorority girls, the Marines, the youth group missionaries, the frat rats, the stoners. (Well, the stoners we understand.) "Mom Needs a New Hot Tub," reads the pink, self-made XXL T-shirt worn by a woman whose name tag reads FLORA. She's using a cane, and so gets to wait out the last hour or so in the security lobby, with a woman pulling an oxygen tank.

"Think about it this way," Dobkowitz offers. "The median age in this country is 36 or 37, which means half the country does not know life without Bob Barker. You're young, you go out in the world and all the new things happen -- jobs, marriage. But turn on the set and Bob's doing the television show, and it's all okay."

It is no accident that, from the first season, the people who play "The Price Is Right" look exactly like the nation itself, no matter the year. They are dressed for immediate departure on Untucked Airlines. They seem like a lot of different thesis statements at once -- about diversity, about class, about consumption -- on a show that never meant to suggest any of that. Some ran on down, some skipped on down, one legendarily popped out of her tube top in the mid-'70s.

Up on that stage, they get bleary-eyed and sometimes tell Barker about being sick a lot in first grade, or about endless days spent at Meemaw's house watching TV, or they have him sign the tattoo they've gotten of his famous smiling face. Sometimes it's Bob on the shoulder, or else Bob on the calf, Bob on the biceps. It puzzles him and he does not question it.

Barker's wife, Dorothy Jo, has been dead 25 years, and he misses her greatly. They never had children. He has millions of grandchildren, though, if you broaden the definition of love and family to include being loved on television, by that sort of family. After a taping of the show earlier this year, in his dressing room, Barker considers this concept for a moment, as if it has never been suggested to him, and says yes, that's a good point, that's probably true.

Change Isn't Good

Barker remembers the late producer Mark Goodson presenting the concept and persuading him to host. ("I think we'll get a good run out of this," Goodson said. "I do, too," replied Barker, who already had a good run hosting "Truth or Consequences.") And there the concept remained: the chunky stagflation-era typography; the low-tech lights and buzzers; the glittery sets that appear to be covered in the felty hides of genuine Muppets; that jouncy, frantic theme song.