http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Price-Rig...he-Best-Of/8760

They are actually going to include some Bill Cullen episodes in this new DVD box set? And even Bob Barker's first hosting episode...with that fur coat as the first IFUB ever??? Now that is a definite buy, no doubt!!!

They're also wasting almost 25% of the content on Barker's last week.

I'll wait until it shows up in the $9.99 bin someplace. And it will.

To be fair, it was originally announced as 20 episodes, then upped to 26. (Those extra six likely being the first show and the last week). The announced price did not change with the announced content. So it's not really wasted per se. Granted, I didn't want to pay $30 for this even before the added content, but that's a separate issue.

The first episode bit strikes me as odd, considering it contains a fur. Not that I'm defending him at all, but I thought Bob called for a moratorium on any fur episodes? Consider it a curious thought. :-P

Or did that all go out the window when he stepped down?

Everything mentioned so far points to there not being any Dian, Holly, or Kathleen episodes, huh. What a shame.

Sure it is. I don't care about what they announce, I care about what they go to market with. (Especially because it is entirely possible that they planned to go to market with 26 episodes all along and that all of this is a marketing stunt.) And if they discovered that they could squeeze six extra shows on there and decided to use that space to hold the final week of Ezekiel when they could have used it to hold more interesting stuff from further back in the history of the show, that, to me, is wasted.

So no "Bump" episodes, possibly?

I'm not too thrilled about all the last-week episodes either, but from a collecting standpoint it will be good to have a good-quality copy of the premiere. Most copies in the trade curcuit that I know about are in poor condition.

I'm thinking yeah, that's exactly it. He may have been executive producer, but he was never owner. My thought has always been that Fremantle had the right to license whatever episodes they wanted to whomever they wanted, and they kept the furs out of the equation just to keep the old man content.

Speaking of Ezekiel, for some reason this picture amuses me greatly.

If that's the case, it would seem that if the old episodes ever found their way back to GSN we'd likely get the whole package of shows, including the ones they skipped over last time. Personally, I'd like to see more of the half-hour shows.

It would certainly be more accurate if his hands were about six inches higher on each side. :)

Or not visible at all.

What mentioned that? On the site first noted in the thread, none of the three reports says there are or aren't.

Nothing has mentioned it, but given that the recent retrospective specials omitted them entirely, the box art shows only recent photos, and the DVD episodes we know of would not have those models in them, it makes me think there is some legal barrier to including them. But I wouldn't have expected the premiere episode to show up either, so maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised.

I point out here that until we either have the DVD in our hands or see a press release containing which episodes will be included, this is conjecture or sheer speculation.

I, for one, don't think there will be any kind of legal barriers such as this.

I don't either. If they had to exclude episodes with Dian, Holly, and/or Kathleen, that wipes out pretty much every show between 1975 and 2000...well over half the run! That's a pretty big chunk of history for the show, and it would just seem weird not to include any episodes from that time.

I'm thinking (hoping) that the exclusion of the classic-era models from the specials and retrospectives was a Barker Thing, done at his discretion while he was EP. That the first show with a fur is said to be included in the DVD set indicates to me that it is likely old Puckerbutt has no say in what shows are included in this package, as Fremantle owns the shows and can license them as they wish.

As I said, thinking and hoping...

That's almost certainly true. Speculation at this point about which episodes they'll include is pointless (but fun!), but if you threw darts blindly in the tape room you'd be bound to hit Dian, Holly and Kathleen episodes pretty quickly. Unless there really is some legal issue with their clearances, I can't imagine that they won't show up.

I would imagine it hasn't been easy to select episodes. Plenty of shows have moments, but why do we need, for example, the entire episode where the girl lost her tube top, if only those few seconds were noteworthy? Wasn't Vanna only selected to 'Come on Down' for the final IUFB? Honestly, hardly any episodes were really 'special' for the full sixty minutes.

(I still love Robair's idea for a TPIR series back when we were speculating about GSN: "You Know How It Ends: The Double Overbid Marathon")

But you're adding a Cullen or two? OK, just because I have some extra Best Buy rewards that I need to use up, you sold me.

To Vanna's embarrassment, she was one of the first four contestants. As most of us know, she did not get out of contestant's row. I think we could get the whole show based on that alone.

/Maybe they should bring her back for another chance...
//Maybe not

IIRC, she was down there the entire show. I recall Barker making a comment about her after his entrance.

If they have Barker's last show, that's fine. The entire week is a bit overkill. Maybe if my Dad gets those reward coupons, I'll try and buy them by proxy.

EDIT: Well, I WAS going to say what Nick and Joe said. Darn me for being two minutes late to the party.

But yeah, Vanna did get a couple comments down there. At the top of the show, Bob remarked that there were TV screens backstage where the crew can watch the show. And when a crew member read "Get Serious" on Vanna's shirt, he said "I am! I am!"

If I remember correctly, I believe Barker also commented on the fact that Vanna was still down in Contestant's Row at one point. This was about a year before she got the WOF job, and IIRC, Vanna was a brunette, not a blonde. This was around 1980 or 81, so it was Johnny O. who called Vanna to "come on down."

IIRC, in her book, she said the ep. taped on 6/2/80 (her mom's birthday), and aired about two or three weeks later. Or maybe it aired on her mom's b-day...either way, the taping and airing happened in June 1980. She went to "Wheel" in late-1982.

I stand corrected. And yes, absolutely, that then ought to be one of the episodes in the set.

But please don't. Just on general principle.

It aired on June 20. Oddly enough, I don't believe this is the date Vanna has given for it, but Price's records confirm it to be correct.

I believe you will find that alot of the previous episodes that have been excluded from reairing will remain as such as far as this DVD set is concerned.

You can draw your conclusions from that as you wish.

Agreed. But somewhere in the back of the mind, you wonder if including *ALL* of the final week of Barker's reign was a final ego stroke for Barker -- If Carson's last week on the Tonight Show can do it, than so can I, especially since I hosted "Price" longer than Carson hosted "Tonight".

...But Carson's final week was far better!!!

Is Carson's entire final week on DVD? I have The Ultimate Collection and that has the Thursday and Friday shows from Carson's last week. From what I've seen, the newer Definitive Collection is primarily the previously released sets in one box.

I had thought there were 3 new eps on Carson's last week, and they were all available on DVD & VHS at the time. That was one collection that has always been on my 'must have' list but for whatever reason I have yet to purchase.

No Dennis James.
No Tom Kennedy.
No Doug Davidson.
No sale.

Like them or not, TPIR from 1972 on has had four emcees. At least one episode of each should be included if only for posterity, even if it means dropping some Cullen episodes (sorry, Matt). During his run on the show, Dennis James brought a certain energy to the show that stiff, mechanical (at the time) Barker did not.


Would you like me to pass this along to her?

What about Drew?

Oh, you won't hear complaints from me, that sounds like a terrific idea. Besides, I doubt seriously that there are going to be oodles of Cullen episodes to drop. Two would frankly surprise me. The way I see it, they should have a "bonus disc" of non-Barker TPIR, heck maybe even with an oversea version or two.

I vote for the oversea version (or two) being from Joe Pasquale's version. :-P

They could definitely add a Dennis James ep, since furs are "in" again, so to speak, and that was the only show a vast majority of people remember him hosting.

Kennedy?? perhaps, but IMHO I don't recall him doing anything on his version that stood out.

Davidson?? That show was so far off the traditional format chart, it might scare some people!

Foreign versions?? Absolutely! Maybe a quick montage of the non-English formats and a full ep from each English-speaking country (If you can have a DVD box set including Bruce Forsyth's appearance from The Muppet Show,...) :-)

And if you're gonna have Barker's last, you should have either Drew's first taped or aired ep!



Sure...then we can finalize the dates for that weekend in Vail next month... :-)

According to someone who works for BCI...

"This is what I know.

We have 4 Bill Cullen episodes, 3 episodes from Bob' first week, his entire final week and the rest are from the early to mid 70s.

I would guess that depending on how this set sells and how that influences the producers, future volumes could move into the 80s."

OK, nobody's happier about this than I (and maybe Adam), but even I know That's Too Much!

If I'm Joe Housewife, and I'm buying this thing because of my hero, Bob Barker, why on earth am I going to be excited by the fact that half of one disc is this black and white version I've never heard of?

According to that list then, there don't appear to be too many hour-long episodes outside of the last week. I wonder if they're going to include the first hour-long from 1975. Even though most of us have it in our collections, for the average fan out there, it would be a nice touch.



A fur wasn't given away on every episode. It would have been good if they could have seen fit to throw one Dennis ep in there -- how about the one that ended in a showcase tie -- the only time in the show's history that happened. That would have been a neat treasure!

Hmm . . . Dian didn't start until 1975. Is it possible we'll only be getting pre- and post-Dian episodes in this set?

Does Barker have a say in that?

If Barker's lost the power to stop episodes due to furs, I'd imagine it'd be the same thing for Dian or any of the other models.

But it's all just been speculation. None of us knows* whether Barker is wielding any veto power over this set. One member has already rather cryptically suggested that the off-limits episodes are still off-limits, and you'll note that the BCI guy says they have "3 episodes from Bob' first week," which might mean three shows that don't have furs and not necessarily the "very first" episode they're promising at the OP's link.


*I imagine some people might know for sure but for some reason or another aren't saying.

The evidence does seem to fit with the theory Bob has veto power.

I said three days ago...



The episodes we know of are all outside that time period, and the rest being from "the early-to-mid 70's" would seem to suggest nothing after 1975. And there were exactly three episodes from week 1 without fur coats.

Of course, something could happen to prove me totally wrong, but so far everything seems to support it.

Was Dian around on the first hour long episode?

Sure was. In fact, she started sometime in the summer of '75, when Anitra took a leave of absence.

According to the aforementioned "BCI guy," the set "can't have episodes that feature furs, as Bob won't allow it." Which is why I was surprised when it was reported the first episode is included. Probably just an exception because of its significance.

BCI did try to negotiate (for lack of a better term) with Bob to include fur episodes, but no go (also a mention of other hosts' exclusion at that link).

Here's why I think it makes sense for Bob to have veto power over DVD releases. Those in the know about such things, correct me if I'm wrong.

Bob's contract (at least until recently) probably had no clauses relating to home video releases of the show since (a) none was planned and (b) until the advent of DVD, doing so was fairly cost prohibitive. Therefore, just as GSN has to obtain releases from all hosts and celebrities to rerun older shows, and just as BCI likely had to get releases to release the Best of MG DVD, so they probably have to obtain releases from Bob to release the Best of TPIR DVD. Thus, Bob can simply refuse to release any episodes he does not want to be seen again, which means BCI is stuck with whatever non-fur, non-Dian/Holly/Kathleen episodes they can find. (It's possible his recent contracts did have clauses giving him veto power over reruns and other releases of old shows, too.) This may also explain the lack of James/Kennedy/Davidson episodes; Bob could have held his episodes (at least the ones he was willing to have included) hostage until BCI agreed not to include any other 1972-and-beyond versions of TPIR .

My god...if that is true, it just proves that Barker is/was a complete jerk*. It's nice that he cared about Uncle Bill...but denying a PSA possibility or a donation of the proceeds to a charity (I'd assume either the charity the money from the mic and chair went to or his DJ&T foundation) is just plain silly.

*Yeah, I went there. Sue me.

This quote got me:



Are you serious...no really, are you serious?!

/somewhat rhetorical question