Perfect Bid: The Contestant Who Knew Too Much

So, "Take the A Train" starts,

which is, you know, I know

okay, Rod's gonna come out next and do his warm-up.

And, well, Rod finishes his warm-up,

and they do the opening slate,

and he's telling us, you know,

"Fifteen seconds. Lick your lips, and sit up straight."

And blah, blah, blah and get ready to applaud.

And we start applauding,

and music comes on, lights are on.

They're doing the opening pan.

And I hear my name.

Hi, I'm Linda, or I'm Ted!

You're Linda! I'm Ted!

- Oh, you got me confused. - I don't know who you are. Who are we?

I'm Linda.

And the Homework Helpline is coming up in just a minute

as soon as we figure out who we are.

Linda Great.

My name is Ted Slauson.

And, uh, I was born on an Air Force base in Massachusetts.

My dad was in the Air Force.

From there, when I was six weeks old,

we moved to Wisconsin,

which is where both of my parents are from.

Lived there for a few years,

moved... went down to the Kansas City, Missouri area

where my dad was stationed for a few years.

And then in 1970, they moved to California

where my dad was transferred.

Uh, he retired in 1972,

so, they ended up just staying in California,

but that's... they're still living in the house that I grew up in,

the house that I remember most from my childhood.

"The Price is Right..."

...America's love-in with the giveaway,

a hit in prime time in the 1950s,

by 1972, the producers decide

time is right for a daytime version.

Roger Dobkowitz started as a production assistant on The Price is Right.

It was his first job in television.

For the showcase, when they reveal the showcase...

we actually taped calculators

to the readout machines

with gaffer's tape on that machine,

and that machine.

And I had to enter in the amount.

Oh, now the difference.

The difference is here, and then I had to jump over here.

And the operators had to enter in all that information.

I mean, you look back,

how did we ever put together a game show

using this rudimentary equipment?

Nowadays, everyone has four TVs and a million channels to watch.

Well, back in the early '70s,

there were four channels and we had one TV.

And with six kids,

obviously, we had to all agree on what to watch.

And you know, my older brothers and sisters

decided they wanted to watch "The Price is Right,"

so grudgingly, you know,

sat down and watched it with them.

By the end of the show, I was pretty much hooked.

And I still have...

just about all of my name tags,

and contestant cards from all the tapings I've been to.

I went to, I'm pretty sure it was 37 altogether.

What's interesting is that,

in the old days on the left,

they have more, kind of a pastel color,

and then as they got into the 2000s,

they got kind of bright in their colors.

I have been a mathematics teacher

and in mathematics assessment.

We mostly write and develop and review

test questions that go on assessments that students take.

I didn't have anything to do on the show at the beginning.

As I tell a lot of young people,

I said, "That's a wonderful position to be in."

But what happened is that people started asking me to help them.

I helped them with the prizes.

I helped them with the scripts.

I helped them copying.

I helped them this, I helped them that.

And I began to pick up a little bit of everything.

My mathematical ability

really kind of surfaced around junior high level.

So that, of course, with the numbers and everything

and all the prices, that kind of made a connection for me.

Hi, this is Ted!

And this is Linda!

And we're here for the Homework Helpline.

So have your program... Your problems ready,

and we'll be waiting for your call.

So, one week,

I got into, like, watching, "Price is Rights" from 1973.

Side-by-side refrigerator-freezer from world-famous Amana.

Think 25 cubic foot side-by-side...

The same refrigerator-freezer

was on four different episodes that I watched

and it was $789 all four times.

I'm like, "Well, see? There it is.

There's proof. It was way back in the beginning."

It was the same, you know,

same stuff over and over.

And it's that hideous avocado green.

My brother and I, I think, both noticed.

"Oh, well, I remember the price of this was $1500 or whatever."

It would be $1500 again and so that kind of inspired me

to start, kind of tracking prices,

or, you know, keeping records,

if you will.

When I would record the shows,

and put it all in a Word doc and everything

and put it in the database,

pretty much every show,

I had to add four or five new things

because they were always bringing new stuff on.

I went to San Francisco State University

and when you go after a master's degree,

you got to write a thesis.

In those days, you had to put it all on paper,

and I wrote a thesis about this thick.

Two hundred pages.

I wrote a thesis on game shows

because I love game shows.

I would actually sit and watch game shows in the afternoon,

and wait for the credits to roll.

Saw who produced them,

and they only showed the credits once a week,

so if you missed it once a week,

you had to wait a whole nother week.

And I sent a copy of my thesis

out to like 20 or 30 game show producers.

I saw Mark Goodson,

and Mark Goodson was one of those people.

He's larger than life.

A big office, big desk!

Near the end of the interview, he said to me, he said,

"When are you flying back to Los Angeles?"

I said, "Flying back? I'm driving back."

And his eyes got really big.

He said, "You drove to New York?"

I said, "Yes, I drove to New York.

I have a VW Bug and I drove to New York."

And then in the hotel, I remember it to this day,

there was a little slip of paper in the...

"Somebody phoned for you, Roger. Here it is."

It was Mark Goodson's office.

"Please phone the office." I phoned the office right away,

and the secretary said, "Mark Goodson would like to see you tomorrow."

Well, I went into his office,

and he said, "Roger, I've decided to hire you,

"because anyone that would drive

"to New York City for an interview has a lot of initiative."

And this is "The Price is Right"

that I wrote back in the early 1990s.

And it has all the games that were on the show that year.

You type in some names of some players.

And you can type up to nine.

Last thing is a random number,

so that the prizes and prices and everything get randomized.

There we go.

Here's the opening of the show.

It's all in text with, you know, fake lights going around.

And it's calling down at least two of the people that I put in.

It has the standard opening, of course.

You know, then the doors open, it's not gonna be Bob Barker,

'cause I wasn't that good of a programmer back then.

When I was on duty, I had a disc jockey show.

They had a studio there.

There was an audience participation show.

The host didn't show up.

He was never ashamed to take a drink.

And I think that he probably over-imbibed.

But in any event, G. Pearson Ward came rushing in there.

"Bob, you have to..." Everything was live.

There was no taping in those.

He rushed in there.

He said, "You have to get out there and do that show."

And so out I went. I didn't have time to get nervous.

I grabbed the hand mic, went out,

started talking to the audience.

And I got about three or four laughs.

And I thought, "I like this."

I'm gonna try to make them do that some more.

And fortunately, my wife, Dorothy Jo,

heard that show.

And when I got home,

she said, "Barker, that's what you should do."

She said, "You did that better than you've ever done anything else."

I mean, Bob Barker has said

every game on the show had an element of luck.

A good chunk of those games,

if you had a really good knowledge of prices,

you were gonna win.

$500, not bad.

It's not real money, so I'm gonna go ahead

and look in the next hole.

Next hole is worth...