Doug Davidson's TNPIR & Why It Won't Be Inducted Anytime Soon

Doug Davidson's TNPIR & Why It Won't Be Inducted Anytime Soon
Originally posted: January 28, 2011

Text by: Cyndi Seidelman

As a kid in 1994, after school at 3:30, my day consisted of avoiding getting beat up by a 5th grade imbecile, getting my homework done, and turning on Power Rangers. Then at 4:30pm on KIRO Channel 7, I watched The New Price Is Right with Doug Davidson. As a kid and being a budding game show geek, I enjoyed what I saw. At that time, I was in school and hardly saw the superior daytime version, that was on 6 hours before. Either way, I enjoyed what I saw.

Now it's 2011, 16 months ago, I started this site and quite a few people have asked me to do Doug Davidson's Price Is Right. While I agree that it doesn't hold a candle to the daytime version, it doesn't mean that it's a bad show. So, I'm going to defend The New Price Is Right with Doug Davidson.

First item to defend: Doug Davidson. Sure, Doug Davidson wasn't Bob Barker, or even Tom Kennedy for that matter, but that's comparing a wiener dog to two Irish Wolfhounds. That's not to say that his hosting was terrible. In fact, I thought that Doug Davidson did a great job hosting the show. He didn't try to be like Bob, he was Doug and did a fine job at being Doug. He brought his own style and energy to the show. He really bonded with the contestants and made them feel very comfortable in somewhat new surroundings.

Second Item to Defend: The Vastly Different Set. I'm not a big set freak, but I absolutely LOVE the set. It just screamed "Nighttime" and "Bigger Budget" and class. I also enjoyed the video wall that was used to do different things, like having The Price WAS Right or the introductions of prizes among other things. Although it didn't look like the Daytime Set, it still was a fantastic set. I don't need to mention the music, but I'd prefer that remix of the theme to the Daytime theme at that time, which after 22 years, needed a retuning of sorts.

Third Item to Defend: No Contestants Row. Now, this is going to be the hardest to defend, but I'm going to try. When I watched Price Is Right when I was a kid, I was more enamored with Plinko, Cliffhangers, Bump! among other pricing games and couldn't care less about the Items up for bids. Without Contestants Row, it allowed the viewer to care more about the contestant on stage. Not only that, it allowed for some good comedic moments between Doug, Burton, the contestants & others.

In short, I won't be inducting The New Price Is Right anytime soon. Doug was a good host, and I'll be inducting Dennis James before Doug, the set was great, and contestants row wasn't that big of a loss in this case, since it helped bolster other parts of the show and get the entire crew involved in certain aspects. If I were to letter grade Doug's price, it'd get a B-. Sure No Contestants Row hurts, but at least the core aspect of Price is still there.

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