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"Here it comes! From the Bob Barker Studio at CBS in Hollywood! Television's most exciting hour of fantastic prizes! The fabulous 60-minute Price Is Right!"
Originating in 1956 with Bill Cullen as host, The Price Is Right asked four contestants to look at a prize and guess its actual retail price; whichever contestant got the closest without overbidding won the prize. This format ran in daytime and prime time on NBC, and later on ABC, from 1956 to 1964. It was pastiched in a famous episode of The Flintstones.
The more familiar format, with Bob Barker and the Catch Phrase "Come on down!", debuted in 1972 on CBS daytime and can still be seen there. Concurrent syndicated series starred Dennis James, Tom Kennedy and Doug Davidson. This format added two new elements: Contestants are now chosen from the Studio Audience, and the winner of each item up for bids joins the host onstage to play one of dozens of pricing games. The hourlong format for The Price Is Right became permanent in October 1975. After starting his 35th year with the show, Bob Barker announced his retirement from TV at the end of October 2006. Bob Barker's final show was broadcast in June 2007; Drew Carey succeeded him beginning in September of that year.
The Price is Right has its own tropes:
- Contestants' Row
- $1 bids (basically, betting that everybody else has bid too high and therefore lost automatically): Often, contestants using this clearly have no idea why this is done; they just like saying it.
- Inverted with $1-higher bids, where the last bidder in a round bids one dollar higher than the highest bid of the other three contestants in an attempt to win the prize.
- The mere existence of Plinko, which is arguably the show's most popular pricing game.
- Showcase Showdown, with the Big Wheel
- "Isn't this exciting?": Bob Barker endlessly delaying his reveal of whether the contestant won or lost, much to the contestant's agony.
This show provides examples of:
- Adaptation Displacement: Name one person under the age of 60 (excluding diehard game show fans) who is even aware of the Bill Cullen version.
- And Ninety Nine Cents: Prices are usually rounded to the dollar, so except for grocery products, nothing actually ends in "99 cents". However, that doesn't stop lots of the prices from ending in "99 dollars". Notable in Clock Game, where occasional Genre Savvy contestants go straight to $999 for a quick win.
- Brother Chuck: Numerous pricing games have followed Chuck's path, including Superball!, the Phone Home Game, the Telephone Game
 and the dubious Shower Game. Some would prefer that Superball!, Penny Ante, and $uper $aver had not been retired.
- Catch Phrase: "Come on down!", "A NEW CAR!", and "All this can be yours, if the price is right."
- "This is Bob Barker, reminding you to help control the pet population: have your pets spayed or neutered!"
- "Once [the Range Game] is stopped, it can't be reset for 37 hours." Drew tried to carry on this phrase, but he said "days" by mistake and never attempted the catch phrase again.
- Cheaters Never Prosper: Subverted. There's only been two occasions of cheaters during the Barker era, and after being chewed out, the cheaters still got the prize they were playing for.
- Consolation Prize: The giant checks used in the Check Game are given to the players if the win or lose (with a nice big "VOID" stamped on loser's checks). Bob has joked that they always find voided checks in the trash outside the studio.
- Crossover: Bob, Rod and some of the models appeared on Family Feud (which, at that time, preceded TPIR on CBS), competing against the cast of The Young And The Restless. The first Feud episode that week even copied the Price intro.
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome:
- Terry Kniess' perfect Showcase bid on the December 16, 2008 episode, supposedly the first in the show's history. Drew didn't seem too enthused about it, though.
- A man proposes during the Showcase Showdown, while also getting $1.00 on his spin and eventually winning the showcase. She said yes.
- When a player gets the price exactly right when another player had tried bidding a dollar more than him.
- Downer Ending: Double overbids in the Showcase.
- There have also been at least two instances of Showcase bids being over by $1 (one of which was also a double overbid).
- In one of the early $1,000,000 specials, one contestant was barely a quarter inch away from winning the $1,000,000 on his bonus spin.
- Ear Worm: The theme song, the yodeling music they play on Cliff Hangers yodeling music, etc.
- Escort Mission: Cliff Hangers, in a unique way.
- Fan Nickname: An early pricing game never officially named on the show is referred to as "Bullseye I" by its fans. The current "Bullseye" pricing game is unofficially "Bullseye II" or "Bullseye '76" (the year it debuted).
- Drew has referred to the Cliff Hangers character as "Yodely Guy" or "Yodel Guy"; Doug Davidson dubbed him "Hans".
- Fanservice: Barker's Beauties, particularly when they break out the swimsuits.
- Fur And Loathing: When Barker joined PETA, furs were no longer offered as prizes. This would be understandable, but he doesn't even want those old episodes aired on GSN.
- Gannon Banned: "Showcase Showdown" is when they spin the big wheel. The final round, where contestants bid on the big prize packages, is simply referred to as the "Showcases". Never get these confused, or Price fans will hate you forever and a day.
- Genre Savvy: A little of this can help a lot, but not always; contestants rarely have any. One example can be found in the Ten Chances game, where the right answers always end in zero. You would only know this from watching frequently; it's never pointed out on the air.
- Growing The Beard: The show became a much less staid affair around the time that it expanded to a full hour: not only were there twice as many games, but the Showcases began using skits with then-announcer Johnny Olson, and new gameplay elements such as the big wheel were added as well.
- Helium Speech: Rich Fields once inhaled helium before reading the prize copy, as part of a Showcase skit. He then did it again before his signoff tag.
- Hey Its That Voice: Rod Roddy was already well known as the announcer on Press Your Luck, Hit Man and Whew! before his role as TPIR's announcer.
- Jerk Ass: Anybody who bids $1 above a previous contestant's bid in the opening round.
- This especially applies if the previous contestant bid $1.
- Parodied in Family Guy: A guy who tries to pull this stunt gets cursed at by the other contestant.
- Actually these people are better examples of Stop Having Fun Guys because they want to win so they do the $1 up bids. They aren't a Jerk Ass; they just want to win (as anyone else does).
- Last Of His Kind: Daytime game shows used to be as ubiquitous as Soap Operas. However, Lets Make A Deal got revived in October 2009 on CBS, so The Price Is Right is not technically the "last" anymore.
- Leitmotif: The losing horns, when someone loses a pricing game. If you've seen the show, you probably just heard it in your head by its mere mention.
- Loads And Loads Of Characters: Replace 'characters' with 'games' and you've got this trope. In recent years, some pricing games appear so rarely, fans often wonder if they're still on the show.
- Long Runners
- Luck Based Mission: Skill is often not enough for these games. For instance, Half Off comes down to a random choice between two boxes if you get everything else right, and Three Strikes can easily be Unwinnable if the strike chips are pulled too quickly.
- And in games like Plinko and Punch-A-Bunch, you're just as likely to get a Zonk as hit the big money.
- Memetic Mutation: IT'S A NEW CAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!
- "Help control the pet population: Have your pets spayed or neutered!"
- Minigame Game: If you had to describe the show's format, this would be it.
- Nightmare Fuel: The Shower Game.
- Old Shame: One of the things keeping The Price Is Right off GSN was Bob Barker's refusal to greenlight shows that offered fur coats as prizes. Also, Barker's abandoned habit of letting women pull the $100 perfect bid bonus out of his pocket by themselves.
- The Other Darrin: Dennis James, Tom Kennedy and Doug Davidson hosted nighttime syndicated versions. Guess which game show doesn't have a nighttime syndicated version anymore.
- Percussive Maintenance: At least once, Bob kicked a set piece when it got stuck. (He once trained with Chuck Norris.)
- Periphery Demographic: College students love The Price Is Right, mostly because it's on during typical lunch hours. It got to the point at Penn State where a person wrote in to the campus newspaper complaining about the show being the only thing shown in the dining halls. The next day, hundreds of letters were sent supporting the show.
- The producers did notice a surge in popularity after Bob Barker appeared in the Adam Sandler movie Happy Gilmore, in which Bob Barker, appearing as himself in a Pro/AM golf tournament, was paired up with - and later beat the everloving crap out of - Adam Sandler's character Happy Gilmore.
- "The price is wrong, bitch!"
- Pretty In Mink: Fur coats were often prizes until Bob Barker joined PETA.
- Product Placement: Even more so than other game shows. Not just with big prizes, but contestants often have to figure out the prices of several small prizes to get more chances to win the big one. And of course, every single one is described in detail for the contestant and viewers.
- Utterly justified, as knowing which brand something is can help contestants guess the price, which of course is the object of the game.
- This is actually far less common now. The smaller products used in the pricing games are brand-name products, but these days, about half of them are just given a generic description.
- Put On A Bus: A couple of years into Drew Carey's run, many of the games went missing without being confirmed as retired. Some have trickled back into the rotation while a handful remain in limbo.
- Rearrange The Song: Every now and then.
- An early prize cue on the show was later rearranged to become the Family Feud theme.
- The show's main theme used a different orchestration for the 1994 syndie version.
- Also inverted when the theme song from the Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour was later recycled as a prize cue.
- Replacement Scrappy: A couple.
- Following original announcer Johnny Olson's death in 1985, the show rotated announcing duties among Rod Roddy, Gene Wood, Bob Hilton and Rich Jeffries, with Rod ultimately getting the nod. Not one fan of the show liked Rich Jeffries' flat, nasal voice. Others think that Gene, while usually a great announcer on other shows, was a poor fit for Price.
- After Rod Roddy died 18 years later, the show tried out another string of guest announcers. Opinions vary wildly on many of the sub-announcers, but one thing is for certain: nobody liked it when Daniel Rosen was behind the mic, as he sounded much like Rich Jeffries…on Quaaludes.
- Not only that, Daniel Rosen (or someone else) also infected a popular fansite with six accounts singing the praises of his announcing, while the legit members were close to unanimously against him. Read all about it here.
- Earlier sub-announcer Paul Boland was also a bit of a Scrappy himself. Supposedly, he was canned after a week of sub-announcing due to his over-enthusiasm and refusal to tone it down.
- Some fans of the show hate occasional sub-announcer Burton Richardson, mainly for his over-enthusiasm as well.
- Running Gag: Do people know how to play the Check Game?
- Synthesizeritis: The CBS show's Theme Tune and many of its music cues were composed by noted Moog synthesist Edd Kalehoff. Yes, the show is still using Moog-based tunes well into the 21st century. See also Totally Radical, below.
- After Drew Carey took over the show, several modern-sounding pieces of music were added to the show's "soundtrack" (as it were), but many of the familiar themes have stayed untouched, including the show's famous opening theme.
- That One Level: A few.
- The long-since retired pricing game "Bullseye I" is probably the only universally accepted example of this, being lost every time it was played. Some more subjective examples are "That's Too Much!", "Fortune Hunter", "Mystery Price" and "Step Up."
- Also subverted by pricing games that are apparently hated for being too easy. "Pick-a-Number" is an example.
- Many people hate Ten Chances, which can take forever to play, especially with an inept contestant who is a slow writer and who still, after claiming to have watched the show for years, can't figure out the unwritten rule of Ten Chances' prices always ending in zero.
- They Changed It Now It Sucks: Some fans find the removal of some price bidding games and new host Drew Carey to be abysmal. The most popular reason that Drew is hated among fans is his occasional lack of emotion.
- The 1994 nighttime version with Doug Davidson was generally hated among longtime fans of the show due to its radical changes (half-hour format, no Contestant's Row, no big wheel, altered Showdown, glitzier theme and set, different personnel, radically different games, etc.). However, many fans have since retracted their hatred of this version.
- Totally Radical: The sets designed in The Seventies are still in use. Along the way, they've gone from dated to retro-kitsch, and despite a couple recolors, they still look Seventies.
- Unwinnable: Bullseye I, the only pricing game that never had a winner. It wasn't technically Unwinnable, though; just very, very hard to win.
- To be absolutely technical and straight-laced about it, Plinko has never been won and isn't statistically likely to be, either. Most people consider it a win if the contestant hits the big-money slot; Word Of God says otherwise.
- What An Idiot: This troper recalls at least one instance of players in the contestant's row bidding $1 lower than the previous bid.
This show has been made in several other countries, including in the United Kingdom, where it ran from 1984 to 2007, with Bruce Forsyth hosting for a time.
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