Bob Barker

Robert William "Bob" Barker (born December 12, 1923) is a seventeen-time Emmy Award-winning American television game show host. He is best known for hosting CBS's The Price Is Right since September 4, 1972, making it the longest-running daytime game show in television history. On October 31, 2006 he announced that he would retire from hosting The Price Is Right in June 2007 after holding the job for nearly 35 years and having been in television for 50 years.

born in Darrington, Washington, his mother, Matilda ("Tillie") Valandra, was a schoolteacher, and his father, Byron John Barker, was an electrical power foreman who died in a fall from a utility pole in 1929. Barker has a half-brother, Kent Valandra, from Matilda's subsequent remarriage. In the 1940s the family moved to Springfield, MO, where Barker attended, and graduated from, Central High School. He was also in a three-piece jazz band called The Scatters in the mid 1940s.

Barker attended Drury College (now Drury University) in Springfield, Missouri on a basketball scholarship. He was a member of the Epsilon Beta Chapter of Sigma Nu fraternity at Drury. His education was interrupted by World War II. Barker served in the Navy as a fighter pilot. However, the War ended before he was assigned to a seagoing squadron. After the War, he returned to Drury to finish his education, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in economics. While attending Drury, Barker worked his first "media job" at KTTS-FM Radio in Springfield.

Barker left Springfield and worked at a radio station in Florida before landing another Radio job in California. He was hosting an audience-participation radio show in Los Angeles when game show producer Ralph Edwards happened to be listening and liked Barker's voice and style. On December 31, 1956, Barker took over hosting of the game show Truth or Consequences. The show made him a star; he was clearly a natural whose charisma and charm connected with contestants and viewers. He would host it for 18 years.

Bob Barker and his wife, the former Dorothy Jo Gideon, were high-school sweethearts. On their first date on November 17, 1939, Bob took D.J. (as he would often call her) to an Ella Fitzgerald concert. They married in 1945. Years later, it would be Dorothy Jo (as well as Barker's mother Tillie) who inspired Bob to become an advocate of animals. D.J. died of lung cancer on October 19, 1981. The couple had no children. Barker never remarried after her death. His mother Matilda (Tillie) Valandra lived with him until her death in 1993, after her second husband (Bob's step-father) died.

In October 2006, it was announced that Barker had accepted Drury University's invitation to receive an honorary degree recognizing his life achievements and to speak at its May 12, 2007 commencement exercises. It will be the first honorary degree Barker has received in his lifetime.

On September 4, 1972, Barker began his most famous assignment hosting the CBS revival of The Price Is Right. In the four decades of the CBS version, he has become far more strongly associated with The show than first host Bill Cullen was with the 1950s–1960s original.

On October 15, 1987, Barker did what other emcees almost never did: he renounced hair dye and allowed his hair to go gray. It was a shock to the studio audience because it hadn't been publicized in advance; it was a shock to the home audience because the change came in the middle of the week at that time. One home viewer famously wrote Barker a letter saying "Bob, you must have had a hell of a night last night!" The episodes with dyed hair and gray hair were, in actuality, taped several weeks apart. Fellow hosts Monty Hall and Alex Trebek would follow Barker's decision to go to gray hair in the late 1980s.

In 2006, The Price Is Right celebrated 35 consecutive years on the air. It is the longest-running game show of all time in North America and is also the longest running five-day-a-week daytime entertainment program (and only The Tonight Show's 50 years on the air has surpassed it in terms of overall five-day-a-week American entertainment television programming). Overall, in daytime programming (excluding Saturday and Sunday), The Price Is Right is ranked sixth among the longest-continuing television programs (NBC's Today ranks the longest, followed by four daytime soap operas: Guiding Light, As the World Turns, General Hospital, and Days Of Our Lives). It has won its timeslot (11 a.m. Eastern) for the past 25 years with its closest competitor (currently ABC's The View) normally getting about half of TPIR's ratings.

Barker has recently had success with a prime time version of The Price Is Right. This stemmed from the incredibly high ratings for the thirtieth anniversary show in January 2002. Since then, the prime time specials have returned in spurts for sweeps weeks and on occasion when CBS's turn in the rotation occurs for the Daytime Emmy Awards, including the post-September 11 terrorist attack themed episodes honoring the different branches of the U.S. Armed Forces (Army, air Force, Navy, etc.) and public safety officers and, later, special occasions. Coincidentally, the first of the specials saluting the Armed Forces to Air was the Navy, which was Barker's own branch of the military, and both CBS and RTL showed photos from Barker's own time in the Navy.

During the prime time shows, the prizes are more extravagant than in the daytime version, and the cash amounts are higher, with Plinko, It's in the Bag, and Grand Game featuring higher dollar values. In the Showcase Showdown, the $10,000 bonus was replaced during the specials. In the 2002 military specials, $100,000 can be won if the players spin $1.00 in their bonus spin but was never won. Since 2003, a $1,000,000 prize can be won on the prime time version; this has yet to be won; however, there have been a few close calls.

Barker has revealed that Fremantle Media, the company that owns The show, has been looking for a successor in the last two to three years, and also that he had considered retirement for a while, but he had so much fun that he continued to do the show. As for a replacement host, no names have been mentioned as of February 2007.