Range Game
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Range Game is a pricing game on the American television game show The Price Is Right. Debuting on April 3, 1973, it is played for a prize worth more than $3,000 (occasionally for a boat, trailer or car).
[edit] Gameplay
The contestant is shown a scale representing a range of $600. The price of the prize is somewhere within this range. On this scale is a red window which spans $150 of the range; it is dubbed the "range finder".
Starting from the bottom, the range finder moves up the scale slowly. The contestant must press a button to stop the range finder when they believe the price of the prize is within the red window. If they are correct, they win the prize.
[edit] History
When the game debuted in 1973, Range Game used a $50 range finder. The range quickly increased to $100 and just as quickly to the current $150. For a brief time, the 1970s syndicated version used a range finder with a $200 spread.
As a running gag, host Bob Barker told the contestant to be sure when they stopped the range finder, as once it had been stopped, it could not be restarted for 37 hours. On the primetime specials, it could not be restarted for 48 hours. The joke originally used other absurd numbers, as well. The gag was retired when Drew Carey took over as host of the show, because he said that he messed up. On the first playing with him as host, he had stated that they couldn't start the range finder again for 37 days instead of hours. However, as stated above, any time would work, so technically Drew did not mess it up.
On the Doug Davidson syndicated version of Price, Range Game's format was used to bid on the Showcase (although Davidson never acknowledged it as "Range Game"). A completely new prop was constructed for the round, and the contestant selected at random a length for the rangefinder; the lengths came in increments of $1,000 and fell between $4,000 and $10,000. The Showcase's board covered a $60,000 range between $10,000 and $70,000.
On the Million Dollar Spectacular aired on February 29, 2008, a $1,000,000 bonus was offered if the contestant could win Range Game normally as well as guess the price of a car down to the dollar. The range finder also was rebuilt, as the "$150 Range" graphic was made larger using the same fonts as More or Less. The previous font was narrower and smaller.
As demonstrated by Drew bringing out the stage hand behind the prop, the rangefinder is manually operated. Because of this, it moves about an extra $2 up the scale after the contestant hits the button, which could possibly cause a contestant to lose in certain close cases. In these cases, the determination of the game’s outcome is made by producer Roger Dobkowitz or Bob Barker, prior to his retirement.[1]
