page_title: The Price Is Right (1956 American game show)
section_title: Game play
hierarchical_section_title: The Price Is Right (1956 American game show) / Game play
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Bill Cullen as the host of The Price Is Right. Cullen was the host of the original version of the television program, which ran from 1956 to 1963.
context_page_description: The Price Is Right is an American game show where contestants made successive bids on merchandise prizes with the goal of bidding closest to the actual retail price of the prize without going over. The show was a precursor to the current and best-known version of the show, which premiered in 1972 on CBS' daytime schedule. This makes The Price Is Right one of only a few game shows that have aired in some form across all three of what were then the Big Three television networks.
  The series premiered on NBC's daytime schedule on November 26, 1956, and quickly spawned a primetime series that aired once a week. The Price Is Right became one of the few game shows to survive the rigging scandals of the late 1950s, and gained even more popularity after other game shows exposed for being rigged had been canceled.
  In 1963, The Price Is Right switched networks and both the daytime and primetime series moved to ABC. On September 3, 1965, the show aired its final episode after nearly nine years on the air.
context_section_description: On the original version of The Price Is Right, four contestants – one a returning champion, the other three chosen from the studio audience – bid on items or ensembles of items in an auction-style format.
  A prize was presented for the contestants to bid on. A minimum bid was specified. After the opening bid, contestants bid on the item in turn with each successive bid a certain amount higher than the previous bid. A contestant could freeze his/her current bid instead of increasing it if he/she believed his/her bid was close enough to win. A later rule allowed contestants, on their opening bid only, to "underbid" the other bids, but this automatically froze their bid and prevented them from later increasing the original bid. Some rounds were designated as "one-bid" rounds, where only one round of bidding was held (this is the format used on the current version of The Price is Right); sometimes the minimum-bid and higher-bid threshold rules also were waived.
  Other than in one-bid rounds, the bidding continued until a buzzer sounded, at which point each contestant who had not yet "frozen" was given one final bid. Bidding also ended when three of the contestants had frozen, at which point the fourth contestant was allowed one final bid unless he/she already had the high bid. Cullen then read the actual retail price of the prize. The contestant whose bid was closest without going over the actual price won the item. If everyone overbid, the prize was not won; however, Cullen sometimes had the overbids erased and instructed players to give lower bids prior to reading the actual price (similar to what is done on the current CBS version and its syndicated spinoffs).
  After most one-bid rounds, a bonus game was played, in which the winner of the one-bid prize would play a random game (such as wordplay or tune-matching) for additional prizes.
  After a set number of rounds (four on the nighttime version, six on the daytime), the contestant who accumulated the highest value in cash and prizes became the champion and returned on the next show.
caption: Bill Cullen as the show's host.
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