Labor Day Has Come And Gone...

Nothing was going to premiere that day, but still, Labor Day has come and gone. As I have one more week to fill before the new shows start, I'm going to talk about something that really hits home now that my state is participating: that The Price Is Right Live stage show in Las Vegas has become a glorified lottery game show.

First, a little background. There has for years been a live stage show of The Price Is Right at a casino in Las Vegas - I think it was launched as a result of the success of The Price Is Right 30th Anniversary Special in 2002, which was taped in Las Vegas (and by "success", I mean I think it caused a riot). I haven't been to it, but as far as I can tell it's a heavily scaled down version of the television show, with the same pricing games every time (if I have my information right: Plinko, Clock Game, Hole In One, Race Game, Cliff Hangers, It's In The Bag). Despite this, the stage show manages to be so popular that - well, look at it this way: the current revival of Let's Make A Deal with Wayne Brady was originally taped in Las Vegas, and some predicted it would drive The Price Is Right Live out of business. A few months later, Let's Make A Deal moved taping to Los Angeles. My guess: the opposite happened.

There have been The Price Is Right scratch tickets from various state lotteries for years as well, but now the two have converged: I just bought a $5 The Price Is Right scratch ticket, failed to win the $200,000 (or anything else), and entered the ticket into a drawing that will pick thirty people who will be flown to Las Vegas to take part in a special The Price Is Right Live show for the Massachusetts Lottery.

Has it come to that? Massachusetts is not the first state to have this contest. I thought this show was so successful it drove Let's Make A Deal out of town! Why do they have to have ties to the lottery? For that matter, why does the lottery have to join up with The Price Is Right? What happened to the local lottery game show? Remember when just about every area had one? Are any of them still going?

Maybe I shouldn't be complaining. After all, The Price Is Right is an excellent game, and the Las Vegas stage show has had some great hosts (the most commonly used one is Todd Newton) - whereas local lottery game shows usually tended to be boring games of chance with terrible local hosts. I guess all there is to do now is see if I make it to Las Vegas.

Next week: season premieres of Wheel Of Fortune, Jeopardy, Family Feud, and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

Come to think of it, why hasn't Sony done stage shows for any of their game shows in Las Vegas?

Aaron