The current Golden Road sign.
Golden Road is a pricing game on the American television game show The Price Is Right. Debuting on August 19, 1975, it is played for three prizes: A three-digit prize (worth between $400 and $999); a four-digit prize (worth between $1,000 and $9,999) and a five-digit prize (usually worth more than $60,000). On $1,000,000 Spectaculars, Golden Road has sometimes used a 6-digit prize instead of the 5-digit prize; the game play remains the same.
That grand prize represents some of the most expensive prizes offered on the show. Possibilities included a motor home, a cabin cruiser, or an expensive luxury or sports car. The most expensive prize ever won in this game on the daytime show was an $86,743 Dodge Viper on September 28, 2006.
On the prime time version, a Four Winns 268 Vista cabin cruiser worth $105,684 was won on a $1,000,000 Spectacular aired April 9, 2005. The most expensive prize ever offered was a Fleetwood Terra LX 31M motor home worth $107,205, on June 11, 2007; however, the contestant did not win.
Game play
The game begins with a grocery item priced under $1, whose price is shown to the contestant. The price of the three-digit prize is then revealed, with the hundreds digit missing. The contestant must choose one of the two digits in the price of the grocery item as the missing digit.
If they are correct, the game continues with the four-digit prize, whose missing hundreds digit is one of the digits in the price of the three-digit prize. If they are correct, they move on to select the missing hundreds digit in the price of the grand prize from the digits in the price of the four-digit prize. An incorrect guess at any point ends the game; however, the contestant keeps any prizes they have won up to that point.
If the contestant guesses the wrong missing digit on the first prize, the game ends, and he/she leaves with no prizes. Other than the final prize, the prices typically have no repeated digits in their prices.
The final prize is usually billed as "worth more than [however many] thousand dollars" prior to its reveal.
History
Golden Road was created by then-producer Jay Wolpert. [1] Golden Road's original claim to fame was that it always offered a prize worth more than $10,000, while other games typically offered cars in the $4,000 range.
Since 1986, when CBS increased the earnings cap to $100,000 (which has since been abolished), the final prize has been touted as the most expensive car, truck, or even motor home to be available on the show. Typically, the car is usually a Chevrolet Corvette, Dodge Viper, top-of-the-line Lincoln, Cadillac, or other premium foreign luxury car.
Except for in its first appearance on a half-hour show, when it was played third, Golden Road is always the first game played in an episode. Since the late 1980s until his retirement, host Bob Barker almost always entered from the back of the audience at the beginning of a show when Golden Road was to be played, as the game features a road of golden spots on the floor of the stage, and would have been given away with a traditional entrance through the center stage door. One notable exception was on the $1,000,000 Spectacular that aired on May 16, 2007. Barker entered the stage through the center door for that episode; to keep his entrance from giving away the game, the dots were not used.
When Drew Carey took over at the start of the 36th season, the golden dots on the stage were once again not used. Carey specifically pointed out the lack of a real "golden road" to the contestants. The change lasted only two playings; on the third and subsequent playings in season 36, the spots were reinstituted. Until June 23, 2008, the dots were set up during the first One Bid so that Carey could enter through the center stage door. He has since adopted Barker's practice of coming in through the audience.
On 1994's syndicated The New Price Is Right, Golden Road began with a two-digit prize or a fishbowl of cash.
External links
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The Price Is Right |
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