Not watching The Price is Right; but instead… May 19, 2011

This season, The Price is Right went in a direction that I did not like: they decided to go with guest announcers that had little or no announcing experience.  The guest announcer they felt was best was made permanent.  The result is a stilted delivery with caricatured announcer emphasis.  I don’t want to name the announcer because if I decide to watch regularly again, he may grow on me.  In that case, I will update this post with the good news.  Until then, I watch three shows with professional announcers:

• Jeopardy! with Johnny Gilbert
• Wheel of Fortune with a series of guest announcers trying to fill the late Charlie O’Donnell’s shoes; as I type, Jim Thornton is guest announcing for the third week in a row
• Drew Carey’s Improv-A-Ganza with former TPiR announcer, the last pro, Rich Fields

In the case of Improv-A-Ganza, it appears Drew has finally found a successful successor to Whose Line is it Anyway?  I love nearly every second of the show.  The best game so far was Forward/Reverse on last Monday’s episode.  Jonathan Mangum, part of the Improv-A-Ganza performer rotation, is a good announcer/sidekick to Wayne Brady on Let’s Make a Deal, a show I watched (despite not airing in HD) until I could no longer take poor decisions by contestants.  Wayne has appeared as a special guest in select Improv-A-Ganza episodes.

With Wheel, it helps if there are as little dud letters called and as little Bankrupts and Lose-A-Turns spun as possible.  A successful bonus round solve doesn’t hurt either.

Jeopardy! is at its best when the two rounds are completed without the annoying bip-bip-bip-bip indicating time has run out and clues will remain hidden.