Cause and Effects; 4/7/13 UPDATE: Drew’s side of the story, What took me (Mike) so long February 6, 2010

5/16/19 UPDATE: I wrote a long overdue follow up after watching Perfect Bid: The Contestant Who Knew Too Much.

Terry’s side of the story

4/7/13 UPDATE: Drew’s side of the story comes later in this post.

Terry Kneiss, a Double Showcase winner on The Price is Right in December 2008, sent me the following e-mail (with permission to quote him here) on Wednesday:

I just got word from my publisher that the book “Cause and Effects:  The Amazing Story Surrounding the ‘Perfect Showcase Bid’ on Television’s #1 Daytime Game Show” is available to buy online for pre-order.  The website is www.perfectshowcasebid.com.  Publisher is Langdon Press out of [Minnesota].

That perfect showcase bid led to an unenthusiastic reaction from host Drew Carey.  At the time, I didn’t understand why he reacted that way, but I defended him nonetheless:

I believe he was simply in stunned disbelief and shock.  Not everyone handles that situation by yelling and screaming.  Drew has had the yelling, screaming reaction before, but he is far from perfect.  If you want Drew to be wildly enthusiastic every time, you’re going to be disappointed.  Clearly, many were disappointed by this.  If you want to stop watching “The Price is Right” because Drew isn’t enthusiastic enough for your taste, it’s your choice.  But there are plenty of people like me that support Drew and will continue to watch.

I now feel that Drew thought Terry was playing him and the TPiR staff like fools, the same way Michael Larson did on Press Your Luck in 1984.  But I could be wrong.

Cause and Effects will showcase, pardon the pun, Terry’s side of the story.  On the book’s website, there is this introduction:

My name is Terry Kniess as in the guy who hit The Price Is Right Showcase on the nose — last done in 1973! That earned me a “double showcase!” Oh, and you pronounce Kniess like “niece”, as in ‘my niece hit The Price Is Right showcase just a few weeks after I did!’ But is this a simple story of incredible luck? Or is this the tale– as so many members of the press are asserting — of a diabolical scheme perpetrated by a family of evil geniuses? Well, it all starts with a dog.

My vote is “a simple story.”

Terry is a retired meteorologist and has his own weather website.

2/10 UPDATE: Terry has supplied me with an excerpt from Chapter 15: “Pegging the Stranger Meter, or Just a Series of Coincidences?”:

If there is any reason to believe in a conspiracy theory, it’s because of the strange but true coincidences between the show she (my niece, Jodi) was on and the show I was on.  Let’s review:

1.  Her show aired exactly one month to the day after the one I was on.
2.  She sat in the same seat I did.
3.  Her fiancé, Tom, sat in the same seat as my wife, Linda.
4.  Both Jodi and I were among the first four contestants called to “Come on down.”
5.  Linda had to tell me my name was called.  Ton had to tell Jodi her name was called.
6.  She got up on stage with the third prize up for bid.  The same with me.
7.  We were both in the first Showcase Showdown.  The Showcase Showdown is when the contestants spin the big wheel at the end of the first half and second half of the show.
8.  Her first spin was $.95.  My first spin was $.90.

4/7/13 UPDATE: Drew’s side of the story

Last week, Pop My Culture podcast co-host Vanessa Ragland was one of three guests (one of them recurring) on voice actor Rob Paulsen’s weekly Talkin’ Toons UStream show (formerly itself a podcast).  My curiosity was piqued enough to search for the series on iTunes.  As with the Nerdist podcast three years ago, The Price is Right host Drew Carey was on Pop My Culture last year.

About ten minutes in, Drew recalled Kneiss’ double showcase success (without naming him).  And similar to that show, he was deadpan while lamenting the situation.  Drew said there was a diehard TPIR fan that sits in the front row.  The fan knew what the prices of prizes were because they were, at the time, recycled.  “I don’t care what that f***in’ guy said,” Drew intoned.  “He got it from the guy in the front row ’cause we have it on tape.”  He went on to say the fan did that “out of malice to give everybody the exact price and kinda screw over the show.”

Drew wasn’t the only one to say this.  Carrie Grosvenor said the same thing at About the day it aired!:

Apparently, according to the message boards at Golden Road, one of their regular members was in the audience on the day this show was taped, and had been shouting out pricing answers throughout the show. This isn’t unusual in and of itself – anyone who watches the show knows that the audience does this, and that contestants look to these shouted answers for guidance. However, in this case, the audience member, who calls himself “Ted” at Golden Road, is an expert on pricing these items and has some experience giving correct dollar amounts away to contestants. If you watch the show again, it’s very clear that contestant Terry was looking directly at a single person in the audience for help.

In Drew’s Pop My Culture appearance, he noted that TPiR now changes up the prizes and prize features regularly so the prices will be different each time.  Terry Kneiss’ “simple story of incredible luck” may be simpler than I originally thought, but the show’s new practice make his story unique.  His on-the-nose success may never be duplicated.

What took me so long?
You may be wondering why it took so long for me to update this post with that information.  First, I wasn’t as big a Price is Right fan as others and as big a game show fan as I used to be.  Second, I gave up watching the show in 2011 when George Gray was made the permanent announcer.  Forgive me, but George has an exaggerated delivery and I couldn’t stand hearing it.  That’s another thing Drew brought up on PMC: fans that don’t like the changes to the show.  With my radio background and as a fan of voice acting, this is the only change that I don’t like.  It makes me wish that Jim Thornton could double his announcing his duties and work TPiR in addition to Wheel of Fortune.  But like my desire for FOX Sports to go back to using unique themes and cues for the sports they cover, neither George nor FOX’s practice of using NFL cues for more than just NFL coverage are going anywhere.  So, I just need to accept both unpleasant situations and move on.