Some people vacation year after year in the same exotic locale. Some people travel regularly to visit with family and other loved ones.
Scott Boudin flies out to Hollywood and screams for Bob Barker to let him “Come on down!”
Seven times in the past decade -- including just last month -- Boudin says he’s “waited in line for upwards of 12 hours” outside the Television City studio where CBS has taped Barker’s game show “The Price Is Right” since 1972. (The last original episode hosted by Barker airs this Friday at 11 a.m. and 8 p.m.) Boudin has “dragged along everybody from my mom to my coworkers to my wife,” who was, by the way, pregnant at the time. The Old Bethpage resident has “done everything. Wear crazy shirts. Everything short of wearing an Army uniform, because you know they usually have a service member” on-air playing the games.
You get the idea Boudin’s next tactic is to go military. Because he hasn’t made it onto the show yet.
And the 31-year-old has been obsessed since he was a little kid. “In 1980 or ’81, my neighbor got on,” remembers Boudin (pronounced Bow-den), and “they won a rolltop desk, a brass cradle, and a refrigerator which they still have in the house. I always thought I’d be great on the show because I’m a good shopper. I know the prices. I always wanna do the grocery game.”
Now a radio producer on the morning show for Z100, Boudin remembers his first “Price Is Right” visit during a youthful trip with friends, sort of a lark really. They got tickets from one of L.A.’s myriad see-a-show ticket booths, and joined the studio audience shouting price figures at the top of their lungs to shell-shocked contestants. “That’s when my love affair really began,” Boudin says. “I was hooked. I said, ‘This is the coolest thing ever.’”
But it’s not the easiest thing. “TPIR” has become the kind of American tradition that attending Johnny Carson’s celebrated “Tonight Show” used to be. Yet it’s bigger, because fans arrive in packs, in specially made matching T-shirts with self-designed slogans and logos. Sometime over the past 35 seasons of Barker’s hosting stint, “TPIR” evolved from a game show to an event to a sort of whimsical Happening. Would-be contestants began camping out overnight at the sprawling Television City compound to assure early places in line, and starting taking seminars and reading tip sheets to plot come-on-down strategy.
“It literally is an all-day event,” says Boudin, who’s got it down to a science now. Last time he showed up at 5 p.m. the night before, “there had to be a hundred people on line already,” and his pregnant wife said no-thanks. He didn’t argue. “I know from experience if you get there by 5 o’clock in the morning, you’re almost guaranteed to get in” to the studio audience.
But becoming a contestant is another matter. Producers troll the throngs waiting on lines of benches, clipboard in hand. “It’s like a cattle call. They line you up in groups of maybe 10. They like to judge what kind of personality you have. A lot of people think it’s random [during the taping], but they know who they’re choosing right off the bat. You can pretty much tell when you talk [to the producer] whether you’re getting called or not.”
And he hasn’t. (Sigh.) And now Barker’s legendary reign is over. Boudin says he’d try again with whomever the new host turns out to be this fall. (CBS has scheduled Barker repeats through the summer.) He fears they might try to “change everything up,” and that would alter the essential appeal of this one remaining network game show.
“It’s the only game show around that’s still so primitive,” says this fanatic. “Everything else is so computerized, and this is a great nostalgic show that’s still current.”
Yet aging, too, like its now 83-year-old host. “They’ve still got the same curtains from the 1970s. The studio, it still smells like 1975,” Boudin reports. “When we were there last time, they had to stop tape three times, because the [prize-revealing] doors got stuck, and one of the numbers fell off [a game prop].” Barker wasn’t in peak form, either. “He didn’t know what month it was,” Boudin says of his May visit. “He thought it was April-something. Somebody asked if he thought Ryan Seacrest might be the show’s next host, and he had no idea who Ryan Seacrest was. I felt bad for him. He’s grandfatherly to me.”
Boudin says he’s willing to give the post-Barker “Price Is Right” a chance to sustain his obsession. “I can’t imagine it will be the same,” he laments. “But I’ve been going since I was about 20 trying to get on this thing.”
'Price Is Right' fans line up outside the studio in CBS photo by Monty Brinton.