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"The Price Is Right" Fans Want Announcer To “Come On Back”

Josh Woo |
October 5, 2010 | 11:38 p.m. PDT

Contributor

Bob Barker, Rich Fields, Drew Carey (Creative Commons)
Bob Barker, Rich Fields, Drew Carey (Creative Commons)
For seven seasons and more than 1,500 episodes, Rich Fields called about 13,500 people to “come on down” to "The Price is Right." He took over the post in April 2004 after an announcer search following the death of the previous announcer, Rod Roddy, in October 2003.

Fields was dismissed from the game show on July 16, three days before the taping of its 39th season began. Fans of "Price" have not taken kindly to his departure and have been petitioning CBS to reinstate him ever since.

Neon Tommy contributor Josh Woo spoke with him about his reaction to this fan-grown campaign and to his firing.

JW: There’s been a great deal of shock surrounding your departure from "Price" before the 39th season. What was your reaction when they broke the news to you?

RF: I was shocked. I never would’ve left the show on my own. It was a lifelong dream for me, something I’ve always wanted to do since I was a little boy. I was amazed, shocked, disappointed…all in one.

JW: It’s strange that they would suddenly let you go, because you appeared to have great chemistry on the air with both Bob Barker and Drew Carey. How did this on-air chemistry translate off-air?

RF: My wife and I are very good friends with Mr. Barker, just spoke with him yesterday, and we’re very good friends with Drew Carey. It’s a lot of camaraderie with Drew. I think maybe the growing up in Cleveland, the two of us, about two years apart from each other. So Drew and I became very close. Still are.

JW: Aside from reading the copy and calling the names, what else did you do for the show?

RF: I did about 15 minutes of audience warm-up before every show. I have to disseminate a lot of little information that the show producers want people to know. You get ‘em all riled up so that come tape time, it looks like an absolute party in there.

JW: And it’s a tough job. It’s tougher than it looks.

RF: Mr. Barker once said in an Entertainment Tonight interview, “Rich Fields has the hardest announcing job in the city of Hollywood.” And it is.

JW: What can you tell us about why they dismissed you from the show?

RF: Mike Richards and Jen Mullen from FremantleMedia told me that they wanted the show to go more in a direction of a variety show within a game show. So they wanted stand-up comedians to have on-air auditions as the role of the announcer.

JW: With this level of change to this American institution, there’s the Internet fan base to consider. And one particular game show fan website, Buzzerblog, recently posted an entry telling fans how to write to CBS to petition your return to "Price." This stemmed from more than 100,000 hits to the website in just two days solely regarding the fact that you were not there. Half of those visitors had never been to the site before. I don’t think even Bob Barker generated this kind of outcry when he retired three years ago. What do you think is the cause of all this uproar from fans?

RF: Part of the enjoyment of "Price" for folks over 38 was that it didn’t have much of an excessive change except for when Bob left three years ago. Just the whole timbre, pitch and cadence of the show depended on that announcer reading 40 pages of copy in a certain manner, [and he] talked more than the host! I think people tuning in now don’t hear that same comfortable pitch, tone and quality. Drew’s still there, the girls are still there, the music cues are still there, but not hearing that comfortability factor is disappointing for folks, as far as I understand it.

JW: You voice the video games, the iPhone apps, and also the new Facebook game. Will there be confusion from viewers about hearing your voice on those games versus hearing someone else’s on the on-air program?

RF: I think it’s going to be odd for folks to hear this comfortable voice everywhere on the planet with regards to "Price" and then tune into the show and not hear it. Just for consistency’s sake and synergy’s sake, for the vendors and products of "Price," it just doesn’t make sense.

JW: I saw you doing the weather a few weeks ago on CBS2 and KCAL9 as well, correct?

RF: Correct, yes, they’re both owned by CBS, and it’s a big duopoly here in town.

JW: So you’re filling in intermittently?

RF: Yeah. Actually, I know they call it part-time but I worked some 47 hours last week alone. 47 hours of news last week.

JW: What other endeavors that you can tell us about are you pursuing now that you’re not doing "Price"?

RF: I’ve always wanted to host my own game show, so I’m lining that up. And I do voiceover every day—I just did the "Family Guy" a couple of weeks ago…I’ve got a studio here in my house, and I’m submitting auditions all the time. I’ve done comedic acting in the past—I got some pretty good credits behind me, and I never considered myself an actor, but if casting directors and producers think I am, then I love trying out for it. So I’ll continue to chase that kind of stuff now.

JW: And then you’ve also gone back to radio, to K-EARTH 101?

RF: Correct, I’ve been working on-and-off part-time since December of last year. I’ll bet I’ll do a couple of shows a month. I always try to let folks know on the Internet when it’s coming up.

JW: And I daresay you do a very good job of that too.

RF: Thanks, that comes real easy…28 years of extemporaneous speaking and improv-ing on the radio. And that’s why Drew and I did so well. Drew was crushed when he came back from South Africa for the World Cup and he found out what happened to me. We had a two-and-a-half-hour lunch his first day back. His brother had just died the day before, and instead of flying to Cleveland right away, he sat with me and said, “Rich, 10 years of 'The Drew Carey Show,' 8 years of 'Whose Line is it Anyway?,' all the comedic training I’ve ever had—you’ve never done improv, but you and I, we were like Mutt and Jeff, like Abbott and Costello”—this is coming from Drew Carey! So to hear that kind of frustration from Drew was nice validation. As is the outcry from the fans now. You know, they do care, I did matter.

To reach contributor Josh Woo, click here.



 

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