But Mills’ eyes lit up just as brightly as he talked about the inner workings of his singular line of work. The vibe felt almost sleepy following the manic energy of the taping, where the crowd had screamed relentlessly for over an hour, and dazzling colors blasted from every angle. Flowcharts and calendars lined the room’s beige walls and just outside the door, workers laughed quietly in the kitchenette. “The numbers are staggering,” Mills said, sitting in his office following a morning taping of The Price is Right.
From appliances to fabulous cars, to exotic vacations in the South Pacific, he and his team plan, coordinate, purchase, and cajole thousands of prizes across nearly 200 episodes of television per season, painstakingly crafting the backbone of the most watched show on daytime television. As funny and charming as host Drew Carey is, the show would literally be nothing without the prizes, which gives Mills’ role the distinction of being as important to the logistical side of things as it is to the creative.
PRICE IS RIGHT WHEEL SERIES
The show is structured on a series of different games (77 to be exact) that offer a seemingly endless variation on one, unchanging goal: Name the price, win the prize. On Price is Right, however, the prizes are the main action. These games would be fun to play with or without the prizes, though the rewards certainly make things more exciting. We watch Jeopardy to see how many trivia questions we can answer. We watch Wheel of Fortune to solve word puzzles. On most game shows, Let’s Make a Deal included, cash and prizes exist to raise the stakes of the main action. “There is only one other supervising prize producer in town, and she works for our sister show, Let’s Make a Deal,” Mills told CreativeFuture. It is here where Eric Mills navigates a deluge of spreadsheets and databases as part of his daily quest to provide contestants with their winnings on one of the world’s most popular game shows, The Price is Right. As of 2017, CBS estimated he'd handed over at least $187,000.The rarest job in Hollywood is headquartered in an unassuming prefabricated trailer on the CBS backlot. When a player earned their way out of Contestant's Row by making a perfect bid on an item, he'd give them $500 cash out of his own pocket. Of course, Carey had his own fool-proof plan to engender goodwill. "By January 2008, I was about $700,000 over budget!" he revealed, and with the network unwilling to fork over more cash, "We went into a period where we were forced to use tougher games and smaller cars."ġ7. I scheduled easy games with obvious right and wrong price combinations so that more contestants could go home as winners." He just accomplished his mission a little too well. In a blog post, producer Roger Dobkowitz revealed that as viewers adjusted to a new host, he "felt it was extremely important for the first couple of months of the show to have plenty of winners." So, he shared, "I completely ignored the prize budget for the first couple of months. The games got a bit easier with Carey's takeover in 2007, albeit, temporarily. I got a letter from a fellow who said, 'Bob, you must have had one hell of a night.'"ġ6. "So let's say on the Wednesday show I had dark hair, but when we taped the next show I had gray hair and that show aired on Thursday. Why don't you leave it this way?'" However, because of the magic of television, his first silver fox episode aired the day after one featuring his darker locks. "We taped ahead," he explained. "When I came home the people on the show said, 'You look better this way than you do with it dyed or tinted. So producers suggested he tint it, which worked for a bit, until the tint turned his strands blue. When he began dyeing his locks, they turned red. "I went on vacation and I just let it go," he said. The rest he attributes to a good hair day, telling the paper ratings began to climb after he embraced his silver streaks. "I began to gray at my temples, and I guess it could be that technology at that time was not what it is today, but I didn't look good," he told the paper.