Why Bob Barker Really Mattered

I was gratified to see all the kind tributes to Bob Barker, the venerable TV game show host who died last weekend at age 99.  But none of them, I felt, really got at the heart of Barker’s contribution to American television. He was one of a handful of performers from the early days of the medium who essentially defined what it means to be a TV personality. 

To understand why, you have to go back beyond The Price Is Right — the game show he hosted for some 35 years and for which most viewers today know him. Prior to that show, Barker spent 18 years as the host of Truth or Consequences, a popular audience-participation show on both radio and TV, in which contestants who didn’t tell the “truth” — i.e., give the right answer to a joke question before Beulah the Buzzer signaled time was up — were forced to take part in various stunts cooked up by the producers. Barker was the young, soap-opera-handsome newcomer brought in, on the last day of 1956, to replace the balding veteran Jack Bailey as host of the show’s new daytime edition. 

It was a perfect fit. In contrast to the high-pitched, fast-paced style of most radio hosts (who really were barkers) — not to mention the loud comedians who dominated TV in the early years, like Milton Berle and Jackie Gleason — Barker was low-key, warm-spirited, and naturally funny without a hint of strain or ego. With his sometimes flustered contestants (a woman from Brooklyn, say, who thought the Dodgers had moved west to become the Los Angeles Angels), he could be gently amused, but never condescending or cruel. He was utterly comfortable on the screen, and comforting to viewers — the ideal home companion.

I loved Bob Barker, and always put him in the same category as two other early TV stars who helped shape the new medium. One was Steve Allen, host of the original Tonight Show, who could get effortless, spontaneous comedy by simply turning on the cameras outside his studio and talking to passersby on the street.  The other was Art Linkletter, the genial host of another audience-participation show, People Are Funny, perhaps best known for his charming, wide-eyed interviews with schoolchildren on his weekday show House Party. All three were pioneers who understood the demands of the “cool” new medium: unaffected, human-sized performers, without showbiz airs— the first “reality TV” hosts, decades before reality TV became exploitative, phony, and mean. 

Allen is revered today as an innovator who influenced every late-night TV host who followed; Linkletter, sadly, all but forgotten. Barker was lucky enough to have not one but two game shows that soaked up his entire career, long enough that his deceptive talent, so perfectly pitched to the new medium, became part of the very landscape of television.