Bob Barker bidding adieu
10/31/06 04:47 PM
By ED BARK
Game show giant Bob Barker, in his 35th year of hosting CBS' The Price Is Right, has decided the time is right to retire. Cripes, what's next -- telling Pluto it's not a planet? Oops.
Barker, scheduled to turn 83 in December, has been signing annual one-year contracts with CBS for years on end. But finally he's had enough of the super-gaudy game he's been hosting since Sept. 4, 1972. TV's white-haired eminence will be signing off in June, when his parting words no doubt will be, "Have your pets spayed and neutered."
I've done numerous interviews with Barker over the years, and even played that putt-putt Price Is Right golf game with him in a weak moment. Has it really been a decade since he punched out Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore, thereby creating a whole new fan base of high school and college kids who will have a hard time accepting any substitute?
"You know what, he is legendary," CBS Corporation CEO Leslie Moonves told yours truly after Barker had re-upped for another year at age 81. "Probably because it's a game show in the daytime, it doesn't get the respect it deserves. But I'm very proud to know him. I really am."
The legend himself says he's long relished "the opportunity to create spontaneous entertainment. That's what I've done all my life. It's challenging and it's fun and I enjoy it. It's as simple as that. If I didn't, I would have quit a long time ago."
And yes, he digs the college kids because they juice him up with both their loyalty and their attendance at Price Is Right tapings.
"They add great, great energy to the show," Barker says. "We love them."
No replacement has been named yet. It'd be best if they keep it that way.