TPIR vs Other Game Show Set Changes?

[Argo]

Hi Everyone,

Since watching the Pluto TPIR episodes, I've been wondering about set changes. I haven't noticed it as much on other shows, but with TPIR some of the changes were very slow.

I know there were a few style changes during the first few years, but in 1975, the orange/brown/black set was in, but the turntable stage had a green border, long before the rest of the set changed. Then in 1982, one side of turntable wall was changed to the padded purple/red/orange, while the rest of the stage stayed the same. Then when the rest of the turntable area was updated, the carpet didn't match the green boarders until 1984 or 85.

Just curious if anyone knows why the sets took so long to get finished. Was it a testing phase to see how it would look on air and they didn't want to commit to the total set change? Was it a taping/scheduling issue? Was there not enough down time to get the whole set updated? If that was the case, it was strange they wouldn't do the turntable area completely.

Just found it odd that when other shows had set changes, they were usually completed, although may have been tweaked a bit after.

Thanks

[Chelsea Thrasher]

Unlike the rest of the set, one side (typically the "game" side) of the turntable got a fairly consistent refresh every 18-24 months during the first decade of the show. They went with the tricolor padding design - replacing the brown zigzags. Not sure why as I wasn't exactly alive at the time, but somehow after it was switched they decided to make the old "front" side the new "Game" side.  The same inversion happened at least once before in the 70s so it's not even the first time.

Within a few weeks, they appear to have just decided "you know what, we like this" and made the rest of the panels except the red "game" panel match the one padded wall. Then decided "ok, hell, let's just get rid of the "sides" and make all of them match" a few months later.

Every single thing about that set change absolutely reeks of "a series of choices" made over a few months rather than one big choice: The one panel that always gets replaced gets replaced.  Hmm, let's flip these around.  Now let's re-do the other walls to match.  Fix that one in the back too.  It's simple, it tracks with things they'd already been known to change up in that era of the show, and it's a simple and straightforward series of explanations and not some big grand theorized decision.

[Denials]

Pure speculation on my part, but perhaps budget was a factor as well.  Spending limitations may have impacted how much could be done at one time or in one season.

[Steve Gavazzi]

The part that confuses me is that they initially seem to have intentionally switched which side of the turntable wall was the "game side" -- if you watch the earliest shows with the padded wall, there's a square of carpeting on that side that clearly stands out from the rest and looks like it was probably used to conceal electrical outlets in the floor or something.  But then when they changed the other wall panels, they also undid the reversal -- the weird carpet patch is now on the game side, yet the game side is still the side with the old design.  So either they changed one of the walls, then tore them down and put them both on the other sides a few weeks later, or they outright tore out the wall and flipped it 180°.

I'm sure there's no grand story behind it, but whatever they did feels like it must have been more trouble than it was worth.

[MSTieScott]

The part that confuses me is that they initially seem to have intentionally switched which side of the turntable wall was the "game side" -- if you watch the earliest shows with the padded wall, there's a square of carpeting on that side that clearly stands out from the rest and looks like it was probably used to conceal electrical outlets in the floor or something.  But then when they changed the other wall panels, they also undid the reversal -- the weird carpet patch is now on the game side, yet the game side is still the side with the old design.

I saw that square you're talking about. To me, it looks like they had placed some heavy rectangular item on that side of the turntable for storage, mashing down the carpet and making it look a different color.

I don't know how it was done in 1982, but at the end of Barker's run, games on the turntable that required electronics would have the cable placed against the camera-right side of the turntable wall. On that side, the carpet could be pulled up a couple of inches and the cable tucked behind it. This isn't the clearest image of it, but at 1:26 in , in the lower right corner of the screen, you can see a tiny bit of Bonus Game's gray cable next to the blue carpet looking a little uneven against the wall.

The position of what I believe to be mashed-down carpet would be at an inconvenient place to plug in large games like Switcheroo and Blank Check, so I suspect that even in the '80s, the cables were being placed against the wall. That would also explain why the shape changed sides -- they simply stored the heavy rectangular object on the other side of the turntable during a different set strike.

[Steve Gavazzi]

That actually makes way more sense.  The plug theory didn't really sound right to me, but I couldn't figure out what else it could have been.

[Unrealtor]

Conveniently for this discussion, earlier today the Barker-Era Price Is Right YouTube channel posted which would seem to be further evidence for the idea that it's not a permanent fixture.

[MSTieScott]

Ooh, I didn't know the Pluto channel was posting high-video-quality clips.

As Any Number comes around on the turntable , you can see that the right side of the carpet is obscuring most of the wall's green border while the left side is not (and it looks like there's kind of a lump at the end). This supports my theory that that's how they were hiding the cables in 1982.

[Argo]

Actually PlutoTV is running full episodes.

Here is the youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGSJP4R77uPAeRjcp5VqOOw

[tvmitch]

I'm just here to say that (on a game like Superball that showed multiple turntable prizes) I enjoy seeing the turntable shake when they are loading prizes from the other side.

[RyanCDN]

Ooh, I didn't know the Pluto channel was posting high-video-quality clips.

As Any Number comes around on the turntable , you can see that the right side of the carpet is obscuring most of the wall's green border while the left side is not (and it looks like there's kind of a lump at the end). This supports my theory that that's how they were hiding the cables in 1982.

Great clear clip.  As the turn table is in motion, if you look to the lower left near the white border surrounding the lights behind the turntable you can also see what appears to be the cable being fed through as it is in motion.

[tomcat]

I don't have any inside knowledge to how the turntable operated, but is that really a cable, or a belt that a stagehand would use to rotate the turntable with a pulley?

[MSTieScott]

That is the cable for the Any Number board in that clip (the turntable itself is motorized). Just below the floor of the turntable are metal poles bent into a sort of open trough shape. As the turntable spins, the game cable is fed into that holding area so nothing gets tangled up.

I don't know whether enough is showing, but 's an episode in which you can see the stagehand's hands feeding the cable.

[tomcat]

Thanks much for the correction, Scott!