I went to a taping on Friday -- my first time at a TPIR taping in around 20 years. I was curious to see the new studio, and it helped that it's much easier for me to get to than Television City is (and has free parking available).
I arrived with a regular "line voucher" ticket at 7:30 for an 8:00 arrival time, and I was one of the last people to get in (I got a number, the family of 6 behind me got numbers, and then they cut it off).
There were two extended stopdowns due to issues with two of the pricing games, but even aside from that, things seemed a bit lackadaisical, for lack of a better word, compared to the way things were run 20 years ago. The taping started at around 11:15 and didn't end until around 1:35. (And then they were going to tape two more shows after lunch -- seemed like it was going to be a long day for everyone.)
During one of the stopdowns, Drew and George got to talking about horror movies. George mentioned Svengoolie, so Drew of course brought up Cleveland's Ghoulardi and pointed out that the guy who played Ghoulardi was also the ABC network announcer -- neither Drew nor George could remember his name, so I got to yell out "Ernie Anderson."
