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The "budget saver" episode

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Sodboy13:
I was watching a TPIR from the '84-'85 season on the Barker channel last night. I know it's pretty common knowledge about how Price can use wiggle room in its various games to affect the odds of winning, and boy does it seem like this particular episode is going above and beyond to keep things lean. It appears to be from November or December, as a portion of a promo for the Christmas Home Viewer Showcase was shown.

Game 1: Super Ball! (which always ropes me in) for two prizes and a cruise totaling less than $7,000. The price ranges on the first three ball prizes seem... tighter. Contestant blows all three, but does get the Super Ball and at least rolls in $300.
Game 2: Range Game, for a low-end Chevy. Accordingly, the price gets put on the low end of the range, about $6,245, for a loss.
Game 3: Barker's Bargain Bar. One of the bargain prices is $420, truly ahead of its time. Actual prices are $820 and $970 for a loss.
Game 4: Poker Game, where Bob always advises contestants to pick prices with "a lot of nines." The four prizes on offer are $505, $465, $620, and $640. Contestant draws the three 5s and holds them for the win.
Game 5: Clock Game for a sailboard ($749) and a range ($860) in a well-played win.
Game 6: Oh we're doing Grand Game! Target price is $1.35. Products are $.49, $.79, $1.03, $1.29, $1.39, and $1.85. Which actually seems pretty winnable, given the two lowest and one highest prices. And it does get taken, for the full $10K.
Showcases: Ah shoot, it was almost midnight and I fell asleep.

The show was still a fun watch, basically no one who wasn't looking for it would notice, and I am not posting this as a criticism of it; I am just noting it because of the way I could see the pennies getting pinched. And it makes me wonder if any of you know the subtler ways other shows could tug on the purse strings as necessary. Feel free to share your examples.

Allstar87:
You saw Dec. 11, 1984.  :) https://tpirepguide.com/?p=17754

Linda won a surprisingly generous for 1984 Showcase, over $19K, after her opponent overbid. Maybe they were holding back over the rest of the show anticipating they'd be giving away a bundle at the end.

rebelwrest:
The joke I have is when the TPIR is over budget, there is a whole week of Lucky $even and That's Too Much.

Among our community, we know when a series is over budget when we see more difficult bonus rounds (a friend of mine was on Wheel, won the main game, and had a DIFFICULT bonus puzzle and all the episodes that week had DIFFICULT bonus puzzles).

I think my favorite attempt at a budget saver happened on an episode of The $20,000 Pyramid with a winner's circle that was clearly designed to not be won.  The third box was Lina Wertmüller Movies and the pair almost pulled off a win.  Dick even said you deserve to win after facing a board like that.

Kevin Prather:
In the 90s, you knew Wheel was in budget-saver mode when the three-letter bonus puzzles came out.

Did Jeopardy have any budget-saving tricks? Wordier clues leading to less clues revealed? I imagine they don't have a terrible amount of fluxuation in their prize money from week to week, save for when James Holzhauer was on. Even Ken's daily average was only marginally above the mean.

BrandonFG:
The current version of Feud does this a lot, where it seems like there’s only one logical answer in Fast Money, and the second place answer is usually a distant second. As a result, you get a lotta high totals for the first player while the partner rarely gets to 200. On the rare occasion I watch, it seems like any family with at least four wins usually only has one FM victory.

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