George Hamilton the new BobBarker?
Price Is Right and YouTube pay tribute to Barker with million $ show
CBS' The Price Is Right offers a million dollars in send-off show for 35-year host Bob Barker.Gossip has it George Hamilton's the shoo-in for the top job on top game show
George Hamilton… Come On Down!
Word from Hollywood is - the perennially tanned and eternally young-at-heart George Hamilton is the front-runner in contenders for Bob Barker’s replacement as game show host of the venerable CBS game show The Price Is Right. Bob Barker has been the sole host during the thirty-five years of television’s longest running game show. Prior to his role on The Price Is Right, Barker hosted The New Truth and Consequences for 18 years. He retires in June, after more than fifty years as a game show host. The show will have a special primetime two-night send-off on May 16 and 17. CBS has planned a special edition of the game show for the first night’s send-off on May 16, in which contestants will have a chance to win one million dollars. For the second night’s show, the network will air Bob Barker: A Celebration of 50 Years on Television. The show will include clips of Barker from the early days to the present.
In keeping with the times, CBS has an interactive site for individual Barker fans inviting them to submit 15-second video tributes to him via YouTube. CBS will choose a selection of these submissions to air either on the tribute show, or throughout the season’s final week of The Price Is Right. Neil Patrick Harris explains what you need to do to send your personal goodbye message to Barker on YouTube, and further instructions are available at CBS.com. Barker’s final Price Is Right show tapes in June, ending his multi Emmy-winning run as television’s best-loved emcee.
After a lengthy audition process for the chance to replace Bob Barker, three contenders remain. Hamilton’s competition is Entertainment Tonight’s, Mark Steines and Las Vegas’ The Price Is Right stage show host, Todd Newton. However, Hollywood gossip website TMZ.com reported that CBS chief Les Moonves and producers find Hamilton “wonderfully charming” and “could really make the show work.”
Hamilton has built a career on being wonderfully charming and no doubt would have little trouble making the show work. With fifty-plus years in the entertainment business himself, George Hamilton is a larger-than-life figure who remains as popular now as he has been in any one of the five decades of fame that he has enjoyed. At 67, just to be in the running speaks volumes about Hamilton’s cache in an industry that traditionally eschews the old in its quest for discovering the latest and the newest. Barker, now 83 leads the way for Hamilton to extend a couple more decades to his long and healthy career.
The announcement confirming Barker’s replacement is expected to take place during CBS’ fall 2007 presentation, scheduled for May 16. Stay tuned.
