ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 29, 1996 TAG: 9612310064
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRAZIER MOORE ASSOCIATED PRESS
After a quarter-century as host of ``The Price Is Right,'' he remains priceless.
But Bob Barker reached an even more impressive milestone last weekend, on Saturday, at five past noon. It had been 40 years earlier to the minute that he got the best news of his life.
``I know exactly where I was, I know exactly how I felt,'' Barker says. ``I hung up the phone and said to my wife, `Dorothy Jo, I got it!''' Ten days later, he went on the air as the new host of an NBC game show called ``Truth or Consequences.''
Between that 18-year gig and ``The Price Is Right'' (a CBS fixture weekdays at 11 a.m.), Barker has never been off the air since.
``I have grown old in your service,'' he joked on a prime-time retrospective last summer.
But this television veteran, who turned 73 two weeks ago and white-haired long before that, cheerfully defies his years - and the actuarial tables of his youth-adoring industry.
He remains leading-man handsome complete with an L.A. tan, his face a seasoned, more luminous version of former Vice President Dan Quayle's.
As a TV personality, Barker retains a touch of the old school. For instance, no wireless microphone for him. Like the mike itself, the mike cord serves him well as a prop, insouciantly flicked and finessed.
All in all, Barker rocks. Still.
His ``Price Is Right,'' which premiered Sept. 4, 1972, is now television's longest-running game show. It is the only game show on any of the major broadcast networks, where a dozen or more once thrived.
And Barker is the sole remaining quiz-master among contemporaries who once included Bud Collyer, Dennis James, Bill Leyden, Jan Murray, Merv Griffin and Bill Cullen, the late host of the original ``Price Is Right.''
How to explain Barker's longevity?
For one thing, he, unlike many others in his trade, doesn't undermine himself with campiness and irony, doesn't mock the quiz-show genre he is part of. No phony grin, smarmy air, knowing winks. Barker plays no games.
``I don't try to create false enthusiasm,'' he says during a visit to Manhattan. ``I enjoy the show right along with the audience.
``I want the contestants to feel as though they're guests in my home,'' he adds. ``Perhaps my feeling of respect for them comes across to viewers, and that may be one of the reasons why I've lasted.''
(And one of the reasons for the audience good will that helped him weather a scandal a couple of years ago when a former ``Price Is Right'' model sued him, alleging sexual harassment. Barker, a widower, insisted their ``little hanky-panky'' was consensual. The lawsuit was later dropped.)
Even if Barker weren't marking an anniversary this month, it would still be fitting to salute him.
After all, 'tis the season that imposes on real life the everyday habits of a game show like Barker's: Fellowship, laughs, excitement, commercialism, gifts. For a few weeks, everyone adopts the principle that Barker has always prospered by: It's better to give than to receive.
Laughing all the way.
``On so many game shows,'' he observes, ``it's a case of, `Who are you, where are you from, what number do you want?'''
No such hard line governed ``Truth or Consequences,'' where contestants competed for prizes by trying zany stunts.
Nor is a heavy hand in evidence on ``The Price Is Right,'' which marries a basic human urge - to establish the market value of a desirable item, then claim it - with a carnival: Six price-related games are played each day, drawn from an arcade of 60 different games in all.
No, both of Barker's series were designed with ``flexible formats that allow me to have fun with people.''
Barker likes his studio audience, especially its members who are thrown into a frenzy when invited to ``Come on down.'' And when they get there, he receives them cordially.
He expects to keep doing so for some time, because he has no plans to quit ``The Price Is Right.'' Not that he isn't realistic about the future.
``I may have another 38 or 39 years left in me,'' says Barker, deadpan, as his anniversary looms, ``but I'll never make it another 40.''
Thirty-eight will be just fine.
LENGTH: Medium: 82 linesby CNB