It's enough to chronicle the missteps and idiocies which have finally led the man who wanted to rule game shows to be fired yesterday as the Executive Producer of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!
And a lot of us had enough issues with the man and his belief system with The Price is Right that we stepped away from the show during his oversight/reign of terror on the CBS program.
But a highly-damning Lesley Goldberg report today in The Hollywood Reporter indicates a number of further criminal and civil missteps by Richards on his eleven years as the head of Price.
Goldberg interviewed over a dozen staffers of the show during his reign...
- Many still do not believe they can speak publicly, for fear of retribution from the industry. And since Syd Vinnedge, the head of Fremantle Media, put together the search for the new executive producer after he fired Roger Dobkowitz (and, thanks to Monty Hall and JD Roth, it went little further than Richards!), they're probably right. And admitting there's a lot more of that elsewhere where all that came from!
- The sexual harassment was far more pervasive than first reported. The "Beauties" would often be paraded in front of show staff and critiqued on their looks and sexuality. Those who fared better got better assignments, etc.
- The lawsuits got a fair degree of questions, and it's clear that Drew Carey openly supported Richards, up to and including his attempt to seize the hosting of Jeopardy!
- Richards' "new directions" for Price basically were a complete throwing baby out with the bathwater in firing basically all of the "old guard" of the show, from announcer Rich Fields to Kathy Greco, after Syd Vinnedge fired long-time show-runner Roger Dobkowitz.
- Most were replaced by those under the age of 27 -- a group later called "The Brat Pack".
- Long-standing traditions favorable to the staff under the Barker Era were excised from the show and it's calendar. Though the show still taped only four days a week, staff were required, now, to do all five days -- not clear what was done on the Fridays. Large parties for holidays, which would include name performers like Frank Sinatra Jr. and KC and the Sunshine Band, were also cut. Paid hiatus periods were also removed.
- At least one staffer quit the entertainment industry altogether for what Richards and his minions did to Price and staff morale there.
- One staffer of 18 years finally left after trying to report Richards to the HR department at CBS and got rebuffed.
And if that's bad enough, what he did with the Prize Department is another thing entirely:
- First, it was clear that he wanted to change the show from a middle-class demographic to probably something more akin to Bill Cullen's 1960's Price is Right, seen Saturday mornings on BUZZR.
- He would ask them to try to get prizes at a discount -- and if the manufacturer didn't cooperate, he'd try to find them at outlet stores to get them cheaper. This led to C&D's from various companies to stop the practice.
- But here's a kicker which, if it's investigated (and it better damn well be, by CBS AND outside authorities), could have wide-ranging legal ramifications on at least two fronts. As he replaced the Prize Department with sympathizers, he would often make leftover prizes available to himself and to his sympathizers on the staff.
That's illegal.
In fact, that's FUCKING ILLEGAL.
And it would appear this would be true under at least two concepts.
The first is the concept of "payola". where a show (or the people working on it) could not profit from anything they had put on the show personally.
47 USC Section 317 covers payola and the identification of sponsors. This section requires that if any consideration was given to the show for the placement of a product or service, that consideration had to be notified to the audience. It often is in the credits of shows like Price.
Section 507 of the same outlaws any provision of money or services (including prizes) to directly place a product on a broadcast, without advance notice that the placement was, in fact, done with that provision in mind.
This runs afoul of at least Section 507. They're basically taking and purchasing (with the show's prize budget) products and services which are ending up in their own hands at steep discounts. This is the same kind of thing which felled Alan Freed -- in fact, the FCC site on the law basically gives the music industry as an example -- ignoring the complete end-around which has become the industry's complete extent!
But there's another law in play here. Yes, your good friend and mine, Prohibited Practices in Contests of Skill and Chance -- the game-show rigging law.
It was never a secret that Mikey Richards was trying to move the needle away from the longtime even VIEWERS of the show -- the "LFaTs" -- Loyal Friends and True, as Bob Barker would call many of us who watched the show, if not every day, as often as we could.
It often paid to watch The Price is Right every day -- as the ability to memorize prices and gameplay quirks was allowed. (Explicit physical price lists are not and never have been.) If you knew that can of Campbell's Soup was $1.07 (as my anonymous friend, a clear LFaT, did and helped a contestant win a prize when we attended a taping), that was kosher! Bringing a list of prices, including the $1.07 Campbell's Soup, was not!
All that went away under Richards, and it really appeared his quest was to get the home audience to see LOSERS, not winners.
Now, with this information in mind, it's clear he had a vested interest in making the games as difficult as possible so that he would then funnel the prizes to himself at a steep discount, or one of his "Brat Pack" sympathisers.
That's rigging the show. It's something I had a smidge of a suspicion that, at least to an extent that would be under-the-table enough to keep going, Richards WAS, in fact, doing. But this indicates to me there was a vested interest in contestants losing -- a DIRECT vested interest in violation of at least two major Federal communications laws.
It also defrauds CBS -- they didn't provide this money for a cornucopia of discount outlet "The Price Is Right Losers Shop" items for Richards and his crew...
In contrast, Dobkowitz made the point that if "Contestants not appearing on stage received a gift from Kentucky Fried Chicken" and the show put a picture of a full bucket of chicken on the screen which they had procured in studio, no one associated with the production could even eat that chicken, as insignificant, comparably to the price of, say, Random Fucking Designer Shoes which Mikey or his Brat Pack procured for themselves at a deep discount through the CBS Prize Budget (and where did the sale money go, as well??) after the contestants lost enough times to flush them through the system.
(In fact, it was so obviously stupid in the case of the KFC and the then-ten-dollar or so buckets that Dobkowitz said later the show did basically look the other way and had the crew eat the chicken. What other realistic option was there? The chicken was already prepared and could not be held in camera-able condition for any substantive length of time!)
And, under Richards, this happened CONSTANTLY!
And here's a final kicker: There could be at least TWO MORE major exposition articles on Mike Richards' campaign against game shows and for himself in the likes of The Daily Beast and The Ringer. The latter is almost-certainly going to be another Claire McNear piece -- she's already done one highly-damning article about Richards manipulating his way into hosting Jeopardy!.
Stay tuned. There's more to this.
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