Ya gotta give Drew Carey a lot of credit. Going into his third season on The Price is Right, he's been able to step in the shoes of an icon, Bob Barker, and do a good job. He's also his part to drag the 38-year-old show into the 21st century, whether it wants to be here or not.A couple of weeks ago, Drew simultaneously started a blog called Drew From TV, and a Twitter feed called TPIRHost, essentially to talk about his backstage experiences at TPiR, and whatever else he happens to think about (he soon started a second Twitter feed called DrewFromTV so he could muse on politics, soccer, and his other interests without associating it with the show).
It seemed like a great idea; anyone who's met Drew or read his book or watched his videos on Reason.tv knows that he's a thoughtful and interesting guy who doesn't necessarily swim with the Hollywood current, either politically or socially. Since he's started blogging and tweeting, he's shown some great behind-the-scenes pictures, including season 38 set changes and pics of techie studio equipment like patch panels and game controllers that have been in use since day one.
Well, no sooner did Drew start blogging than a few of the show's more zealous fans caused him to not only shut commenting down but remove a post where one of those fans used an offensive term to refer to one of his former co-workers. He eventually turned comments back on, but decided to moderate them.
"What bugs me the most is that it was all spill-over from a TPIR "fan" site that seems, at first glance, to be chock full of people that are metaphorically out on the street with their pants down yelling at a telephone pole," wrote Carey. He went on to say that it wasn't, but one of those minority of "telephone pole screamers" went too far. "I won't tolerate people pooping in my pool while I'm trying to splash around with my friends and get some sun."
There's some background to all this, and it's all in the "some people on the web need to get a grip" category: some users on TPiR fan site Golden-Road.net have been gunning for Drew since he joined the show, but especially since longtime producer Roger Dobkowitz, a friend of the site, left at the beginning of season 37.
Why they're gunning for Drew is still a mystery; some think Drew was instrumental in Dobkowitz's departure, others think that Drew is stomping around the set making more demands than Barker -- who was an executive producer and a rumored set tyrant -- ever did. Anything the show tried out this year -- comedic Showcases, more creative prizes, the appearance of Jack Wagner -- was ripped to shreds by those fans. They then laid the blame in Drew's lap, citing inside info for which they never provided evidence.
BuzzerBlog, which first pointed out Drew's blog and tweets, wrote about this situation a few days ago, and it seems like the tide is turning against the G-R.net folks, as even people who regularly post to the site are distancing themselves from their fellow fans' "enthusiasm."
It's all very strange and makes me wonder why people can't just choose to enjoy a show or watch something else. You don't like the direction TPiR is going in? Watch something else, or read a book, or cruise the web. Bitterly complaining on a message board and ticking the host off on his own blog seems to be counterproductive. But then again, we are talking about the web, where, even after all these years, certain theories about a minority of its users still apply.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-04-2009 @ 4:54PM
Vincent J. Murphy said...
I'm still freaked out that he has hair.
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7-04-2009 @ 11:09PM
Tim said...
I can't get over how dowdy he looks with that awful haircut he's been sporting lately. The show was on in the break room at work one day last month, and I asked the other 12 people if anybody liked his haircut. No one did.
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7-06-2009 @ 11:35AM
Scott said...
I can't, for the life of me, understsand why Drew Carey is famous. He's not funny, goodlooking, or even passably interesting. The tempo at TPIR is decidedly depressing now, where it used to be sort of interesting, with Bob Barker's personality at the helm. I just don't get Drew Carey's appeal... can somebody explain it to me?
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7-05-2009 @ 12:30PM
Joyce N. said...
Drew is a good guy and is doing a great job with TPIR. I don't miss Bob at all.
Keep up the good work, Drew!
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7-05-2009 @ 1:49PM
Andrew L. said...
You know what? I am a G-R.netter, and believe me, not everybody there is, as the Penny Arcade link suggests, a "Total F*ckwad". Some people there are concerned about the direction the show is taking now, but so what? The show has always been tweaked year-to-year. Granted, the reason most people are pissed off about Roger leaving the show is because he was the link between Golden-Road.net and the Bob Barker Studio. Again, so what? It's not like the world is ending, and believe me, there are some people there that believed the world had come to an end before Drew was even hired.
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7-05-2009 @ 7:34PM
BJ Wanlund said...
I was booted out from G-R.net because I vehemently disagreed with the tack that they were taking on Drew as host vis a vis Bob Barker (in a polite manner of course).
As a result of my banning from the site, I've become even more anti-Bob and, in the case of the recent Bob feud, I took Betty White's side just to distance myself further from Bob and his extremist supporters.
I haven't watched Price recently, but I don't believe everybody who is screaming about all these changes (which are BADLY needed in my opinion, heck the LCDs for the bids on Contestant's Row haven't been replaced since Day One back in 1973).
No sane person should expect that NECESSARY change SHOULD happen. However, these extremists think that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING should be changed about TPiR, and any sane change is met with such insane vitriol and negativity it almost makes me want to retch.
Sorry, this is one issue I feel rather strongly about, being on the receiving end of some of that vitriol and negativity myself.
BJ
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7-06-2009 @ 9:33PM
Patrick said...
I'm a member of G-R.net, and I'll happily concede that there is a wide spectrum of 'Price' fans. Some can tell you, off the top of their head, the win percentages for every pricing game and even which segment each game is normally played in. That kind of information has never been of much value to me, and so I've never really tried to collect it.
I'll also concede that there's an awful lot of complaining going on there because of the changes that have been made on the show. A good bit of it is unfair and overly-judgmental, condemning even the RUMOR of change before any actual change is confirmed.
On the other hand, there have been some changes that just don't play all that well on a show that has made a reputation of making very few significant changes in 35 years. It never really needed to back then.
I can't blame the show for trying new things. But when you grow up watching a show that makes change for the sake of change nearly a four-letter word, and then you begin to feel that a good bit of what's changing is for no good reason, that can tick you off. It ticks some members off a little more than it should.
It's sad to me that a fan site -- note that I choose NOT to use quotation marks to infer that they are anything but fans -- that has had such a fantastic relationship with a show now has such an apparently adversarial relationship with the show and its host. That's an awful lot of damage that may never be repaired.
One other important point, and I direct this to the earlier commenter, BJ: I have no idea what your screen name was at the time you posted at the site, but in defense of the moderators, I've never seen ANYONE banned from the entire site for POLITELY disagreeing with anyone, no matter how vehemently the POLITE disagreement came. There is disagreement in every single post and on every single topic. If you were truly always polite and not continually argumentative, as some on both sides of the debate seem to have become, yours would be the first case of anyone being banned for no reason at all.
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