The Price Is Right is an American game show produced by Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions, wherein contestants placed successive bids on merchandise prizes with the goal of bidding closest to each prize's actual retail price without surpassing it.

The show was a precursor to the current and best-known version of the program, which premiered in 1972 on CBS's daytime schedule.

It makes The Price Is Right one of only a few game show franchises to have aired in some form across all three of the Big Three television networks.

The show was sponsored primarily throughout its run by Unilever, then known as Lever Brothers Corporation, and the specific products that were often featured were Imperial margarine, Wisk laundry detergent, Handy Andy liquid cleaner, and Dove bath and beauty bar.

After a set number of rounds (four on the nighttime version, six on the daytime), the contestant who accumulated the highest value in cash and prizes became the champion and returned on the next show.

By the time of the ABC run, the tiebreaker changed so that the person who was first to send in the correct bid won the prize.

Some examples: Sometimes, large amounts of food – such as a mile of hot dogs along with buns and enough condiments (perhaps to go with a barbecue pit) – were offered as the bonus.

In some events, the outlandish prizes were merely for show; for instance, in one episode contestants bid on the original retail price for a 1920s car, but instead won a more contemporary model.

Thus, as the more popular competition was eliminated, The Price Is Right became the most-watched game show in the country, and remained so for two years.

The fourth chair was filled by a celebrity who played for either a studio audience member or a home viewer.

Stewart's follow-up to The Price Is Right, his first independent production, was The Face Is Familiar with Jack Whitaker as host.

Later, Stewart created other successful shows such as Eye Guess, a sight-and-memory game with Bill Cullen as host, Jackpot!

The pricing games, contestants from the audience, and the bid-or-pass on prizes hidden behind doors were all previously used on another hit game show of the era, Let's Make a Deal, and Goodson-Todman's first choice of host for The New Price Is Right, Dennis James, was Let's Make a Deal's regular guest host at the time.

Counting all incarnations, The Price Is Right has aired for more hours than any other nationwide game show in American television history.

June Ferguson and Toni Wallace were the regular models, while Gail Sheldon also made frequent appearances.

Although The Price Is Right became Goodson-Todman's first regularly aired game show to be broadcast in color on September 23, 1957,[7] no color kinescopes or videotapes are known to exist from the nighttime run except for approximately 90 seconds preceding the debut of the Kraft Music Hall on television, broadcast on October 8, 1958, taken from a quad-tape recording made off the broadcast feed[8] and discovered in 2024,[9] and since made available on YouTube by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Most of the daytime run is believed to be wiped; the UCLA Film and Television Archive lists the first and third episodes from 1956 among its holdings.

[11] A few NBC daytime episodes with commercials intact, originally broadcast in the late spring/early summer of 1957, have been around the "collector's circuit."

The Fremantle logo animation was added after each episode, as the production company currently owns all Mark Goodson properties.

The 1964 finale featured Pat Carroll as the celebrity player, and the night's champion was invited back to appear on the following Monday's daytime episode.