The Price is Right (Australia): Showcae Suspense Cue (UPDATED!)

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Leo the Tiger

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Published on November 20, 2021 3:00:11 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCSPUDAP-X4

Game:

The Price Is Right (2008)

Category:

Show

Duration: 1:18

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6

I may be wrong about this, but having watched a bunch of episodes of Australia's version of "The Price is Right," I decided to try my luck at doing the suspense cue that plays during their version of the Showcase. (This is from the 2003-05 era.)

In Australia, the day's two top winners first bid on the price of one showcase in the "Showcase Playoff," played in the style of the short-lived U.S. pricing game Double Bullseye. Both players would be given a $50 range to bid within. After one player bid, the other player would be told whether to bid higher or lower than the other player's bid. The first contestant to bid the correct price then attempted to place the prizes in order from least to most expensive on a pricing board in the Showcase itself, and if they placed all the items correctly, they won. If not, they got nothing in the Showcase.

The music cue I've done comes from a time when the Showcase (at this time) also added a prize of a $499,000 condominium on the Sunshine Coast in addition to eight other prizes, making the showcase worth between $500,000 and $600,000, and making it known as the "Mega Showcase". Three people won the "Mega Showcase": Marisa Tamboro (15 September 2004), Laurie Dennis (22 September 2004), and Joanne Segeviano (3 March 2005, during a special "Celebrity Week"). Another contestant did get all eight Mega Showcase prizes in correct order, but he took the cash buyout of $50,000. I wonder if he's ever lived that down? He probably has.

In May 2005 the show returned to a half-hour, albeit with a new format. Only two pricing games were played each day, followed by a single Showcase Showdown whose winner advanced immediately to the prize-ordering part of the Showcase. The Showcase dropped the condominium as the top prize, but a cash jackpot of over $100,000 was added to the boot of the car to entice the bidder. It was then renamed the "Monster Showcase."

The Mega Showcase win of $664,667 (about US$612,000) won by Segeviano was a world record for the Price franchise that stood until exactly three years later, in February 2008, when Adam Rose won US$1,153,908 on the U.S. primetime version of the show.

The show ended on 24 November 2005, and Larry Emdur then signed with the Seven Network to revive the ailing Wheel of Fortune, which was cancelled after only a few months. (This is actually where I first learned about Larry; TPIR is probably what he's best known for doing.)

The instrument lineup is as follows:

Glockenspiel
2 vibraphones
Drum set
Piano
Electric piano
Violin
Viola
Cello (or violincello)
Double bass (or contrabass)
Bass guitar

Music belongs to whoever composed it; I cannot find the name of the person, but this is NOT in the public domain. If I got the cue wrong, I'm sorry, but this was my own take on it.
This arrangement © me and me alone
"The Price is Right" © Fremantle and everybody else who owns the rights; in Australia, the show was a Grundy television production. The show has aired in Australia on all three of its major television commercial networks: Seven Network, Nine Network (which is the era the cue I've done here comes from), and Network Ten (formerly 0-10).

Part of an episode's ending where you can hear the actual cue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7z-dIaKu98

This is the first Mega Showcase winner, Marisa Tamboro.

EDIT: Forgot to finish the violin part; updated it so that it is playing through the whole thing now.

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