We’re not too far removed from when “Jeopardy!” set the game show world on fire when contestant James Holzhauer annihilated the competition for 32 straight episodes – putting up numbers that nobody had ever seen before on the hit game show.
Ken Jennings is still the current leader – a record he set with $2,520,700 in 74 episodes in 2004, but it only took Holzhauer exactly half the amount of time to fall just $58,484 shy of beating the all-time record.
But now apparently a “The Price is Right” contestant followed suit and broke the show’s all-time earnings record proving to be a great year for game shows.
There are a lot of game shows on television. America is so obsessed with that particular industry there is a “Game Show Network,” dedicated exclusively to it. Remember the days when “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?” reigned supreme on primetime television?
How about “Deal or No Deal?” or “Hollywood Squares?”
All of them were really popular but none of the aforementioned compare to the trifecta: “Jeopardy!,” “Wheel of Fortune” and “The Price is Right!”
All of them have featured legendary hosts like Alex Trebek, Pat Sajak, Bob Barker, Chuck Woolery, Bob Cullen and Drew Carey.
This year in game shows has had its up-and-downs. James Holzhauer was responsible for the highest ratings on “Jeopardy!” after obliterating every single game record, even his own.
But things were drabber when “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek was diagnosed with Stage 5 Pancreatic Cancer earlier this year. A couple short months later, the legendary host revealed he was in remission. Tragically, Trebek’s cancer is back.
On the light side however, now we have a new earnings record on “The Price is Right,” the popular game show where the contestants guess the price of an item.
Mike Stouber broke the 63-year-old show’s record for biggest earnings on Monday when he won just south of $263,000 in cash and prizes. The previous record was almost $214,000, a difference of almost $50,000.
Stouber said on his win, “It’s been wild,” and added the whole experience has been “surreal.”
The New Jersey resident won the majority of his winnings on the crowd-favorite game “Plinko” where you take a puck and let it “plink, plink, plink” down a wooden board from peg to peg, hoping it lands on one of the biggest numbers down below. That’s exactly what Stouber did.
The official Instagram account of “The Price is Right,” “therealpriceisright” posted this video to its page.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by The Price Is Right (@therealpriceisright) on
Stouber was definitely stupefied when he was winning all that money.
He told the New York Post, “Throughout the whole show, you’re up there and everything’s moving so fast, you don’t even have a second to realize what’s going on. I guess once we left there and got back to our hotel room, it settled in that that just happened.”
Stouber is also a longtime fan of the show. He claimed, “I definitely have watched the show for as long as I can remember. I don’t think she exactly knew what was going on until it was like, oh my god, he just won all this money.”
And these game shows are not LIVE. It takes weeks or even months for them to finally air and the Stoubers had to stifle their excitement for a little over a month.
When the show aired on Monday, they held a watch party with friends but said, “We weren’t allowed to tell anyone so for them it was a huge shock.”
You’d probably know if you were a friend and they suddenly had a “watch party,” right?