First up, a New York Times piece dissects the continuing popularity of "The Price is Right" -- and notes that so many audience members book a hotel room at the Farmers' Daughter (across the street from CBS Television City on Fairfax) that the hotel provides a tutorial for wannabe contestants:
Thousands of fans — from 19-year-old Midwestern college students to octogenarians who have had crushes on Mr. Barker since he and they were middle-aged — continue to line up along Fairfax Avenue here at 3 a.m., four days a week, most of the year, hoping for one of the 325 spots in the studio audience.
They come in intergenerational groups or solo. They schedule vacations around tapings of the show, and spend months organizing friends and family members to meet them here, wearing T-shirts that identify them by their town or family name. (One man was recently spotted refusing to don his group's shirt at breakfast. Things did not go well for him.)
They stay by the dozens at the Farmer's Daughter hotel across the street from the CBS studio where "The Price Is Right" is taped, and get a nightly tutorial from a desk clerk on how to become members of the studio audience.
Do not wear costumes. ("The show's producers have a horror of waking up and finding out they are on 'Let's Make a Deal,' " he said.) Show up on time to get your four-digit line-spot number, and guard it with your life.
If you get a spot in the audience — and are thus granted a 20-second interview with the producer to see if you might be called down — be clever. Don't go to the restroom when people are being called down. If you are thinking of bringing in a cheat sheet on prices, think again, because that is a felony.
(Photo: New York Times)
Meanwhile, USA Today notes that the Valley's Galpin car dealership -- the nation's largest seller of Fords -- has scored a big coup: It's the new home for MTV's "Pimp My Ride":
Having the show based at Galpin is a dream come true for Beau Boeckmann, the vice president of the dealership who heads up the customization efforts in the new Galpin Auto Sports center, or GAS for short. Even before the offer came, “I said we should do Pimp My Ride, but I thought it would never happen,” says Boeckmann, 36. It's his favorite TV show.
The dealership, owned by Beau's dad, Bert, has customized cars for four decades. It even invented the verb “galpinize” to describe how it transforms cars.
Bert Boeckmann was among the leaders in adding sunroofs in the early 1960s. After the van craze, he was back later to cash in by being among the first to see the potential for macho extras on four-wheel-drive pickups. He added winches, roll bars, fog lights and big wheels, among other things.
Customizing is good business. Beau Boeckmann points to a row of black Ford F-150 pickups specially equipped for tailgate parties. The toys include a barbecue, cooler, two beer taps, satellite dish, Sony PlayStation 2 and a big-screen television. The extras double the list price of the truck to about $70,000, providing healthier margins at a time of thin profits as the auto industry contends with a glut of models.
The new center, staffed by 35 employees, attempts to take the concept further by becoming a one-stop customizers' paradise. “Whatever the customer can dream, we can build it,” Boeckmann says.
Naturally, that makes it the perfect playpen for Pimp, because dreaming and building is what the show is all about. A lot of the parts needed for customizing cars for the show can be found in Galpin Auto Sports. The exceptions, of course, go to some of the crazier stuff like fish tanks or the satellite dish installed on top of a 1989 Land Rover for instant worldwide communications to please a globe-trotting owner in one episode.
Each of the vehicles would cost $50,000 to $100,000 to modify if the owner ordered the conversions. Galpin gets a fee for its participation in the show and didn't have to pay a fee to become the house of Pimp, but Boeckmann and Hurvitz won't disclose other financial arrangements.
"Pimp" moves to more spacious digs from its previous home at West Coast Customs (in Corona). No reason was given for dropping that shop.
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