By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
It seems strange that game shows have a signature microphone. If you watch a comedy sketch spoofing game shows, then the host character is usually holding a long, pencil-thin microphone. Watch reruns of classic game shows, or even the game shows of today, and you’ll see that same long, thin microphone. What happened? Why did the game show genre develop an affinity for such a specific microphone design?
The early days of television produced sound through bulky microphones; overhead boom mics were used for drama and comedy shows. Talk shows and game shows used large microphones, often models like the giant, pill-shaped RCA 77-DX, usually attached to a base on a desk.
Handheld microphones were only occasionally used. Bud Collyer made use of a handheld microphone on Beat the Clock, a clunky model with a heavy cable that Collyer would often have to tug and unravel throughout each episode to allow him more slack. Monty Hall had a bulky handheld microphone for Let’s Make a Deal that connected to a battery pack in his back pocket, eliminating the issues with slack and the risk for tripping.
There were also microphones that could be worn, called lavalier microphones. Inspired by the jewelry of the same name, a lavalier microphone had a cigar-sized microphone in place of the pendant, attached to a necklace worn by the emcee. These were usually used by emcees on game shows that didn’t require much movement. Allen Ludden wore a lavalier microphone on Password. Bill Cullen used one for the original Price is Right, and Gene Rayburn wore one for The Match Game on NBC. The only drawback was that if the emcee moved around a little too much, the microphone could waver or rub back and forth on the clothing, causing interference. This could be ameliorated by anchoring the microphone onto a small plate and having the emcee wear them together. It solved the technical issues but created the obvious problem that the plate attachment was distracting and a bit silly-looking; the host appeared to be wearing armor. Gene Rayburn would occasionally use the plate & cigar-sized microphone combo as a handheld device, which looked awkward.
In 1969, Sony rethought the design of lavalier microphones and introduced a significantly scaled down model, the Sony ECM-50. The microphone shrunk down from a cigar to about the size of a thumb tip. Instead of being worn as a necklace, it clipped onto clothing, rendering the name “lavalier” inaccurate, although it remained the common term for such a microphone.
Although the Sony ECM-50 was tiny, that microscopic microphone was a big advancement for sound production. It was more sensitive, and it responded strongly to bass tones, which gave anchormen, game show hosts, and talk show hosts a satisfying richness to their voices that other microphones couldn’t provide. The Sony ECM-50 almost immediately became industry standard.
Sony quickly introduced a variation on the design, the Sony ECM-51, which took the tiny thumb tipped microphone off the clip and onto a thin rod, akin to the antenna on a portable radio. The rod expanded like a radio antenna, too, allowing the user to nearly triple its length just by pulling on the sturdy tip. Concealed from a viewer’s sight was the tiny button at the base labeled “cough,” which allowed the user to mute the sound with one press of the thumb.
The Sony ECM-51 popped up on TV news in the 1970s; they were popular for press conferences and in-studio interviews; but because the microphone was so sensitive, and because it was so receptive to bass sounds, the ECM-51 was almost completely useless for field reporters; the slightest breeze would render a man-on-the-street interview inaudible.
Since game shows didn’t go into the field that often, there were virtually no disadvantages to the Sony ECM-51, and the microphone became ubiquitous on game shows during the 1970s and 1980s: Hollywood’s Talking, The $10,000 Pyramid, Now You See It, Tattletales, Celebrity Sweepstakes, High Rollers, Wheel of Fortune, Musical Chairs, Hot Seat, You Don’t Say!, Card Sharks, The $128,000 Question, Double Dare, and Celebrity Bowling all made use of the Sony ECM-51, but the game shows that would become most closely identified with the mic were The Price is Right starring Bob Barker, and Match Game starring Gene Rayburn.
The Price is Right and Match Game were the games that most aptly showcased the benefits of the Sony ECM-51’s design, too. The pencil thin design allowed for multitasking. Bob Barker could open an envelope and read the actual retail price without having to put the microphone down. He could reach for props and hold onto a nervous contestant without giving concern to where the microphone was drifting while he was taking care of all that business.
Over on Match Game, Gene Rayburn almost always kept the microphone extended to maximum length (he eventually had a custom mic built, based on the Sony ECM-51 design but with no variance in size, it was just permanently fixed at that maximum length). He could talk to contestants without moving his arm around. If a technical problem rendered the panel’s microphones or the contestants’ microphones useless, it was nothing for Gene to tip the microphone forward to make everyone’s voices heard; he didn’t even have to reach out to do that. And in the case of Gene Rayburn, a born ham, the Sony ECM-51 was a perfect prop for physical comedy. He threw it like a javelin, played it like a flute, waved it like a wand, conducted invisible orchestras, and dueled invisible fencers.
Like any other technology, microphone designs kept improving and evolving in the decades to come. But The Price is Right, year in and year out, saw Bob Barker walking around the stage with the Sony ECM-51. Even when wireless microphones became the norm, Barker, wary of interference issues that sometimes plagued the early wireless models, insisted on his wired Sony ECM-51. When the microphone finally just plain wore out in 2002, he got a new microphone, but not a particularly different one. He was still using a long, thin model, similar to the Sony ECM-51, and to the very end of Barker’s tenure in 2007, he hosted The Price is Right with yards of microphone cable dragging behind him.
When Drew Carey took over in 2007, a lot about The Price is Right changed…but the style of the microphone stayed the same. Carey finally brought the show into the wireless era; his microphone had a battery pack at the bottom, storing a single 9-volt. But it was still that long, thin design that Bob Barker unintentionally made a trademark over the preceding 35 years.
An NBC executive once explained the importance of a microphone as a part of a show’s visual language. When The Tonight Show first launched in 1954, host Steve Allen, a former radio disc jockey who sometimes interviewed guests during his radio shift, had a desk with a large microphone on it, mainly because, number one, it was the set-up he was accustomed to, and number two, with the limited technology at the time, the show pretty much needed a large microphone on the desk.
By the 2000s, with Jay Leno at the helm and everyone wearing lavalier microphones, the large microphone on the desk wasn’t needed anymore, and yet, it had been there for five decades. Someone recommended removing the unnecessary desk mic, but the NBC executives shot down the suggestion because it was part of “the visual language” of the show. People expected to see that microphone on the desk.
Likewise, the long, thin microphone had become visual language for game shows. In the summer of 2016, Alec Baldwin insisted on a Sony ECM-51 as a condition for signing on to host the new Match Game. As silly and strange as it sounds, it wouldn’t feel right if Match Game used any other microphone.