same price) and began taking notes. Kniess was selected as a contestant on September 22, 2008, lost his pricing game (the only contestant to do so that episode), made it to the final showcase and guessed the exact amount of $23,743 for his showcase. Many show staffers, including Carey, were worried that the show was rigged and that Kniess was cheating. Kniess later explained that he had seen all three items of the showcase before and knew the general prices in the thousands. The 743 he used because it was his PIN, based on his wedding date and his wife's birth month. Carey attributed his subdued reaction to the perfect bid by saying, "Everybody thought someone had cheated. We'd just fired Roger Dobkowitz, and all the fan groups were upset about it. I remember asking, 'Are we ever going to air this?' And nobody could see how we could. So I thought the show was never going to air. I thought somebody had cheated us, and I thought the whole show was over. I thought they were going to shut us down, and I thought I was going to be out of a job." Kniess later defended his actions, claiming that he never cheated, and in the end, was awarded his prizes. (His feat can be comparable to the actions of Michael Larson, who appeared on the 1980s CBS game show Press Your Luck, and won $110,237 by memorizing the board sequence.) Reception Critical reaction The Price Is Right has generally been praised and remained a stalwart in television ratings over its long history. In a 2007 article, TV Guide named the program the "greatest game show of all time." The introduction of the program ushered in a new era of game shows—moving away from the knowledge-based quiz show format, creating "a noisy, carnival atmosphere that challenged cultural norms and assumptions represented in previous generations of quiz shows." The show's early reception was not as universally positive, as critics lamented the show's stark departure from the highbrow norms of the Golden Age of Television; original nighttime host Dennis James admitted that even his own housekeeper did not watch the show for that reason, but also defended the series, saying "CBS, who never wanted game shows, just put three game shows on the air, so they know they had better join the fight or lose out, because game shows have a