For nearly a century, well-dressed hosts with crisp mid-Atlantic accents have been handing out prizes on television screens across the world. In most cases, audiences can play along at home, allowing them to partake in the escapist fantasy of dazzling Hollywood soundstages where fun and games lead to jackpot prizes.
It has been the task of set designers to create spaces where that fantasy feels real and immediate, both to the contestants in person and to viewers at home. Analog game show boards have played a part in that from the very beginning, lending a tactile, interactive feeling to the games audiences can see on screen.
The Price is Right Set Design: The Analog Scoreboard Origins
Even in its earliest black and white days, The Price Is Right turntable was an iconic and charming piece of analog set design. To this day, products are still spun around and revealed to contestants with dramatic flair. After its 1972 reboot, the show’s analog set pieces multiplied.
The massive spinning wheel and huge Plinko board, complete with its own staircase, joined the show as classic mainstays. Beyond that core cast, today’s show now includes dozens of bespoke analog game boards that cycle in and out of use episode to episode.
A young Bob Barker watches as a contestant spins the mechanical Big Wheel.
Image Source: Daily News.
Classic host Bob Barker with the famous wheel.
Image Source: Good Morning America
For The Price Is Right, analog tech embodies the big, fun, tactile feeling of the show. Jubilant audiences stand and cheer from their seats as equally giddy contestants get to interact with these massive novel set pieces. The huge wheel takes an exaggerated effort to spin; contestants must climb to the top of the Plinko board to drop their coins. It is a spectacle of physical interaction, where the contestants can express their enthusiasm by how rigorously they play the game.
In that way, these analog design elements are more than just items to be played with; they are platforms for the show’s character. It’s where audiences connect with the fantasy, and where fun and games come alive on screen.
Wheel Of Fortune: An Analog Board That Feels Like Family
When the new Wheel Of Fortune puzzle board was revealed in 1997, hosts Pat Sajak and Vanna White eulogized the old board, describing the change “like losing a loved one.” In the 20+ years of the show’s run with the original board, White would physically turn the triangular blocks to reveal the puzzle in a custom Wheel Of Fortune font.
Though the new board is a digital screen, White still operates it like the analog board, walking to each letter and tapping it in turn to reveal the puzzle.
The popular analog wheel found its way to casinos like The Venetian in Las Vegas, where players can spin the wheel.
Image Source: Las Vegas Weekly
Wheel of Fortune, known for its own “big wheel”, has one of the most recognizable analog-style boards in game show history.
Image Source: NewsCast
The show’s producers and set designers understand the appeal of analog. The physical interaction, the anticipation, the human touch. These are innate qualities of analog boards that nearly all famous game shows rely on to create fun, exciting, and interactive atmospheres on set.
Even spinning the wheel on Wheel of Fortune adds an analog thrill. There’s something romantic about a genuine, real, physical thing determining a game’s outcome. Though fun to play, the outcomes can have massive implications on the contestants’ lives. Somehow, analog boards feel more permanent, more appropriately calibrated for the big emotional moments game shows produce.
Anticipation and Emotion on the Family Feud Board
There is perhaps no game show that takes advantage of analog’s ability to build suspense and anticipation better than Family Feud. When the show first aired in 1976, its format posed a production challenge that set designers had to get incredibly creative to solve.
Contestants would produce their own answers to a question live on-the-spot. Since there was no way to pre-print or handwrite their answers on a display board in real time, production opted for a flip-dot display. Composed of several thousand individual black and yellow dots, the board could display custom text mere seconds after a contestant had spoken it.
Family Feud once used a flip-dot display as its iconic scoreboard.
Image Source: Global Toy News
The Family Feud scoreboard has gone digital, but the earlier version was a more tactile display, the staple of their mid-century set.
Image Source: Fox8
The analog board was the centerpiece of the show from its inception in 1976 until its replacement in 1995. For 20 years, that analog board held audiences, hosts, and viewers at home in suspense as the answers were revealed. Its contribution to game shows and analog history was so impactful that the Strong Museum of Play has fully refurbished the board and will add it to a permanent collection on the history of game shows, which opens in 2027.
Though analog tech is no stranger to museum exhibits, the particular history of the Family Feud board makes it a hallmark example of how analog boards heighten the anticipation and emotion of beloved game shows.
Cooking Show Set Design: America’s Culinary Cup
When 3x Emmy award-winning production designer JP Connelly was tapped to design the set for Padma Lakshmi’s new show on CBS, America’s Culinary Cup, he immediately saw the scope of the challenge. The expansive set contains enough space for 16 active kitchens, a huge pantry to supply them all, a working elevator for dramatic entrances, sweeping sky-scraper views of Manhattan, and above it all, an immense Oat Foundry Split Flap display that serves as the scoreboard.
Connelly explains his vision for the set as a combination of a classic NYC train station with a luxury skyscraper penthouse. The elevator, gilded details, and sky top views all draw from the height of NYC luxury, while the indoor lamp posts, massive windows, and commanding Split Flap display all ground the space in the vintage days of golden era transit.
Though common to game show sets and train stations, analog boards are traditionally a front-of-house item, and so they do not necessarily have a lineage in kitchen spaces. It is part of Connelly’s brilliance to combine these contexts to create a smooth, cohesive atmosphere for the contestants on stage and the viewers at home.
Kitchens are chaotic places – especially with 16 chefs competing simultaneously. The act of cooking is intensely sensory; every sense is engaged, and chefs remain in constant motion. Analog boards make a perfect fit for this atmosphere. The Split Flap display in America’s Culinary Cup is massive, and its sonic quality is immense. It commands attention even in the vast studio space, much like Split Flap displays have historically been used to grab travelers’ attention in busy airport and train station settings.
The hosts of America’s Culinary Cup with their large-scale Oat Foundry Split Flap in the background. The legibility of the display (up to 100 ft) makes it an ideal choice over small consumer signage.
Beyond feeling aesthetically at home, the show’s producers use the board to heighten the drama. Contestants face off head-to-head, then await judgement from triple Michelin-starred chef Michael Cimarusti and James Beard award winner Wylie Dufresne. Their scores are revealed on the Split Flap display with contestants straining to see the results as the numbers flip and spin into place over an agonizing handful of seconds. Like in Family Feud, the analog board provides an incredible moment of tension as the contestants’ fate hangs in the balance.
The tension and anticipation in these high-stakes scenes demand a design centerpiece that meets the moment. The scale, sound, and kinetic physicality of the Split Flap display denote an authoritative finality to the judgment. At the same time, its authenticity and sense of presence soften the judgment with a warmth and distinctly human touch that’s palpable both on-screen and in-studio.
Recapturing “Game Show Magic” With Mechanical Scoreboards
It is the nostalgic magic of analog boards that allows game shows to feel so tactile and present. While screens are ubiquitous and easy, analog displays elevate a space to something more familiar and character-rich. That’s why game shows today, just like the old ones in black and white, employ analog boards to connect with contestants in person and audiences at home alike.
