Bob Stewart (born Isidore L. Steinberg; August 27, 1920 – May 4, 2012) was an American television game show producer. He was active in the TV industry from 1956 until his retirement in 1991.
Stewart is known for creating some of the most popular game shows for Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions. These shows include To Tell the Truth, Password, and The Price Is Right. His biggest success as an independent producer was the Pyramid series, starting with The $10,000 Pyramid in 1973.
The Price Is Right, created by Stewart, is the only game show to be seen nationally in either first-run network or syndication airings in the US in every decade from the 1950s onward.
As of 2023, three Stewart creations are airing on television: The Price is Right, Pyramid and Password.
Early life
Stewart was born Isidore Steinberg in Brooklyn, New York City to Jacob and Dora Steinberg, who were Jewish immigrants from Russia. He changed his name to Bob Stewart after he lost an opportunity in television believing that it was because he was Jewish.
During World War II, Stewart served in the Air Force. After his 1946 discharge, he enrolled in a radio-writing course. Within weeks, his instructor hired him to work at a New York City radio station.
Stewart with Goodson-Todman
Stewart's early broadcasting career included a stint at WNEW in New York City, and then at NBC's flagship TV and radio stations, WNBC-TV and AM, also in New York. In the book The Box, the native New Yorker said he got the first spark for The Price Is Right during his tenure as a staff producer at WRCA-TV (now WNBC-TV) when he happened to observe an auction taking place on 50th Street on his lunch hour. He developed the idea into the working title of The Auctionaire.
Stewart joined Goodson-Todman Productions in 1956, after he bumped into broadcaster (and future game show producer-host) Monty Hall on the street and Hall told him he knew Goodson-Todman's attorney. "You got any ideas?" Stewart quoted Hall as asking.
The Price Is Right, using some of the Auctionaire concept, premiered on NBC November 26, 1956, with Bill Cullen as host. It lasted seven years on NBC before being bumped in favor of Hall's Let's Make a Deal in 1963; after that, Price moved to ABC, where it lasted another two years. In September 1972, after Stewart left Goodson-Todman, Mark Goodson retooled The Price is Right, mixing Stewart's original bidding format with elements from Let's Make a Deal to create The New Price Is Right, which debuted in syndication and on CBS' daytime lineup.
CBS' To Tell the Truth, emceed by Bud Collyer, hit the air less than one month after the original Price debuted, in December 1956. Stewart said he auditioned the concept to Goodson and his producers by trying to have them guess which one of three men had been in the infantry in World War II and was now managing a grocery store. (The original pilot, hosted by Mike Wallace and existing as a kinescope, was titled Nothing But The Truth.)
Five years later, in 1961, Stewart scored again with Password, a word-association guessing game. The show, the first game to pair celebrities and civilian contestants, became the top-rated program on daytime TV and popularized the concept of an end-game bonus round (the popular "Lightning Round") for additional money. (In June 2008, CBS and FremantleMedia revived the game in an updated big-money format titled Million Dollar Password based on the Lightning Round as well as Stewart's Pyramid game formats. His son, Sande Stewart, served as a creative consultant.)
Stewart was one of a coterie of Goodson staff producers who came up with ideas for game shows and segments. Producers such as Stewart, Frank Wayne, Chester Feldman, and Gil Fates earned Goodson's respect not only for their concepts but for their skill in executing them.
Leaving Goodson-Todman
By 1964, he seriously considered leaving Goodson-Todman Productions after proposing an idea for a new word association game to Goodson, which Goodson rejected. When Stewart gave his notice, Goodson tried to get him to reconsider by making him a full partner in the company, but when it was revealed that Stewart's own name would not be added to the company name, Stewart decided to resign, though Goodson-Todman would retain all rights to his creations up to that point.
Stewart's rejected idea would go on to become The $10,000 Pyramid by 1973.