“Wheel of Fortune” Celebrates 5,000 Episodes Next Friday
It’s staggering to think that Wheel of Fortune has been around for five thousand episodes, but it has. The cast and crew plan on celebrating this incredibly monumental occasion next Friday, February 27st. Some facts and figures Sony has shared with us:Over the course of 5,000 episodes, Wheel of Fortune has welcomed more than 15,000 contestants, awarded nearly $200 million in cash and prizes and traveled and taped on location 56 times in front of live audiences totaling more than 350,000 fans.
Though the show now boasts a $1,000,000 top prize as well as a state-of-the-art HD set, the basics of the show has never changed, and that’s what keeps people coming back for over two decades. “Our goal is always to keep the shows as fresh and exciting as possible while staying true to the original concept,” said Harry Friedman, executive producer of Wheel of Fortune. Host Pat Sajak said, “This may be the show that’s never canceled. We intended to do a little game and have a little fun, but we have become a part of people’s lives.” With the way things are looking, the show looks to be unstoppable.
I assume you mean Friday the 20th, right Alex?
On topic though, congrats to Wheel! Here’s hoping for another 5000 shows!
Huh? I thought it was going to be on the 27th.
I know, I know. I corrected it to the 27th. 1 key isn’t even near 7; I have no idea what I was thinking. Sorry.
unstoppable barring poor choices in pat & vanna’s successors upon their eventual retirement?
Now, is this an official 5,000 episodes, or is this 5,000 syndicated episodes? I’m assuming that as usual, they are not counting Chuck and Susan, or Pat and Susan.
And will Rolf Benirshke be there for the festivities?
“More than 15000 contestants” in 5000 shows when there’s only 3-per-show and used to be returning champs and Friday Finals formats?
Well, you’ve also got to take into account the instances when there were teams of two up there.
I like Mr. Friedman’s quote… it could easily be applied to Price.
Ben Z:
5000 SYNDICATED episodes only. If you were to count the daytime run of Wheel as well as nighttime, you’d be getting really close to the 5 figure mark. Unfortunately, it seems the production crew loves, and historically has loved, to ignore the fact that the daytime show ever existed, which is a travesty, IMHO.
Also, considering the syndicated version has been ENTIRELY Pat and Vanna as the regulars, don’t expect the likes of Susan, Chuck, Rolf, or Bob being there, barring that somebody in the studio actually decided to finally acknowledge the daytime show DID exist, reiterating what I said above.
Props for my show. Here’s my 5000th toast to my fervent hope it never gets canceled (at least in my lifetime). Considering that it still has been averaging about 10 million viewers, once again, per episode this season, it, at least, is in no imminent fear of cancellation, which is enough to satisfy me for now… :D
I’m going to touch on what Eugene said, I think it will take some time to adjust to new hosts when Pat and Vanna do decide to retire. Like Price is Right for example. I couldn’t stand the fact that Drew Carey was hosting the show cause there were many off days when it seemed like he didn’t want to be there but after a while I actually started to like Drew as host. With Wheel I think Pat and Vanna should retire at the same time so it doesn’t cause this sort of imbalance of experience. Personally when and if Vanna does retire I would like to see Rachel from the Price is Right take over.
To Wheelloon: They don’t completely ignore the daytime version. They did show some clips of the daytime version during the 25th Season of the nighttime show.
But 5,000 shows is astonishing for any show. I know Entertainment Tonight have long accomplished this feat, and any other first run daily show is a long time away from doing it.
As for Wheel, I hope this show stays on for a long time, or, at least, beyond 2011 (the end of their current contract).
To DeVares:
Considering a handful of times during Season 25 *and that is truly a handful*, a little on the 3000th and 4000th shows, maybe you can’t say they’re COMPLETELY 100% ignoring the daytime show, but 99.9% wouldn’t be that off-base, and certainly close enough for government work…
In either regard, the point is the daytime show is highly overlooked, almost never mentioned, and not well known to much of the potentially interested audience. I’m not exactly sure how I’d remedy this, either, except for allowing some daytime shows to be aired again on GSN or elsewhere, and/or, when doing statistics, to include the daytime show as well in their calculations…
I will be interested to see how Sony reacts to having to replace Pat and Vanna (and Trebek also), and what comparisons will be made to how CBS handled replacing Bob Barker. However, while Pat and Vanna have their fans, I don’t believe they are as stubbornly diehard as Barker’s, who could have had a cult following behind him everyday, everywhere, and every time he went to the bathroom, and thus, I think the changeover for WOF might fare a bit better (optimistic outcast playing in too!).
The audience for WOF is also much bigger, so if they lose a couple million viewers anyway, then it won’t hurt the show (at least pure-mathematical-percentages-wise) as much as it did TPIR. It would still be number 2, at least, if Jeopardy were to not fall a bit in turn, and the ad revenues would still be fantastic.
Optimistic Conclusion: Sony would really have to screw up to screw with WOF’s success. Not that it’s impossible, but given how much I’d believe they wouldn’t want that to happen, I doubt that it will…
@Wheelloon I would have to think Sony would be smarter and would have learned from the mess CBS/Fremantle Media made during the host search. I don’t know how they were so unbelievably unprepared for the hosting choice, but they were. I’m not trying to be rude, but Bob Barker is old. Ancient, even. He could have dropped at any moment, or had to retire due to medical reasons. I just can’t believe they didn’t think of the situation before it came.
Harry Friedman, the EP of Wheel and Jeopardy, is an expert and master of the genre. He’s worked in it for a long time and he gets it. I’m sure that he’ll have a good host in mind soon before the day comes, which I don’t expect to be for a while, when Pat/Vanna step down. There’s no reason to rush around like CBS did, scrambling to find a host. It made them seem extremely inept.
I really don’t know how this got started or that we’re getting into this because I hate this speculative talk, haha. However, I’ve been saying for years that if it was my choice as to new hosts for the show, I’d have Mark Walberg on Wheel and Bob Goen on Jeopardy. Goen’s told me his dream hosting gig would be Jeopardy, and I can easily see him in those shoes. He did excellent on a fast paced quizzer like That’s The Question.
@Alex
I’m almost totally in agreement with all you said there. I don’t hold Friedman as in high of a regard as some people do, as it seems like I strongly support some changes he makes while balking at others that make me wanna bang my head against the wall.
CBS/Fremantle weren’t prepared (I was saying that a lot on here back then even, if you remember) and it angered me, b/c, as you said, Barker really could’ve dropped at any moment. Shit happens, we all know. Drew is still doing alright though. I watched an episode with him earlier this week for the first time in awhile, and I STILL enjoyed him.
Reiterating my long standing thought, I believe Pat and Vanna will both renew their 5 year contracts one more time (they are up within the next year, IIRC), and then call it quits. Pat has expressed publicly, many times, he has no intention on trying to beat Barker’s 35 year stand, apparently which he’s been asked about many times.
Both your choices for WOF and J! are also choices of mine, but Goen may be considered too old by that point (yeah, yeah, I know). Jeff Probst might be up for one of the jobs, especially given he has some J! experience, possibly Ryan Seacrest (who IMHO, would need to tone himself down first). What I’ll be curious to see is if Sony decides (what I think would end up being unwisely) to axe a hostess on WOF and let the computers do Vanna’s job.
Either way, I trust SONY to make the right decisions on something this important, and not just leave it in the hands of one person, no matter if they are or not Harry Friedman…