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Author Topic: How to keep Wheel fresh? From Buzzerblog; by Benjamin Williams, pacdude, and me.  (Read 31625 times)

PYLdude

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The 2981-2982 season will be memorable with the $999,000 minimum bonus round prize.

Which would certainly make the Million Dollar Wedge less interesting.

Will they have patented the head in a jar technology by then?
I suppose you can still learn stuff on TLC, though it would be more in the Goofus & Gallant sense, that is (don't do what these parents did)"- Travis Eberle, 2012

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Allstar87

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The 2981-2982 season will be memorable with the $999,000 minimum bonus round prize.

Which would certainly make the Million Dollar Wedge less interesting.

They could always make it the Billion Dollar Wedge instead.

Sodboy13

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I almost never watch Wheel, but since I was off work today, I decided to watch an episode with the critiques from this thread. What I noticed:

Round 1's prize was a $7,500 Walmart giftcard. The minor prize tag on the wheel was a $1,000 Walmart giftcard. Trips and Walmart, that's our game, W-H-E-E-L.

"Here's our puzzle for Round 2, and the category is Before And After..." Right on cue. And as several posters mentioned, it was of the lazy "tack a single word onto the end of a phrase" variety.

Round 3's prize puzzle was worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $12,500, which seems kind of game-breaking.

Does Round 4 ever get played to any extent anymore? It seems like any time I tune in, it's immediately time for the final spin.

The Bonus Round now apparently operates on only two difficulty levels: $32,000 and Anything Over $32,000. The almost impossible MOVING QUICKLY was the reward tonight's couple got for randomly spinning the $45,000 card.

I don't get how this show stays on with high ratings, other than inertia. It's one thing to be comfortingly familiar; it's another to be flatly predictable, and Wheel seems to have gone out of its way to make itself more of the latter.
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WarioBarker

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Round 3's prize puzzle was worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $12,500, which seems kind of game-breaking.
It was $12,000, which seems to be the minimum for team weeks nowadays (the minimum for normal weeks appears to be $6,000).

Does Round 4 ever get played to any extent anymore? It seems like any time I tune in, it's immediately time for the final spin.
I think it depends on budget and where the Wheel is given Pat's spin strength, although team weeks tend to have shorter games since there's six interviews rather than three. Round 4 sometimes does play out in full, and on rare occasion they get through a full Round 5, but there hasn't been a six-full-rounds game in ages.

As for "time is running out", given the game structure I really don't think there's any such thing as a "game timer" in use before the last Toss-Up, since otherwise we'd be getting Speed-Ups in Round 3.

The Bonus Round now apparently operates on only two difficulty levels: $32,000 and Anything Over $32,000. The almost impossible MOVING QUICKLY was the reward tonight's couple got for randomly spinning the $45,000 card.
The puzzles are selected and slotted in advance, regardless of what gets hit on the Bonus Wheel, so it's really just a coincidence that nearly every time the prize is Not The Bare F-ing Minimum it gets lost. Even then, only 10 of the 42 Bonus Rounds so far this season have been for Not-$32,000, three of which have been won (and $32K itself has been lost 16 times).

* Not-$32K wins: the Million on September 17 (LOUD LAUGHTER, Thing); $40,000 on October 2 (JUMP ON THE BANDWAGON, Phrase); and $45,000 on October 15 (JUICE BAR, Place).
* Not-$32K losses: $45,000 on September 18 (ICONIC GAME, Thing, picks of BDMA), October 21 (HIGH GEAR, Thing, picks of CDMO), and November 11; cars on September 24 (VALUABLE CARGO, Thing, picks of CDHAM) and October 3 (IT TAKES KNOW-HOW, Phrase, picks of MCDI); $100,000 on October 27 (POINT THE WAY, Phrase, picks of PCMO); and $40,000 on November 7 (LIKE WALKING ON AIR, Phrase, picks of PGMO).

I don't get how this show stays on with high ratings, other than inertia. It's one thing to be comfortingly familiar; it's another to be flatly predictable, and Wheel seems to have gone out of its way to make itself more of the latter.
Yeah, that's a bit of an issue. Then again, like I suggested before, Wheel does seem to be striving for the "primetime network game of the past decade" feel.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2014, 02:22:12 AM by Dan88 »
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BrandonFG

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ICONIC GAME? These puzzles are getting more and more ridiculous. I haven't watched in a while, but the gratuitous adjectives in puzzles was one thing that turned me off at least a decade ago.
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TimK2003

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Fedya

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I presume that was in a speed-up round?

And to be fair, Dick Clark walked off the Pyramid set (or out of camera range) a couple of times after some of his post-WC clues didn't work.
-- Ted Schuerzinger, now blogging at http://justacineast.blogspot.com/

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TLEberle

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Regarding the bonus puzzle: in the last ten years or so I've come to view it as a game of rock-paper-scissors: if you pick the right letters you have a decent chance to solve, and if you don't you have to be lucky. (And there are times you can solve a puzzle with not all that many letters showing through knowledge of phonemes and the building blocks of our language and how the puzzle writers think.) And really, for $32,000 up to thirty-two times $32,000; it doesn't need to be a cake-walk or easy or whatever way you want to say it. Let it be hard.
Travis L. Eberle

BrandonFG

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ICONIC GAME? These puzzles are getting more and more ridiculous.

As are the answers:  http://kdvr.com/2014/11/11/pat-sajak-walks-off-set-after-ridiculous-wheel-of-fortune-answer/
I saw this the other day. I guess sites will put anything together to get clicks nowadays. Kinda miss the days when silly game show reactions didn't necessitate a news article, esp. when Pat's been doing that shtick for at least 15-20 years.
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Tony Peters

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Since I live in one of the last markets to get Wheel in HD, the only reason for me to check it out this week was to see an actual live (-to-storage-medium) view of the Pacific Ocean behind the set (they recorded at the Hilton Waikaloa Villiage on the Big Island).  With all the stuff mentioned, it's sadly become more enjoyable to watch Entertainment Tonight (Jeopardy!'s lead-out locally) than Wheel these days (if I even watch TV at 6:30 Central Time).
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aaron sica

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Since I live in one of the last markets to get Wheel in HD

You too, huh? Wheel and J! went HD in 2006. I never thought 8 years later, my local affiliate would *still* have them (and every other syndicated offering) in SD.

Tony Peters

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Since I live in one of the last markets to get Wheel in HD

You too, huh? Wheel and J! went HD in 2006. I never thought 8 years later, my local affiliate would *still* have them (and every other syndicated offering) in SD.

I meant that Wheel has been shown in HD here for less than a year (starting on December 27 of last year); I think every first-run syndicated show on every local station's main channel is in HD now.

From what I read from your comment, there are still some Big-4-affiliated stations that don't have HD syndication.  I take it you live in a market ranked below #125 or #150, where such a thing would still be fairly common (I'm in #79)?
Sometimes I find myself missing the days when cats ruled the internet...

aaron sica

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From what I read from your comment, there are still some Big-4-affiliated stations that don't have HD syndication.  I take it you live in a market ranked below #125 or #150, where such a thing would still be fairly common (I'm in #79)?

I live in the Harrisburg/Lebanon/Lancaster/York (Pa.) market..I'm not sure where it ranks.

Prizes

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I live in the Harrisburg/Lebanon/Lancaster/York (Pa.) market..I'm not sure where it ranks.

45th. For anyone's interest, and for future use, these are Nielsen's rankings used for 2014-15: http://www.tvb.org/media/file/Nielsen_2014-2015_DMA_Ranks.pdf

I'm 53rd, for whatever little that's worth.

/given my state of residence, my market rank isn't the only thing that's little
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BrandonFG

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Good to see my area has moved back up to 42nd. We were hovering around the mid-40s for a few years...
"I just wanna give a shoutout to my homies in their late-30s who are watching this on Paramount+ right now, cause they couldn't stay up late enough to watch it live!"

Now celebrating his 21st season on GSF!