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Game Show “What If:” Wheel of Fortune

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steveleb:
The reason those earlier syndication deals didn’t happen is that their respective executives ran the idea up the flagpole with their clients in the top markets and got a tepid response.  To them, the show was meh and had zero promotability.  Plus neither shop was particularly strong on first run, which was crucial to leveraging new shows into opportunistic time slots.

And without the daytime version continuing the production cost nut they would have needed to cover was not very likely to have been met in year one.  From my own knowledge of how the math worked on 100k pyramid we needed to hit only about 80 per cent of what a standalone project would have required, including barter.  In 1980 barter was not yet a factor.  Again, this worked against Wheel.

A decent parallel to look at is $50,000 Pyramid, which in the latter stages of its ABC  run was in the same run had similarly modest ratings to Wheel.  Even with Dick and celebrities they could only get an ad agency distribution company to take the risk.  There was no startup cost since the set was never struck.  The best time slots they could muster in top markets was daytime on two Tribune stations and a handful of early fringes on midsize affiliates—and that’s with failures like Truth in November that stations were motivated to replace. 

Simply put, a cancelled Wheel looking to move to first run strip in 1980 likely never gets greenlit, and I don’t believe the opportunity for an upstart like King to resurrect it ever occurs.

Chelsea Thrasher:

--- Quote from: TLEberle on December 22, 2024, 01:23:06 AM ---I think it was a mistake to have the nighttime version adopt shopping just with slightly higher money until round three. Playing for cash is such a different animal that it would have separated from the daytime mother ship and would have injected a bit of excitement plus you don't have the thumb-twiddling of what to do with $500.

--- End quote ---

Fun fact in learning more about daytime ratings from 1987-89:  The daytime version's ratings decline basically started to the day that the nighttime show switched to the cash format. Daytime Wheel was averaging around a 5.7/23 for Summer 1987. By end of year they were down to a 5.3/22, they sat at a 4.7/21 come the Spring (and lost a few stations for basically the first time since 1982), and had fallen to a 4.5/19 by the time Pat left. Meanwhile, the other NBC offerings in the same period were essentially steady.

It was specifically a Wheel problem, and the only thing that had changed was the nighttime version going to cash and huge prize budgets.

(For what it's worth, those numbers then held steady for Rolf's first few weeks, however viewers' patience for him eroded rapidly around the time NBC started gutting game shows out of daytime in March 1989. Moving to CBS shed about a third of the audience, but they found the show again by the fall, but never got above the mid 3s rating /15 share again.

For the fourish years that the daytime and nighttime shows were basically the same except for champions and a slight difference in prize budget, the nighttime version did really well, and so did the daytime show. The second those two split apart?  The daytime show started withering on the vine. And had the nighttime version been cash to begin with, there's a very solid chance the daytime show is dead within a couple of years (vs. what actually happened, where the nighttime version's ratings successes actually gave the daytime show a ratings boost through '87). The second viewers saw Wheel of Fortune without shopping, they started making it clear with their remotes that they had no interest in seeing it with it.

rebelwrest:
When Ratings Ryan had the Nielsen books, I was curious to see what Wheel's ratings were before the nighttime version premiered.  I think what saved Wheel in the early 80s was the move to 10:30 AM Eastern.  Wheel was regularly coming in third against TPIR and "Love Boat" reruns.  Once the move happened, it's only network competition was "Alice" reruns but steadily worked it way back up to respectable ratings. When "Child's Play" premiered, Wheel regularly won against it.  Then something interesting happened after January 1983 and the move back to 11AM. Of course TPIR won the timeslot at first, but by May 1983 (and ABC stopped showing Love Boat reruns), Wheel was winning it's time slot and didn't relinquish it for awhile.

Casey Buck:

--- Quote from: Chelsea Thrasher on December 24, 2024, 12:37:14 AM ---The second viewers saw Wheel of Fortune without shopping, they started making it clear with their remotes that they had no interest in seeing it with it.

--- End quote ---

So, the viewers wanted to see more puzzle solving and wheel spinning, and less tedious hemming and hawing over ceramic dalmatians and patio furniture (with equally tedious prize descriptions, to boot). Who knew?

Jack Clark wasn't lying: it turns out the Big Bonanza of Cash really was "by popular demand". :P

I'm honestly shocked it took until 1987 for the show to switch to cash. Hell, I'd argue they should have switched to cash during the Woolery years once Lin Bolen left NBC. Wasn't she the whole reason they had shopping to begin with?

Joe Mello:

--- Quote from: Casey Buck on December 24, 2024, 02:58:29 PM ---I'm honestly shocked it took until 1987 for the show to switch to cash. Hell, I'd argue they should have switched to cash during the Woolery years once Lin Bolen left NBC. Wasn't she the whole reason they had shopping to begin with?
--- End quote ---
That's what wikipedia says, at least.

I'm of a mind that playing for prizes was less expensive for the show than playing for cash would have been. Even if it wasn't the intention, the shopping format kept costs down for long enough that, once the nighttime show became a massive hit, they had both the clout and coffers to tinker with the format.

And of course, it's easy for us with 35+ years of hindsight to say "significantly changing a well-established format that was already successful for years and years was always the way to go."

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