The Wheel's never spun in primetime...

[Blanquepage]

I would watch a longer Wheel episode with three comedians playing strictly for laughs, the way they do 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown in the UK.

I don't think it would be too complicated to stretch a game out to an hour - perhaps bring back the "turn your backs" for a commercial break.

Since it's electronic now...couldn't they just turn the board off? 

[SuperMatch93]

I'm thinking of how a tournament format could work over the course of an hour, maybe do two separate games per half hour and have the two winners face off in a special two-player speed round.

That's how the hour-long episodes worked in 1975; for the final round, they also randomly selected a puzzle from one of three bowls marked by category.

[JayDLewis]

Since it's electronic now...couldn't they just turn the board off? 

[SRIV94]

I don't mean this to sound snarky, but what would be its gimmick?

New consonants.

/ducking

Or maybe puzzles using the Decabet.

[weaklink75]

Only way I could think of it working is to guarantee a million dollar bonus round:

-you play two front games as normal; whoever has the highest score goes to a head to head final puzzle.

-winner of that final puzzle gets an extra $50,000 (they can have a spinoff to determine who goes first in the final puzzle), and has a chance at the bonus round for the million- no need to get a special wedge or spin the bonus wheel (unless you want to use it to determine what the bonus puzzle will be)

[BrandonFG]

I dunno if I'd make the puzzle worth a million. I think the standard syndication rules can apply: land on the wedge, solve the puzzle, don't Bankrupt, etc.

Bump the minimum bonus payout from 33K to 40K. Offer a few nicer cars. That's about the extent of everything I'd do. Oh, and maybe make the Prize Puzzle something like a European vacation or trip around the world.

[TLEberle]

Only way I could think of it working is to guarantee a million dollar bonus round:

"And for that reason, I'm out."

[clemon79]

Oh, and maybe make the Prize Puzzle something like a European vacation or trip around the world.

Thereby making the non-Prize-Puzzles even less relevant than they are in syndication?

I am the Kevin O'Leary to Travis's Robert Herjavec, I think.

[TLEberle]

Thereby making the non-Prize-Puzzles even less relevant than they are in syndication?

I am the Kevin O'Leary to Travis's Robert Herjavec, I think.

That was indeed the reference.

So here's a thing: a couple weeks ago they have Collette Vacations week where the sponsoring company provided all of the trips on offer that week. Thirty years ago the show was lauded for extravagant and lavish prizes, with $50,000 hand-made Italian sports cars, $90,000 Oriental rugs, jewels as big as my little cousin's fist, boats and motorhomes and all sorts of stuff, and yet in that one week they don't offer anything out of the ordinary. Why not offer a first class trip to the location, or a longer trip to do something different instead of aggressively doing the same thing every day for thirty-nine weeks? J.R. linked to us an episode from 1987 where there was a three-week cruise of the Orient in the bonus round. The cars are now run-of-the-mill sedans and no longer even kick in the five-grand to cover the taxes on it. If the syndicated show can't put their back into offering things that are interesting and water-cooler-worthy, then why would we assume that a nighttime version would do the same? Put a Corvette, Mercedes or Jaguar out on the wheel to get some eyeballs--TPIR did that for the first couple of years after Drew Carey took over.

The reason that Who Wants to be a Millionaire worked and Chance of a Lifetime didn't is that Millionaire gave away its money in an interesting, exciting and compelling way, and Lange Lifetime (for as neat a game as it was) didna. Wheel of Fortune used to give away the cash and prizes in a compelling way--they haven't for about ten years or so now.

[BrandonFG]

Oh, and maybe make the Prize Puzzle something like a European vacation or trip around the world.

Thereby making the non-Prize-Puzzles even less relevant than they are in syndication?

Noted. I haven't been a Wheel Watcher in close to 20 years, so I'd love to see numbers on how frequently the Prize Puzzle winner is the big winner of the night. For that reason, I wouldn't mind seeing the Prize not go towards the final total, but not my show.

[TLEberle]

Noted. I haven't been a Wheel Watcher in close to 20 years, so I'd love to see numbers on how frequently the Prize Puzzle winner is the big winner of the night. For that reason, I wouldn't mind seeing the Prize not go towards the final total, but not my show.

I bet that the Buy a Vowel message boards would have copious amounts of box scores you could go through to figure out whether it's significant or not.

As to my idea of how to mount an hour-long show it would be very close to how the Armed Forces episode on CBS went: three contestants play a toss-up to determine control before each round and stay on until they fail to solve two puzzles. Replace contestants as necessary from a ring of fire. (Maybe that would be where the toss-ups could come into play instead). At 45 minutes the three big winners to that point come back for a final speed round to determine who plays the bonus puzzle.

It would differentiate itself from the other version, and allow lots of people the chance to play.

[clemon79]

Noted. I haven't been a Wheel Watcher in close to 20 years, so I'd love to see numbers on how frequently the Prize Puzzle winner is the big winner of the night. For that reason, I wouldn't mind seeing the Prize not go towards the final total, but not my show.

We had a thread about it a while back that showed pretty conclusively that winning the Prize Puzzle won you the game a disproportionate amount of the time.

I'm with you; the concept of "score money" as opposed to "bonus money" works just fine on Teh Pyramid and would certainly fix one of the major problems with WoF.

[TLEberle]

And they didn't even chyron up the score or bonus money. Dick mentioned it and would recap it after each visit to the winner's circle and that was it. Mention the value of the trip or don't, but Pat could easily say "You've won $7,300 and the trip to Hong Kong tonight, did you have a good time?"

[parliboy]

We had a thread about it a while back that showed pretty conclusively that winning the Prize Puzzle won you the game a disproportionate amount of the time.

More than once.  Flerbert gave us some numbers addressing a season, and I looked at a smaller sample at a different time covering several weeks.  The short version of my assessment was that winning the prize puzzle round was worth winning two rounds.  His numbers seem to back that up.

[Jeremy Nelson]

Thereby making the non-Prize-Puzzles even less relevant than they are in syndication?

I am the Kevin O'Leary to Travis's Robert Herjavec, I think.

That was indeed the reference.

So here's a thing: a couple weeks ago they have Collette Vacations week where the sponsoring company provided all of the trips on offer that week. Thirty years ago the show was lauded for extravagant and lavish prizes, with $50,000 hand-made Italian sports cars, $90,000 Oriental rugs, jewels as big as my little cousin's fist, boats and motorhomes and all sorts of stuff, and yet in that one week they don't offer anything out of the ordinary. Why not offer a first class trip to the location, or a longer trip to do something different instead of aggressively doing the same thing every day for thirty-nine weeks? J.R. linked to us an episode from 1987 where there was a three-week cruise of the Orient in the bonus round. The cars are now run-of-the-mill sedans and no longer even kick in the five-grand to cover the taxes on it. If the syndicated show can't put their back into offering things that are interesting and water-cooler-worthy, then why would we assume that a nighttime version would do the same? Put a Corvette, Mercedes or Jaguar out on the wheel to get some eyeballs--TPIR did that for the first couple of years after Drew Carey took over.

For years I've wondered why Wheel hasn't tapped the resources of its corporate parent Sony- I'm sure they could put together some really neat tech packages, movie premiere experiences and the like.

I'd be cool with the two front game winners playing a best of 3/5 series of speed up round puzzles.