The reason most of the home audience is watching Wheel of Fortune is to play along.
This I wholeheartedly cosign on. The only current show I can think of where winning and losing is a driving factor for viewership is Jeopardy.
I think this highlights one difference of what makes
Jeopardy! seem fresh, while
Wheel feels like comfort food, which is interesting because there's only so many ways you can dress up answering in the form of a question. With
J!, since the unlimited championships era began, we've gotten to know longtime contestants as celebrities in their own right. KenJen, Arthur Chu, Julia Collins, and countless others have become rockstars because we see these people's personalities, and begin rooting for them. We actually felt like we knew the late Cindy Stowell because of how the show handled her health with such class.
Meanwhile, most of
Wheel's contestants come across as robotic, Diet Casting Central types. Sometimes you get a memorable one like the guy who jokingly talked trash about his family, but mostly, you see the same people found on any other daytime or basic cable game show, which only adds to
Wheel's monotone feel. Chelsea hit the nail on the head when she said you could air a 2012 episode with a current copyright and not know the difference. Is GSN still showing episodes from c. 2013-14? I'd love to see an episode for comparison.
Keeping this back on track, I'm usually at my evening university job when this and
J! are on, but I'll try and catch this at some point during Christmas break. The one very brief clip I saw in the
GMA interview reminded me of Meredith on
Millionaire, in that she interacted well enough but knew how to keep the game going.