The Story of Pat Sajak & Wheel of Fortune

Notes:

If I could change anything about this video, I would dial down the praise toward the very end. For as charming a guy I think Pat Sajak is, my closing thoughts are definitely hyperbolic. I'm calling that a consequence of making this video amid peak COVID quarantine.

I did forget to bring a bottle of water with me while I was recording the voiceover, which makes my voice noticeably weak here. It also made my life about 100 times harder during the edit. There are over 80(!) words or phrases that I re-recorded and inserted into an already-edited video to get rid of voice cracks and other improprieties. Vocal fatigue is a real thing. I don't know how audiobook narrators do it.

I know that my decision to omit Pat's politics skews his likability to a certain degree. He is a staunch conservative, and he has been vocal about his beliefs (quite smugly, at times) on Twitter. Photos have surfaced of him with Marjorie Taylor Greene and a Newsmax personality. He is a trustee for an outwardly conservative college. These values are at odds with my own, and I don't want my appreciation for his career to be mistaken for approval of his politics. I thought it was worth ignoring politics for the sake of this story, but that's a decision I've grown less comfortable with over time. It's a complex situation, and it feels weird to use the phrase "separate the art from the artist" when the "art" in question is just a game show and an interesting story that accompanies it. Pat is probably not a very decent person. But his show is important to me, and I enjoy watching him do his thing. Make of that what you will. 

Corrections:

• Around the 16:07 mark, I start talking about the salary dispute that resulted in the termination of Chuck Woolery from Wheel of Fortune. However, even though it is definite that a salary dispute led to his termination, I am not 100% confident in the exact figures I use here. It seems like no one can agree on what the exact details of the dispute were, and I probably could have saved myself the uncertainty had I been more vague with reference to dollar values.

• It's not known for certain whether the developmental tape for Wheel of Fortune (11:01) came before the original Shopper's Bazaar pilot was taped. Personally, I think it's most plausible that it came when I put it, but there is some level of uncertainty there.

• At 36:06, the onscreen caption says that The Late Late Show is syndicated. It's not. It airs on CBS. Just a goof. (I did away with those captions in subsequent videos mainly because they were too annoying to deal with and didn't offer significant value for the hassle. And things like this can slip through the cracks.)

• Also, speaking of The Late Late Show, commenter Justin Flickner brought to my attention that the framed photo of Pat Sajak on The Late Late Show's mantle was actually a gift to the show from Neil Patrick Harris, which can be viewed in this interview. It's a neat little moment that shows Pat's good humor about the failure of his show.

• Commenter Rob H provided a correction about the situation surrounding David Letterman's morning talk show. To reproduce his comment: Letterman being cut to 60 minutes was not the reason Wheel was saved. While correct that the decision to cancel Wheel of Fortune was reversed, Hollywood Squares ended up becoming the third casualty to make room for Letterman on the schedule. High Rollers, Chain Reaction and Squares aired their final episodes on June 20, 1980. Once Letterman was cut to 60 minutes (and Another World cut from 90 minutes to 60), the schedule was shifted and a new hourlong soap opera called "Texas" premiered in the mid-afternoon.

• I made the projection that Pat wouldn't renew his contract beyond what he already had at the time this video was made. I was wrong. He renewed an additional time, and he only retired in 2024. I imagine his decision to renew was influenced, to some degree, by Alex Trebek's death in November of 2020. For what it's worth, I think Ryan Seacrest is doing okay.