The Media Notepad: Pat Sajak announces retirement from hosting “Wheel Of Fortune”
Also: Person, Place, or Thing gets greenlight to fall series; Pat Robertson dies; Chris Licht out at CNN
After forty-plus years as host of Wheel Of Fortune, Chicago native Pat Sajak announced on Monday he was stepping down effective at the end of next season. The 76-year old made his announcement Monday evening on Twitter:
Well, the time has come. I’ve decided that our 41st season, which begins in September, will be my last. It’s been a wonderful ride, and I’ll have more to say in the coming months. Many thanks to you all. (If nothing else, it’ll keep the clickbait sites busy!)
— Pat Sajak (@PatOnWheel) June 12, 2023
Sajak will be a consultant to the show for the next three years, as hostess Vanna White is expected to remain with the show.
Earlier this year, CBS Media Ventures, Sony Pictures Television, and the ABC owned-and-operated stations (including WLS-TV/ABC 7 in Chicago) announced the renewal of both Wheel and Jeopardy! for the next five years starting this fall. The ABC-owned stations has been the base for both shows since 1992 as each ranked regularly in the top five among most watched syndicated programs.
“As the host of Wheel of Fortune, Pat has entertained millions of viewers across America for 40 amazing years. We are incredibly grateful and proud to have had Pat as our host for all these years and we look forward to celebrating his outstanding career throughout the upcoming season,” said Suzanne Prete, executive vice president of game shows for Sony Pictures Television, who produces the show.
Raised on the Southwest Side’s South Lawndale neighborhood (aka Little Village), Sajak replaced Chuck Woolery as host of the NBC daytime version of Wheel in 1981, and became host of the nighttime version in September 1983, syndicated to local stations by King World. Sajak did double-duty on both versions of Wheel until late 1988 when Sajak departed the NBC version to become host of the short-lived Pat Sajak Show for CBS from January 1989 to April 1990. The daytime Wheel itself moved to CBS six months later and returned to NBC in January 1991 before ending its run months later.
Wheel is a key cog in ABC 7’s ratings dominance throughout the day, along with Jeopardy! and until 2011, The Oprah Winfrey Show – all three syndicated by King World until 2007, when it was absorbed into CBS Television Distribution (KW was sold to CBS in 1999.) Wheel has constantly won the “prime access” 6:30 p.m. time slot since January 1984, when it surpassed rival game show Family Feud on NBC-owned WMAQ-TV and Jeffersons reruns on Tribune’s WGN-TV.
While no host for the 2024-25 season and beyond has been named yet, let’s hope we have no on-air “tryouts” like we did for Jeopardy! after Alex Trebek died as we all know how that turned out.
In other game show news, Fox announced last week its game show it tested on select stations last August – Person, Place, or Thing is coming back as a full-time syndicated show beginning in September. A firm go for fall, Person is cleared in over 90 percent of the country with station groups representing Fox, Nexstar, Tegna, Sinclair, and others as 160 outlets have bought the show. The show is hosted by Melissa Peterman, who has a recurring role as Young Sheldon’s next-door neighbor (lucky her) and also had roles on Reba and Freeform’s Baby Daddy.
“I’m excited to return to working with [Fox First Run’s executive VP of programming and development] Stephen Brown and the team at Fox on a game show that is truly for everyone,” Peterman said in a statement. “This is 20 Questions for the 21st century, with twists and turns that will keep people guessing. I promise that viewers will be shouting answers at the TV from home, but I can’t promise we’ll hear them. I can’t wait to get started.”
Twenty Questions was a game show originally heard on radio in the 1940s and first appeared on television in 1949 as a local show in New York, then a national show airing on NBC, ABC, and DuMont, running until 1955. The show however, hasn’t aired since.
Like fellow Fox First Run game show Pictionary, Person was tested on several Fox-owned stations including Fox-owned WPWR (My50), as it was last summer and will air the show this fall. In September, Person will join several game shows on Fox’s syndicated stable including 25 Words Or Less, Pictionary, and Jay Leno’s You Bet Your Life (with new episodes pending on resolution of the Writer’s Strike.)
Pat Robertson, known for running one of the biggest TV Ministries in the country, died last week in his Virginia Beach, Virginia home at the age of 93.
Robertson is obviously known more for his anti-LGBTQ commentary and ridiculously nutty statements – not to mention an unsuccessful run for the GOP Presidential nomination in 1988, but he was also a successful businessman, starting his Christian Broadcasting Network with a single TV station in Portsmouth, Virginia (WYAH) in 1960 and became one of cable TV’s earlier pioneers, launching non-secular (religious) CBN in 1977 and formed The 700 Club, a religious TV show which still airs to this day on cable and in syndication (over My50.) By the early 1980s, CBN added non-secular family programming, such as reruns of old 1950s and 1960s sitcoms and the first scripted original show, serial Another Life.
In 1973, Robertson purchased the license to Channel 39 in Dallas and found a winning formula as an independent station combining secular and non-secular programming – especially with its weekend afternoon westerns block. Known as KXTX, the station was run by CBN until 1993, when management from NBC affiliate KXAS took over in a leased managed agreement until NBC took over ownership of KXAS in 1998. CBN sold KXTX in 2000 and is now an NBC-owned Telemundo station, and once again, a sister station to KXAS.
CBN also owned the former WXNE in Boston, now known as Fox affiliate WFXT. After agreeing to sell WXNE to Fox in 1986, the station declined to air the network’s new late night show with Joan Rivers as the deal wasn’t closed yet and forced to air on a little-listened to local AM radio station.
In 1988, CBN rebranded itself as CBN Family Channel and later The Family Channel to appeal more to advertisers and added more family-friendly programming including original programming such as sitcom Big Brother Jake and drama Rin Tin Tin: K-9 Cop plus game shows such as Shop Til You Drop. The same year, CBN formed International Family Entertainment and was spun-off under the supervision of his son Tim and in 1993 bought the MTM library, the production company founded by Mary Tyler Moore and her then-husband, Grant Tinker. In 1997, IFE was sold to a joint venture headed by Fox owner News Corp. and Haim Saban under the new Fox Family Chanel name with one stipulation: retain the time slots The 700 Club is in, one that continued after both sold their joint venture to The Walt Disney Co. in a $5.6 billion deal in 2001, remaining it ABC Family and in 2015, Freeform (some of Fox’s properties were reunited with ABC Family under Disney’s banner after the latter purchased much of the studio in 2018.)
Robertson stepped down from his hosting duties in 2021; he was succeeded by his son Gordon.
In another management upheaval at a cable news network, CNN parted ways with President Chris Licht after only fourteen months. This comes after a scathing article was published about his tenure at the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned network in The Atlantic.
Licht came to CNN in order to steer the network away from what WBD President David Zaslav called advocate journalism, an obvious veiled shot at partisan competitors MSNBC and Fox News. But it appeared Licht did nothing but alienate employees at the network and fired longtime mainstays such as Don Lemon as the network was trying to mimic what low-rated newcomer NewsNation was doing.
Perhaps the biggest stain on Licht’s tenure was the decision to give former President Donald Trump airtime in a town hall setting last month. Critics described the recent one-hour special as a disaster as the interviewer through softball questions at him, who is now charged with 37 felonies for concealing and mishandling sensitive documents in his Mar-A-Largo estate. Taking place in red-leaning New Hampshire, the crowd was made up of mostly Trump supporters. Despite this debacle, the show did what it was intended to do – draw viewers as 3.3 million people tuned in. However, ratings for CNN as a whole declined significantly after that, with its primetime lineup one evening drawing fewer viewers than NewsMax.
The firing is the latest misstep at the veteran cable news network – there were even plans to have Gayle King and Charles Barkley to host a prime-time show on CNN, but those have yet to materialize. Licht came over from CBS, where his last position was… executive producing The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Given his resume, you wonder why anyone thought he was qualified to run a cable news network in the first place.