Notes:
- I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out. Honestly, if I could change anything about this video, it'd mainly just be dialing down the praise toward the very end of the video. It's no secret that I like Pat Sajak, but looking back, my closing thoughts are definitely a little hyperbolic. I'm gonna call that a consequence of quarantine brain.
- I did forget to bring a bottle of water with me while I was recording the voiceover, which actually ended up making 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. And there are still plenty that I missed. Oy. Vocal fatigue is a real thing. 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 conservative, and has at various points been vocal about his beliefs on Twitter. Very recently, photos surfaced of him with Marjorie Taylor Greene and a Newsmax personality. His beliefs 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 the politics for the sake of this story, but in retrospect, I probably should have given them a more disapproving mention. 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. I don't like that reality. 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 quote 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 and Vanna are now both signed through 2024, which will put him over 42 years on Wheel if he stays the whole time. I assume the death of Alex Trebek had some bearing on this decision, but who knows?
Some unused thumbnails:
