Game Shows Hit the Jackpot

By Richard Zoglin

Vanna White's daily chores on Wheel of Fortune could most charitably be described as minimal. At the beginning of each show, the blond ex-model poses with the "fabulous prizes" on display and greets Host Pat Sajak with a cheery hello. Then she takes up her station at the puzzle board, briskly turning over lettered tiles and scooting out of the way like the ball boy at a tennis match. Yet White has become TV's most improbable cult heroine. "I've gotten tons of fan mail," she marvels. "Love letters, marriage proposals, children being named after me, which is quite an honor. Every year on Sept. 4, I get a picture of this adorable little Vanna."

In a world where letter turners become superstars, it is perhaps not surprising that Wheel of Fortune, an almost comically unassuming game show, is the highest-rated syndicated series in television history. Or that the venerable game-show genre has suddenly hit the jackpot once again. Following the No. 1-rated Wheel of Fortune, two more games, Jeopardy! and The New Newlywed Game, currently rank in the top five on A.C. Nielsen's list of the most-watched syndicated shows (those sold directly to local stations by independent syndicators rather than distributed through the networks). In addition to the ten games aired weekdays by the three networks, at least 15 game shows are currently running in syndication, and no fewer than 19 new ones have been proposed for next fall.

The current crop includes specimens of most of the genre's major varieties: big merchandise giveaways (Price Is Right), sophisticated parlor games spiced with celebrities ($100,000 Pyramid), R-rated competitions between couples coaxed into revealing embarrassing personal secrets (The New Newlywed Game). But most of the new hits are an odd throwback to an era of simple games and conventional contestants. Wheel of Fortune, in which players spin a giant wheel to reveal letters in a hidden phrase, is a variation on the old word game Hangman. At least three current imitators feature similar fill-in-the- blank word games. A number of other shows depend on question-answer quizzes, exemplified by the challenging Jeopardy!, now a success in syndication after two earlier versions aired on NBC.

It is back-to-the-basics television. "Rules just clutter up the game and confuse people," says Alex Trebek, the host and producer of Jeopardy! "People should be able to understand the show in the first half-hour, even if it's their first time watching." That may help explain why the same shows keep reappearing. Password has resurfaced as Super Password, and among the retreads planned for next fall are The New Hollywood Squares and We Love the Dating Game. Death is only a temporary state in game-show heaven. Dan Enright, producer of Tic Tac Dough and The Joker's Wild, plans to retire his two aging shows at the end of this season but is not taking it as a defeat. "They are two perennials," he says. "I'll just rest them a while and bring them back in a few years."

Little is likely to change in the meantime; little ever does. Game-show contestants are, as always, relentlessly peppy; bedroom sets and trips to Bermuda still bring squeals of ecstasy; hosts are still genial, well manicured and almost exclusively white males. Sets have, however, grown more lavish over the years, and cash prizes have mounted. The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime, which debuted last month, is so proud of offering "the biggest prize in television history" that it displays the cash in bundles stacked on a pedestal at center stage.

The next twist in TV games may be home-audience involvement. Two new shows planned for next season, Banko and WinAmerica Sweepstakes, will offer big cash prizes to viewers who play along at home with game cards to be distributed nationwide. The innovation could catch on, though the game-show community is wary. "You don't buy audiences with huge amounts of giveaway money," contends Mark Goodson, producer of such classics as To Tell the Truth and + Password. Chuck Barris, who has made a fortune as creator of such shows as The Dating Game and The Gong Show, is not so sure. "Two-way involvement may be a way we could go in the future," he says. "I'll be in St. Tropez mulling it over."

While there, he might also mull the phenomenal success of Wheel of Fortune. A fixture on NBC's morning schedule since 1975, Wheel was on the verge of cancellation in 1982, when a small distribution company named King World decided to create a night-time syndicated version. The show (now seen twice each weekday in most cities, in both network and syndicated editions) soon became a major hit, and this season generated $70 million in gross revenues. "If Wheel continues to hang in there," says King World Chairman Roger King, "it will do better business than Star Wars."

What accounts for its amazing popularity? Partly it is the elementary but engaging word game (many puzzles are devised personally by Creator Merv Griffin, who also wrote the show's theme music), partly the hypnotic allure of the wheel itself. It may also be a function of Host Sajak, whose low-key, faintly ironic style is a welcome break from most game-show gush. "As a game- show host, there's always the temptation to do a parody of one, to do a rapid- fire delivery and smile a little more," says Sajak, 39, who was a weatherman for KNBC in Los Angeles before hopping aboard Wheel in late 1981. "But that's not my style."

Then there is White, "part of the mystery of the show," as Sajak sees it. A native of North Myrtle Beach, S.C., she drove to Hollywood in a U-Haul in 1980, landed a couple of movie bit roles, and was hired as Wheel's tile- turning hostess in 1982. "Turning letters isn't a hard job," admits White, 29. "But you do have to use your peripheral vision and listen to everything." White is quite proud of her performance: "I've never turned over a wrong tile." Indeed, her only major gaffe was the time she tripped and fell off the platform behind a contestant's new Mustang. "I wasn't hurt," she recalls, "but my ego was bruised."

With reporting by Elaine Dutka/Los Angeles