Wheel pre-empted all this week on ABC O&O's

I called WTVD (the only one that had a person on the line) and they confirmed that Wheel being in repeats is the reason for the World News encores at 7:30 for this week, and said that Wheel will "99% likely" be back at 7:30 next week so long as it's new episodes.

This may happen again for the week of April 13-17, which is also repeats. As of 3/30, those episodes are still listed at 7:30.

The Saturday rerun is a bad episode, anyway, so the fact that most ABC's aren't airing it isn't a big deal to me.

For the weekdays, though, the East Coast O&O's usually move Wheel to the subchannel when pre-empted, so the overnight airings threw me. I think they could have at least moved it to replace Daytime Jeopardy! instead, which WABC airs at 1:07 AM.

This could likely be a record-low ratings week for Wheel since it is gone for an entire week in five of the top six Nielsen markets. So much for Wheel being the #1 game show in syndication.

^ Probably. Though, surprisingly, they did not move J! to LWN on Christmas either, even though that show was new.

^ No. It's because of problematic themes. See this thread: buyavowel.boards.net/thread/11477/carnival-week-getaway-weeks-pulled

So I pulled up last night’s episode on DVR from WABC, and instead of Wheel, Daytime Jeopardy! had aired just after 3:00 AM instead. Guess I’ll try recording Daytime J!’s slot at 1:07 AM tonight and see what happens.

It didn’t record Monday’s episode at all because I still have the previous rerun of that episode stored.

Good to know. I scheduled DJ! to record tonight just in case. Wheel itself is not set to record because, like with Monday, I still have the Saturday rerun of that episode stored.

While checking my 3:05 recording last night, J! did not start until about 5 minutes in, and the recorded ended before Final Jeopardy!, so it's best to add 5 minutes to the recordings. I had to do the same thing back when WABC aired the second run of Millionaire at 1:37 AM, otherwise it would cut off before the final question.

As always when Wheel is pre-empted without Jeopardy!, it adds to the "fact" that's been being pushed for the past several years that "Jeopardy! is the best and Wheel sucks." Thanks, Harry Friedman...

As of Sunday, Wheel is still listed at the regular time on KABC Los Angeles, KGO San Francisco, and WTVD Raleigh, but the pre-emptions will likely resume there. Wheel air times are mostly the same as last time, except that WABC New York now properly has Wheel listed at 1:07 AM all week, WPVI's Friday airing will be 2:30 AM instead of 2:37, and KFSN Fresno will now be airing it at 1:06 AM, although they also have Friday's episode listed at the normal 7:30 time slot. Saturday's show is not affected this week.


This sucks. Wheel has been thrown under the bus so many times these past couple of years. If Wheel had new episodes but Jeopardy! had reruns, I guarantee ABC would not be doing this with the latter's time slot. All game show ratings are up because people find it comforting and a nice break from all the doom and gloom in the news half the day. And ABC wants to take away one of them in top markets for a repeat of the exact same news we watched one hour ago, not even a unique program, and which one do they choose? The one that people love to make fun of the most - Wheel of Fortune. This is just plain sabotage to Wheel's otherwise-increasing ratings. It wouldn't shock me if ABC ran the pre-emptions by Harry and he gave the okay. As long as his other game show isn't affected. And I find it very two-faced of KGO to be doing this when they're supposed to be promoting San Francisco week coming up soon.

If things are still bad, I dread what's going to happen when Wheel runs out of new episodes after San Fran week. Starting May 4, if Wheel is pre-empted long-term on the ABC O&O's until Wheel either finally airs the Carnival and Collette episodes, or they manage to produce more episodes before Season 38, that would be really bad for the show. It would only drive the "Jeopardy! is the only game show that matters" notion even further, especially if Wheel continues to be pre-empted after J! runs out of new shows starting June 1, but J! reruns continue to air at 7:00 before World News repeats. (Watch them dig into the vault and air "classic" episodes of J! while Wheel's reruns don't go any earlier than Season 35)

I also have to fault Wheel's poor decision of not filling in the gaps of the pulled Carnival and Collette weeks. They should have moved up all the remaining new weeks to air consecutively. As soon as the first rerun week began, complete with an explicit note about the episodes being reruns, the masses began assuming that Wheel has already run out of episodes. When most viewers did not see a SPIN ID on last Wednesday's episode due to a bizarre editing oversight, there were so many arguments in the Facebook group about whether Wednesday was a new episode or not ("There was no SPIN ID because it was a rerun!"). Wheel had to make cookie-cutter comments acknowledging the error and assuring that week was new episodes. Also, I'm sure that when some people in ABC O&O markets saw Wheel pre-empted for multiple days in a row, they assumed that Wheel would be gone long-term until production continues (or it's gone because of "Jeopardy! supremacy" as some people have been putting it...).

Say what you want about the game shows themselves, but to take away a lighthearted, successful program for a second airing of the same program in a 90-minute timespan is just a boneheaded decision. ABC already added an extra hour-long, pandemic-centric news program at 1 PM Eastern until further notice.

Just to note - that first week (at least here in Albany) the Ten Commandments didn't start until 8pm. Not sure if that was a network wide thing or just a local decision.