A breakdown of Wheel's network and time slot frequencies

Part of the reason Wheel of Fortune remains a syndication hit is because its affiliates are not allowed to just place it anywhere. For the most part, Wheel of Fortune must be scheduled in the prime access hour, which is the hour before network primetime begins. It also airs on "Big Three" network affiliates (ABC, CBS, NBC) in over 90% of the country. While other syndicated hits like Family Feud and Judge Judy can be found in a variety of different time slots and on many different networks, including lesser affiliates like MyNetworkTV and The CW, this is not the case with Wheel.

Here is a thorough breakdown of how much of the United States of America (and the US Virgin Islands, the only place outside the 50 states that has a native affiliate that carries the show in first-run) airs Wheel in what time slot, and on what network.

By far, the most popular time slot for Wheel is 7:30/6:30 Central, with its prime access hour mandate combined with the fact that the 6:00 PM time slot is used for local news in most markets, thus not allowing syndicated programming to go there. This is why much of the Central and Mountain Time Zones airs Wheel's sister program Jeopardy! in the afternoon, since there is no place to pair it with Wheel, and it is not required to be slotted in the prime access hour in those time zones (but it is required in the Eastern and Pacific Time Zones, even if it doesn't air on the same affiliate as Wheel).


Notes:

This is regarding the show's regular time slots and affiliates. Any regularly-occurring anomalies, such as a station pre-empting Wheel and moving it to another time slot or station once a week during NFL season, are disregarded.

This is only concerning the weekday run of Wheel of Fortune. Some markets split the weekday and weekend run (AKA "Saturday reruns") between two different affiliates. The latter will not be counted; this will only count the affiliate that airs Wheel the most times per week.

One market (Marquette, Michigan) splits Wheel between two affiliates during the week: WLUC-DT2 (FOX) on Mondays and WLUC (NBC) from Tuesday-Friday and Saturday. The latter will be counted here since it's the more prominent Wheel affiliate there.

Smaller stations that sometimes air Wheel when pre-empted on its regular station (such as the independent KTXA in Dallas, Texas) are not counted.

Some small markets do not have a native affiliate that carries Wheel, but do receive it from an affiliate in a neighboring market (such as Zanesville, Ohio getting Wheel on Columbus' WBNS). In these cases, these markets will be counted in market counts, but the affiliate will only be counted once.

Markets that receive neighboring Wheel affiliates but also have their own native Wheel affiliate (such as Palm Springs, California, where much of the market can access KABC in Los Angeles alongside the native KMIR) will only be counted concerning the latter.

This only counts unique affiliates that carry Wheel. In some markets, Wheel is received via a semi-satellite, or simulcast, of another nearby affiliate. For example, the state of the Alaska has three markets, but there is only one unique affiliate in the whole state that carries Wheel, which is simulcast to the other two markets.

Any time slots are outside of Daylight Savings Time, for the markets in states that do not observe it.

There is technically one market in the Mountain Time Zone (Glendive, Montana) that gets Wheel at 5:30 PM local time instead of 6:00 or 6:30, but that is via a simulcast of a Central Time Zone affiliate that is carried on cable, so I am counting it as an additional 6:30 PM CST market, rather than 5:30 PM MST. Glendive does not have a native affiliate that carries Wheel.

Canada is not counted here. Only the United States and the US Virgin Islands. Wheel does not have a native affiliate in any other US territory such as Puerto Rico or Guam.


Number of affiliates that carry WOF by network



Number of markets that carry WOF by air time (EST)



Number of affiliates that carry WOF by network and air time (EST)



Number of affiliates that air WOF by time zone and local time




Visual graphs coming soon.


Full list: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QI2GrydaNuVFaupF9q-mCXzlK3Vx9XHWcgFzhFsWyxU/edit?usp=sharing