A couple glimmers of hope of audiences returning?

In terms of other game shows, recent social media photos have shown that Family Feud (not sure if both versions or just one) has begun taping with a limited, masked audience. Would that leave Wheel, J!, and 25 Words or Less the only game shows left not taping with a general public audience at all?

“Plague” is certainly a lovely way to put it.

So do I. In fact, I find it much more sickening and heartbreaking than some counties turning the mask mandates off and on again.

I also wanted to mention other shows that have taped or are currently taping:

- Three upcoming primetime series that would normally have had audiences have taped in full. Two had paid audiences only; the third allowed contestant guests but otherwise had no audience.

-Syndicated Family Feud has begun taping for the upcoming season in Georgia. To my surprise, they do have regular audiences. I don’t know what their COVID protocols are. This is the only show, to my knowledge, that has come close to their pre-COVID audience size.

Wheel has. Jeopardy!, I'd argue against. They're pretty much the only game show that's flying contestants from all over the country out to LA just as often as they were in 2019. Meanwhile, Wheel still insists on having two or all three contestants be from LA or nearby while they still have a backlog of people who got picked at Wheelmobile events in 2019 and early 2020. They even snuck in an LA local on a "city salute" episode (though she may have been an alternate), and when Omnicron rose, Wheel briefly went back to 100% locals. I don't recall J! doing that around that same time. Doing a quick twitter search of KABC's Twitter promoting local game show contestants, J! hasn't had too many LA people this season, and only about four episodes this season had two LA players on the same episode.

25 Words or Less also is sticking to all locals for next season. My friend was so close to getting on but was denied at the last possible moment just because he would have to fly in. And now with TPIR requiring "auditions" to be part of the small pod audience, are J! and You Bet Your Life the only daily game shows that are currently having a significant amount of non-LA people in studio?

That all being said, I doubt they'd bring back audiences for J! and not Wheel. They'd surely bring them back for both shows at the same time.

Today I called the Wheel of Fortune and was surprised that someone picked up the phone for the first time in a while since COVID hit. The receptionist told me that audiences are returning for Season 40! I am hopeful that's true!

I don't want to say too much, but I can 100% confirm that audiences will be returning for next season. Certain people have already been given dates and times to attend tapings. I would expect the website to be updated no later than the first week of July.

Ugh. Why are they putting out the Jeopardy! tickets first even though Wheel generally starts taping before them? Do they not want to give us out-of-state Wheel fans enough notice to plan a trip out there?

Was anybody able to snag tickets from this batch? Demand must have been through the roof, because as of posting this message, only the August 11 and 12 tape days still show availability. I wouldn't be surprised if they opened a waitlist, as J! did just that yesterday, though those waitlist slots were probably scooped up in an hour's time.

It seems like they really frontloaded their tape schedule for the fall with 16 sessions through the end of September (which likely amounts to 17 weeks or more under the assumption that at least one of the theme weeks is "America's Game"). That keeps episodes in the can for the remainder of the calendar year, if not longer.