Wheel channel coming to Pluto in August

Here is a chart I made of which episodes from S34-37 are or were available on any streaming platform, along with which episodes from those seasons have never aired on television more than once: i.redd.it/lazlv34lo3f91.jpg


Some more insights regarding Pluto's selection of episodes and 24/7 channel:

Four episodes that were on Netflix are not on Pluto: 6725, 7136, 7137, and 7143. Despite the large number of episodes, only one episode has a $100,000 win.

For episodes not previously on Netflix, the closed captioning is taken straight from the original airings. This includes anomalies such as Pat's edited "Steph, try it again." from 7028 and Faye Longaker from 7051 having her name misspelled as "Fay". For episodes that were on Netflix, the captions are from those copies, which Netflix edited from the originals to match their standards.

The Retro Bonus Round is edited out of all episodes except for the three on Netflix that kept it intact: 6937, 6939, and 7159.

Episode 7127, the GAC: South Florida ep with R3 missing, still manages to run a full 30 minutes on the channel with longer commercial breaks and adding another one between Pat and Vanna's signoff and the credits.

Mystery $10K SPIN ID drawings in eps not previously on Netflix edit them out with a white flash (even if a rerun copy with a seamless edit exists for the episode, such as 6636), and that effect is also used to edit out the promotional consideration plugs; Netflix, GSN, and MediaCorp Channel 5 would just jump cut over them.

During the Mystery Round, the sponsor logo in the top-left corner is absent. This is the first time I've seen this; GSN and Netflix would leave this intact and only the plug before the round would be cut.

The video resolution for all episodes peaks at 684p; Netflix was the original full 1080p if you had the HD plan.



The most interesting thing about the channel is the fashion in which they air the episodes. First off, episodes are not necessarily grouped by week or episode number, but by theme. This means that all America's Game episodes air together, regardless of what season they're from.

Once a theme group is queued in the channel, its episodes are aired in alphabetical order by Pluto's listed title. What does that mean? Take the original air date and the first letter of the month and first digit of the day. That decides the order the episodes air in, which means it's not necessarily the order in which they originally aired. In a couple of simple examples, S36's Big Money Week aired May 6-10, 2019. Pluto's alphabetizing algorithm sees "May 1..." from "May 10" before it sees May 6, 7, etc., so because of that, the May 10th episode (#7000) airs before May 6-9. Also, S35's Halloween Week originally aired October 30-November 3, 2017. Since N comes before O, Pluto airs November 1-3 first, followed by October 30-31.

For themes that span multiple seasons, if they aired during similar calendar dates, such as Teacher's Week, Pluto will alphabetize the episodes based on their calendar date, which means if there were multiple episodes that aired on that date, they will air in order of their year. For example, all Teacher's Weeks from S34-37 had episodes that aired on September 12 and 13 of their respective years. Pluto airs 9/12/2016, then 9/12/2017, etc., then 9/13/2016, 9/13/2017, etc. This also means that S37's Bed & Breakfast week airs before S35's because the former aired on October while the latter aired in September.

Despite all of this, Pluto's channel does not run all available episodes in a set order like the TPIR channel. Essentially, a random batch of themes is chosen and then run in alphabetical order. Every run has a different selection of themes with no particular pattern other than the alphabetizing, which results in some themes airing more often than others. If you see Veterans Week on the channel, for example, you will likely see either Weekend Getaways or Wheel Around the World next, or you may see America's Game, Bed & Breakfast, Big Money, or California Coast. Again, totally random and never the same selection each run. The only consistency I've seen so far is that Great Northwest has always been grouped with Great American Cities and always follows it when that theme airs. GN has never aired without GAC and vice-versa.

Episode 7042 is rare on the channel since it is the only episode of its theme (Let's Eat!). It only aired once to date, during what has been the fullest run of episodes on the channel so far: nearly every ep ran in alphabetical order from August 13-18, except for five America's Game episodes and one Veterans Week episode that were skipped. Random episode skips within theme groups do happen every now and then for no particular reason.

Like with the TPIR channel, episodes are numbered within their season, but with their production number (e.g. S37 premiere is "S37 E7021" rather than "S37 E1"). All listed numbers are correct, but some episodes have incorrect OAD's listed: 6452's year is listed as 2013 instead of 2016, 6477-80 have their originally scheduled November 8-11 air dates instead of their last-minute November 9-12 dates, 6762 is dated 3/12/2018 instead of 3/13, and 6771-75 is dated 3/13-17/2018 (which was a Tuesday-Saturday) instead of 3/26-30/2018.

A list of each theme group and Pluto's airing order is listed below. Episode numbers are color coded by season.

34 - Light blue / 35 - Purple / 36 - Pink / 37 - Dark blue