PlutoTV channel update

What a Pleasant Surprise!

Actually goes back to
Great American Cities San Diego after
Season 21 San Francisco week

Nothing was changed with S34-37.

The S21 San Francisco week is exclusive to the channel right now and is not available On Demand.

The channel was originally going to start showing S22 onwards after the SF week, then it changed to the modern GAC eps starting with San Diego from S34, only for S22 to start airing after #S-6551 (GAC San Diego Day 1). #S-4123 (Going in Style Day 3) is on the channel now.

When was the last time any officially broadcasted Wheel of Fortune episode feature Charlie at all?

Finally, Wheel has a channel that's more competitive with Jeopardy! Among the additions include Michelle Lowenstein's show from that 2008 Canada Week where a certain milestone was accomplished for the first time. That said, I feel that the best strategy regarding On Demand is to have a method where some episodes are exclusive to the channel's rotation like what The Price Is Right's Barker Era channel is doing, or better yet, as new episodes get added, move the older ones to On Demand. It would had been better if 200 of the first 400 moved to On Demand a month or two after the episodes first aired on the channel, with more being added as each wave gets added. Sure, wheelfan82 is posting Season 12 right now and this will soon mean that the nearly complete run from Season 12-20 will be posted, while we get some new S21-25 episodes, of which some haven't yet been recapped. Best of all, the quality for the episodes posted is even better than the VCR copies, so there's still a reason to rewatch. You can nearly make out the text on Pat's interview cards with the masters. It's a nice step forward, and I won't be surprised if the show went back as far as 2000, but likely not until after Pat/Vanna collect their pensions.

After the first cycle of the new batch (starting with S21), they immediately looped back to a new cycle of the batch starting from S20 on 3/29 at 10:30 AM ET. 94 of the 100 episodes were aired in this second cycle, with S21 SF week and one ep of S22 Going in Style skipped.

After the second cycle of the new batch, select episodes from the first batch (S34-37) aired, mostly in chronological order, rather than the alphabetical order they used to air in. 88 of the 250 episodes from the first batch aired in this cycle.

On 4/2 at 5:30 AM, another cycle began starting with S20, with all 100 episodes from the new batch airing in order. Following this, on 4/4 at 7:30 AM, S21 SF week aired another time, perhaps to make up for it being skipped in the previous cycle.

Starting at 10:00 AM on 4/4 is where things have started to get weird. It appears all 350 episodes in rotation have been put on shuffle. The channel is now airing episodes in a purely random order, not just by week or theme, but by individual episodes. As of 12:30 PM ET on 4/5, 54 unique episodes will have aired, 16 of them from the S20-30 batch, and 38 from the S34-37 batch. So far, there have been no repeats from when the shuffling started. At least one episode from every season available has shown up in the shuffle so far except for 20, 28, and 29, but since the modern batch has more episodes, the new classic batch won't be seen on the channel as often as last week if they keep airing the episodes this way.

Been studying the channel since the new batch was added and things got a little quirky a week in.

As I mentioned before, starting on April 4 at 10 AM Eastern, all 150 episodes in rotation now air in a purely random order. However, the shuffle will occasionally freeze for "marathons" of select weeks. These "marathons" appear to have a theme associated with them for the most part, but not necessarily containing weeks that all share the same theme.

"Marathons" air starting at 4 PM Eastern every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Each "marathon" consists of three select weeks, including weeks that don't have all of their episodes in rotation. The three weeks all air consecutively, then the first of the three airs a second time, so most "marathons" last for 20 episodes (15 unique) from 4 PM-2 AM (11:30 PM not counting the repeated week), after which the channel returns to the randomized episodes. Sometimes, the week's episodes are aired in reverse order, or mixed up.

These are the "marathons" that have aired on the channel so far:

• April 5: Wheel Around the World: S27, S35 (only 3 eps), S36. The repeat of the S27 week was only days 1-3.
• April 7: Second Honeymoon/Sweethearts: S26, S23, S36.
• April 8: California Coast: S34, S35, S21 San Francisco Week.
• April 12: S27 International Food (Fri-Mon), S37 Surfin' Safari (M/T/W/F/Th), S36 Island Hopping (Fri-Mon). Theme: Food paradise?
• April 14: Family: S20, S21 Mom & Me, S23. All weeks' eps aired in reverse order.
• April 15: S34 GAC Boston, S36 GAC DC (only 2 eps), S34 Weekend Getaways. Theme: Domestic travel? All aired in reverse order.

The season 10 premiere may just be my favorite single episode of the entire series and is an absolute exemplar of what made that era of the show so utterly special. Even if they don't upload any other episode (I hope they do!), I am so ecstatic they uploaded this one.

An even more amazing update! 

Eight episodes from Season 5 have been added On Demand!

They consist of #S-781, 782, and 783, titled "Classic Shopping Episodes", and the full week of #S-791 through 795, titled "Memorable Contestants". These should have been the final five episodes of the nighttime shopping era since the first Big Month of Cash episode was 796, unless these aired way out of order.

The channel is still only showing S20-37 right now.