Season 30 Taping/Airing Schedule & Information

Now they said Prize wedges, 1/2 Kias, and Gift tags also offer $500 per consonant occurrence. Since the Wild Card is also on $500, wouldn't that also award $500? I don't see why it shouldn't.

My guess is they didn't do it with the MDW so that when people hit it when having no money, they can't protect it by mass vowel buying right afterwards. They're forced to spin again and risk losing it to Bankrupt, and this exact scenario has ended like this before...

Guint has also theorized that the MDW was why they retired Free Spin, because it could save a MDW from being retired much easier than FP can...I imagine the second Bankrupt was made permanent for this reason as well...

Darn you, Michele Lowenstein!

The less times it appears, the better.

The Million Dollar Win is also, IMO, what practically took out a lot of categories from the Bonus Round.

The Million Dollar Prize screwed up everything.

Yep. The weekly promo is up. Spoiler alert, but nothing TOO revealing, except in the case of your friend, Sanam. Don't expand on this please.

www.sonypictures.com/previews/tv/wheeloffortune/ (click the first link on the list)

Like Wayoshi said, there are absolutely no shots of the Wheel. Looks like we actually will have to wait for the premiere to know the layout for sure. You guys love torturing us, don't you Wheel? (That's a half-joke. Let's not expand on that remark, please.) For those that don't want to watch it, here are a couple of screenshots. First, an overhead of the Wheel graphic used in the title card, complete with a green "30" center (thanks Jon, for the still):




And a still of the scoreboards. I cropped out the contestants to avoid spoilers as to what episode it's from...



Sanam, do you remember any other graphics besides the 1/2 Car tags? There has to be something to justify the thin scores (notice how the numbers are thinner while the dollar sign is the same size as before...). Is there perhaps a Wild Card, Prize, or MDW graphic? The tag seen here is also quite "left". There's enough room to put three tags down there...Also, it looks like the "sky" WOF logo on Pat's podium won't be an off-camera-only thing. Yay.

Regardless, I'm still very excited for the Season 30 premiere! It actually looks pretty promising to me.

Knowing them, nope.

"Moving" graphics of what, exactly?

YES - love the promo!!!

The problem with DoND was because, of all game shows, it had the most IMPOSSIBLE way of winning the million. There was no skill involved, it was all luck based. A player who played very well throughout the entire show could easily lose the top prize in a flash. Add in the fact that they didn't get their first winner until 3 years from the premiere, and were desperate enough to do a special $Mil Mission, of course people would lose interest in the show.

The issue with Millionaire was because the game had no telling in when a contestant would answer. People would sit around for long periods of time and only see a contestant win $8,000. The clock format was smart, because viewers could expect something to happen within a time limit. Unfortunately, the limit was too small and would not give contestants adequate time. 45 seconds isn't enough to build enough confidence in an answer, especially when you're going for $500,000. Take the Tournament of 10, for example. Everybody knew what the right answer was, but with less than 3 minutes, no one had enough time to think it out and go for the million. You can practically tell by the contestant's reaction halfway through that they weren't going for it. Watch this clip of Sam Murray from the Tournament. He had absolutely NO CONFIDENCE in the answer. He had to fluke guess: www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9OVpPjlxHw. Add in the fact that a winner was FORCED, and that their last REAL winner was in 2003, and you lose interest in the show.

The reason as to why these shows aren't where they used to be in terms of popularity is because there is too big of a gap between wins. People don't want to wait so long because they start to lose hope in the show, and think that there is never going to be another major win (take it from a Leafs fan ). If I was to change an element of the $Mil wedge, I would make it so that when a contestant got the wedge and solved the puzzle, it would forever be in there possession, regardless if they hit Bankrupt 50 times from that point. It makes it exciting because there is a good chance of a $Million Bonus Round, and at the same time, it would also be exciting to see the contestant make a comeback if they are losing.

That's my opinion.