The day the Wheel went high-tech
Author: Graham Clifford
When loyal Wheel of Fortune viewers in the United States tuned into their TV sets on February 24th 1997 they were in for something of a shock!
Now many would have heard three days earlier than the Puzzle board used on the show was to be replaced with an electronic one but it still came as a surprise after the board’s 15 years of use.
As the curtain rose the new board glittered on screens across the country – modern technology had caught up with the show!
The board featured 52 monitors which would light up in blue when a correct letter was called. Vanna, the very able assistant, would walk up to the monitor and touch anywhere along the right side of the screen for the letter to magically appear.
Some viewers were a bit discouraged by the fact that, when the puzzle was solved, the remaining letters would fill in automatically meaning Vanna couldn’t even have the pleasure of revealing them herself!
However aside from Vanna’s slightly diminished role the new board did have significant advantages over the old one, namely the fact that taping would not have to stop in segments that had more than one puzzle. With the old board, after a puzzle was solved the host would face the camera and announce “Here is our next puzzle”, and while the viewers saw a seamless transition to the next puzzle, what actually happened was a show stop down. During the stop down, the board would be wheeled off stage and the new puzzle loaded in by hand out of sight of the contestants. With the new board, no stop downs were necessary, meaning tapings could finish quicker at a lower cost to the production company.
Amazingly the old board now sits in Washington’s Smithsonian institute which goes to show what a huge role the Wheel of Fortune has played in American history and culture since its inception.