{"id":24708,"date":"2014-09-17T05:35:15","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T09:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eyesofageneration.com\/?p=24708"},"modified":"2016-10-26T11:52:32","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T15:52:32","slug":"wheel-of-fortune-pilot-number-1-1973merv-griffin-shot-three-pilot-episod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/?p=24708","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Wheel Of Fortune&#8217;&#8230;Pilot Number 1&#8230;1973"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\"  title=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Wheel-Of-Fortune...Pilot-Number-1...1973-Merv-Griffin-shot-three-pilot-episod.jpg\" \/><\/a><br \/>&#8216;Wheel Of Fortune&#8217;&#8230;Pilot Number 1&#8230;1973<\/p>\n<p>Merv Griffin shot three pilot episodes for &#8216;Wheel Of Fortune&#8217;&#8230;this is the first and at the time the show was called &#8216;Shopper&#8217;s Bazaar&#8217; and was hosted by Chuck Woolery. In the next post, we&#8217;ll see the second pilot hosted by Ed &#8220;Kooky&#8221; Burns, but here&#8217;s how this all came about.<\/p>\n<p>Griffin conceived &#8216;Wheel of Fortune&#8217; just as the original version of Jeopardy!, another show he had created, was ending its 11-year run on NBC with Art Fleming as its host. <\/p>\n<p>Griffin decided to create a Hangman-style game but it needed a &#8220;hook&#8221;. He decided to add a roulette-style wheel because he was always drawn to such wheels when he saw them in casinos and had a friend at Caesars Palace build one for them and as you&#8217;ll see, the original wheel was mounted vertically. <\/p>\n<p>When Griffin pitched the idea for the show to Lin Bolen, then head of NBC&#8217;s daytime programming division, she approved, but wanted the show to have more glamour to attract the female audience; she suggested that Griffin incorporate a shopping element into the gameplay, and so, in 1973, he created a pilot episode titled &#8216;Shopper&#8217;s Bazaar&#8217;, with Chuck Woolery as host and Mike Lawrence as  the announcer. <\/p>\n<p>As you probably know, &#8216;Wheel of Fortune&#8217; ranks as the longest-running syndicated game show in the United States, with over 6,000 episodes aired. This is how it started, but there&#8217;s more on how it all came together in today&#8217;s next post. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0n896dobPzg\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0n896dobPzg<\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Shopper&amp;apos;s Bazaar - The Original Wheel of Fortune Pilot\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0n896dobPzg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>Here are the first few minutes of the woefully awful beginnings of Wheel of Fortune. There are prizes, a puzzle board and Chuck Woolery, but otherwise it&#8217;s a&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/189359747768249\/posts\/729340510436834\">Source<\/a>  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;Wheel Of Fortune&#8217;&#8230;Pilot Number 1&#8230;1973 Merv Griffin shot three pilot episodes for &#8216;Wheel Of Fortune&#8217;&#8230;this is the first and at the time the show was called &#8216;Shopper&#8217;s Bazaar&#8217; and was hosted by Chuck Woolery. In the next post, we&#8217;ll see the second pilot hosted by Ed &#8220;Kooky&#8221; Burns, but here&#8217;s how this all came about. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":24709,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_vp_custom_popup_image":0,"_vp_format_audio_url":"","_vp_album_images":[],"_vp_custom_thumbnail":0,"_vp_custom_thumbnail_focal_point":[],"_vp_custom_thumbnail_cover":0,"_vp_hover_thumbnail":0,"_vp_hover_thumbnail_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[721,720,1134,782,725],"class_list":["post-24708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-announcer","tag-host","tag-jeopardy","tag-nbc","tag-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}