@@ruantengyi some of the game show traders have it, but it’s quite hard to strike up a trade with them and I’ve given up on them now. Former contestants I found were the ones most helpful. Closest I got was finding Rob Elliott’s third episode from round 2 onwards and watching Barbara (the champion in this episode here) lose on her 5th night but walking away with over $19,000 worth in prizes.
He didn’t retire per sé, networks just didn’t want to touch him with a barge pole afterwards. In essence Wheel killed his career. He actually said in his autobiography that pretty much his only regret in his career was doing Wheel. His contract with Seven was actually renewed in mid-1997 for a further 2 years and the trade-off for “resigning” from the Wheel was other projects with the network. Ultimately they sidelined him and eventually cut him loose in mid-1998.
Good episode. I'm a bit surprised to see that the show continued into December and came back early January at the time, considering most shows usually start around the end of January and finish on the last Friday of November Would it be far-fetched to say that the show finishing so late and starting again early for the new year had something to do with the fallout from the July 1996 changes and that they were extending the season to try and get viewers back following the sharp loss of viewers with the change? Unless the show always had an almost year-round run at the time
I think this was a one-off James. Burgo had signed with Nine and one of his gigs was filling in for Kerri-Anne on Midday over the off season. Nine most likely would have been running repeats of Sale and Price while Ten would have had their news or something in place of Neighbours depending on where you lived. Consider this also - you had Tennis all through January and with other networks running repeats in the timeslot if there was no sports coverage, my guess is Seven may have been hinting that the viewers might tune in for something fresh. Tennis usually rated good and bringing Wheel back early to go alongside the tennis if anything was a genius move - viewer got acquainted with Rob and some may say they were prepared to watch it because at least Tony was no longer there. By the time Catch Phrase debuted, Wheel had regained its ground and says a lot given Catch Phrase was cancelled on 3 separate occasions.
5 weeks after Tony’s debut. It was scrapped at the second round of taping (except for during the introduction of the new contestants) - they’d shot 5 weeks worth of shows in early July and then returned for the second round of filming after the Atlanta Olympics were over, and the first episode from that second round aired on August 19.
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