'Wheel of Fortune' is ready to spin its 5000th Show

By Bill Keveney, USA TODAY

The top-rated syndicated series - Wheel of Fortune - celebrates its 5,000th episode Friday, a milestone achieved by few shows in TV history.

In its 26th year, Wheel remains the same old-fashioned game, but with newfangled tweaks along the way. Toss-up puzzles pick up the show's pace and squeeze in more cash-winning opportunities, and fans watching at home can win money online. Wheel, along with fellow Sony production Jeopardy!, was the first syndicated series in high-definition, and it had its first $1 million winner last fall.

"Part of our overall view is that the game should probably stay the same, which it has, but that the show should continue to evolve," says executive producer Harry Friedman, who also oversees Jeopardy!, which just passed 5,700 shows.

After 15,000 contestants, Wheel still regularly wins the weekly syndicated ratings race by a comfortable margin (11.7 million viewers for the week of Feb. 9). Nearly 5 million fans belong to the Wheel Watchers Club, an online viewer loyalty program.

Wheel could go on forever, host Pat Sajak says. "If we lost half our audience tomorrow, we'd still be a top 10 show. … I really believe this may be the show that's never canceled."

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Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

eGuiders cut through clutter of a gazillion videos online

By Mike Snider, USA TODAY

In the golden age of television, TV Guide arrived on newsstands to let viewers know what was being broadcast and when.

Whether this is the golden age of Web videos is debatable. But a new Hollywood-based site, eGuiders.com, launches Tuesday with the intention of becoming a modern guide to the best clips among thousands uploaded daily on dozens of sites.

"There are other sites that say, 'We have the best videos.' But it's done by an algorithm or user-rating tool," says filmmaker and new-media producer Marc Ostrick, who co-founded the site with Columbia University film professor and producer Evangeline Morphos. "We thought actually taking the approach of using experts to guide people to content was going to be the best approach."

Among the experts recommending videos are pop-culture luminaries such as 24 executive producer Jon Cassar, Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof and Private Practice executive producer Mark Tinker. "The idea there is a more structured environment where any video that is available there is already vetted and is being presented by someone you trust, I think, is pretty inspired," Lindelof says.

Videos are categorized by comedy, drama, animation, documentary/non-fiction, music, viral and spinoffs of TV and film. Also promoted: a video pick of the day, and regular interviews and articles on video trends.

"We are trying to reach people who are maybe (ages) 24 to 49 who don't have time to cut through that clutter and go through various websites to find that gem," Ostrick says. "We want to do the searching so our audience can do the watching."

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Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Blip.tv gives videomakers a chance to be a star

By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY

Blip.tv distributes some 38,000 homegrown shows across the Web, and splits ad revenue 50/50 with the folks who make them. Blip attracted 13.2 million viewers in January, according to measurement service Quantcast.

"We target anyone who wants to make quality content and doesn't want to pitch the show to a network TV exec," says Dina Kaplan, Blip's chief operating officer. "There's a lot of great content a network exec might say no to that could be an excellent and profitable Web show."

Internet stars, small audiences

Michael Michaud, whose Chicago-based Channel Awesome production company produces 17 online shows, including the Nostalgia Critic movie review program, began posting shows on Blip in October. His first check was for $25,500. "I'm thrilled," he says. "Before, we were paying $3,000 monthly just to have the shows hosted on our website, and now our hosting is free (from Blip), and we're getting paid as well."

Nostalgia Critic averages 100,000 to 200,000 viewers weekly, Michaud says, while Political Lunch, a three-times-weekly, five-minute chat show about politics, averaged about 500,000 viewers during election season.

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Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.