By Elaine Low Senior TV Writer When Harry Friedman first joined “Wheel of Fortune” as a producer in the mid-1990s, the pace of the game show was lumbering.
Between puzzles, the crew would have to stop taping, draw huge duvetyn curtains in front of the puzzle board and manually replace each letter in each light box.
The process stretched out a half-hour show to 45 or 50 minutes of taping, which would “just suck the life out of the audience, out of the contestants and out of Pat [Sajak] and Vanna [White],” said Friedman.
So in 1997, the television producer — who that same year would take on producing responsibilities for “Jeopardy!” — switched out the manual puzzle board for an electronic one.
Read more on variety.com