Fox tried to get Wheel and Jeopardy

The sale of most of Fox's assets to Disney continues to generate lots of media burbling. A recent story in Deadline Hollywood tells about Fox buying Extra from NBC to beef up the syndie offerings on its stations after the big Disney deal. There's one sentence in the story that really caught my eye...

In the syndication realm, the company [Fox] recently made offers for Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, only to be outbid by Disney-ABC.

Oh, really? Didn't hear anything about that. The two venerable game shows would no doubt have made a nice addition to Fox's stations in major markets.

The new, stripped down Fox will mostly consist of the broadcast network, Fox News, and 28 owned and operated stations in 17 markets. Looks like Fox is doing everything it can to make sure that those O&Os have some reasonably attractive programming. But they didn't nab Pat and Vanna and Alex.

I missed an earlier story in Variety about Fox's efforts to lure the two game show warhorses. Apparently the Fox bid was massive, but Disney-ABC upped the offer for the shows and managed to keep them on their stations.

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