Vanna meets Marconi's box

I've ripped on the oldies boards a lot, and they've ripped on me. But once in a while an oldies board comes up with an appealing bit of game show history. Like the Wheel of Fortune radio show.

Around the turn of the millennium, WoF showrunners decided to put Vanna on the radio with a two-minute version of the ubiquitous TV show. Game Show Forum noticed that eBay was selling some of the radio shows on CD. A poster on the thread gave links to a 1998 Billboard story about the radio version here and here.

The funniest comment in the story is a warning that radio Wheel of Fortune wouldn't work with every station format...

I wouldn't put it on a hard rock station. It would be like, "Here's Megadeath and here's...Vanna White?"

That would be an unusual combination. The Billboard story says that more than 150 country, adult contemporary, news/talk and oldies stations were carrying the show. It replaced a radio version of Jeopardy that apparently didn't catch on. I wouldn't know. I don't remember either show.

Nexxus hair products sponsored Wheel of Fortune on radio. The Billboard story notes: "The link between Vanna's enviable flaxen tresses and the Nexxus product tie-in is no accident." She's still got the tresses, though Wheel of Fortune's radio version has long since come and gone.

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