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 Caitlin Burke Won, Let Her Enjoy It I recognize we now live in a perpetually cynical society. Perhaps, when it comes to game shows, what happened 52 years ago is responsible. Yet, the bulk of today's television audience was not around for the scandal that almost brought down the entire industry. So I suppose the interminable yapping by the usual suspects of online blowhards is to be expected. Caitlin's solving of a phrase, I'VE GOT A GOOD FEELING ABOUT THIS, with only a single "L" showing could not have been on the up-and-up. I've heard and read every possible skeptic's explanation. Even Yahoo! weighed in on the extensive online criticism. You know the drill.....she couldn't possibly have solved the puzzle without help from the producers. Someone in the audience whispered it to her. Wheel had to have a unique event to draw publicity for the show during the November sweeps. For nearly 14 years, I've been a rather insignificant part of the online community that follows game shows. The work I do now with college students is so time-consuming that I am precluded from being much more than an occasional contributor. However, when I saw the unmerciful barrage from those who refuse to accept Caitlin's success as one of the luckiest guesses ever on television, I decided I could not sit back. This all takes me back to six years ago when an average computer software engineer named Ken Jennings slipped onto Jeopardy!. His first day on the show was uneventful and his win was, at best, routine. Seventy-four shows, six months and $2.5 million later, Jennings became arguably the biggest game show legend since Charles Van Doren-----only Ken came by his success honestly. Not to hear it from the jackal pack that loves to pick apart every game show success like a scab on a skinned knee. The producers served up Ken softballs. The categories were easier for him to allow him to go on those long runs. He couldn't possibly know as much as he demonstrated. Even some suggested, in late 1950s honored tradition, that he was fed the answers so Jeopardy! could blow up a rating. I had spent some time at Sony Pictures Studios shortly after Jennings started his marathon. I was escorted through the secluded area where the Jeopardy! writers toil through a sea of research materials to serve up said softballs. Their library is as extensive as some small town book centers. The encyclopedias, atlases, publications, magazines and yearbooks would take a lifetime to peruse. The writers on Jeopardy! aren't wealthy people. Even with the Emmys they have won, you will not find them living in Beverly Hills mansions. They do what they do for the love of it; otherwise, they would be selling foreclosures on the open market. To even remotely suggest that they would compromise standards for a single contestant is to conclude they would enjoy being charged with a felony----which fixing or manipulating a game show constitutes, thanks to a 1960 federal law. The executive producer of Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, Harry Friedman, and I had a discussion about the minority of intensely vocal denizens who refused to accept Ken's success and delighted in picking it apart. "I've never understood people who want to denigrate achievement," Harry told me. "It's as if some people are just sitting back to root for failure." Norm Blumenthal, the executive producer of NBC's original Concentration and one of our favorites, once told me the story of a contestant in the early 1960s. The player made the first match, the first two numbers turned over to reveal tiny bits of the rebus puzzle. The contestant guessed, "KEYNOTE SPEAKER." A stunned Hugh Downs paused and yelled out, "IS RIGHT!" Immediately, the network's Standards and Practices department instituted a probe to ensure that no chicanery was in the works. The conclusion was as most surmised: the contestant saw just enough bits of the puzzle to take a wild guess and was correct. The show's all-time champion Ruth Horowitz, the first Game Show Congress Contestant Legend, told me the story of a surprise visitor at her doorstep after her 20-game undefeated run. "He showed me his identification as an investigator from the FCC," Ruth said. "He came while Concentration was on and he asked me, 'Do you mind if I watch you while you watch the show?' It was obvious that someone thought what I did on the show was not for real. So, I invited him in and I played along just as I did when I was on the show. I solved a couple of the puzzles before the contestants did. After about 20 minutes, he stood up and said, 'Mrs. Horowitz, thank you for your time, we have no problems here.'" Consider something: Wheel of Fortune has been ranked number one among all syndicated shows in every season since its second, 1984-85. The total number of viewers has shrunk since its salad days of the '80s and '90s----but so has the aggregation for every other show in syndication. The show has no returning champion. Wheel has a million-dollar jackpot that is among the most statistically difficult to achieve of any game on television. Yet, its following remains loyal and intense. The last thing Harry Friedman and his staff would ever need to do is to stage a hot-shot guess to hype an artificial rating. Further, consider this: you're going to do that for the staggeringly small amount of money Caitlin won and the $6,500 trip to Grenada? I've had it with all the skepticism. I've had it with all the yapping. It's a free country. You can do it. But it's as if some miserable macks cannot live unless they tear down someone else's joy. Tony Barnhart is one of the premier sports columnists in America. Tuesday night, his column at CBSsports.com, reflecting on a pending college football investigation that may or may not result in a scandal, reminded me of where we are with all the ignoramuses shouting that Caitlin Burke "must have cheated." "As one of my editors taught me a long time ago, we should always be skeptical, but we should never be cynical," wrote Barnhart. "If we give into cynicism it is not only unfair, it's not right." I'll be skeptical where skepticism is merited. However, I know many of the people responsible for the production and delivery of Wheel of Fortune. I know the boss who runs the show. No skepticism is required here. Caitlin Burke made a lucky guess and was right. End of story. Let her enjoy her brief moment in the sun. Three weeks from now, only the extreme hardcore fans of game shows will even remember who she is.  Farewell To Charlie O. O'Donnell died last week at the age of 78. He left behind a nation of admirers, many of whom never saw his face but knew the luxury of his voice. Charlie O., as he was known by his closest friends, taped his last Wheel broadcast only three days before his passing. Charlie O. is one of those personalities who is not supposed to die. We always expect him to be there to set the table for "America's Game." Others may try to chant that a contestant has won "100 THOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUSAND DOLLARS," but none will do it as did Charlie O. As one who has followed game shows from the days of Johnny Olsen, Ralph Paul, Wayne Howell, Don Pardo and others who became synonymous with their prize descriptions and announcer introductions, I knew how quickly Charlie O. would be missed. Few will miss him any more than Wink Martindale. "There are certain people we all know in the world of radio and television that are a cut above. Charlie O'Donnell was such a person," Wink wrote in a remembrance to Don Barrett at LARadio.com, which he shared with me. "(He was) a gentleman in every sense of the word. A friend who never uttered an unkind word about another person. Such people are indeed rare." Wink first met Charlie O. in the sixties. "In the late seventies and early eighties I had the privilege of working with him when he became the announcer on the game show Tic Tac Dough," Martindale wrote. "Charlie wore his long term success with dignity and pride. The words 'he will be missed' may sometime seem an overused cliche. But with Charlie O'Donnell, they have a profound ring of truthfulness." His long-time executive producer Harry Friedman told me this afternoon of the memorial service. "The guests were a mix of friends, fans , family, co-workers and familiar faces from the game show world," Friedman told me. "Charlie was so beloved, and rightfully so." To show you how touched Harry was, he added, "More on Charlie when I can compose my thoughts." That's the way so many of us feel at the moment. Our thoughts are almost impossible to compose. Just as was the case in the mid-'80s when we received the sudden news of Johnny Olsen's untimely death, those of us who love this genre so much cannot imagine a day without Charlie O. My first connection with Charlie as a viewer was in the sixties when he was the man who introduced "DICK CLAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRK" on ABC's American Bandstand. Charlie periodically offered live Clearasil commercials and had that resonance that went along with colleagues such as Dick Tufeld, John Harlan and his Sony cohort Johnny Gilbert. Charlie O. attended one Game Show Congress in 2007. He was asked to be a testimonial speaker when we presented the Ralph Edwards Award to Wink. I'd met Charlie O. only once prior to that. He was patroling the audience between shows five years earlier at a Wheel remote in Nashville. I was with a group of home schooling parents and children. When Charlie O. reached the row where my daughter was seated, Holly proceeded to ask a barrage of questions on behalf of three kids seated next to her. Charlie O. finally asked, "Young lady, are you their agent?" The day Charlie O. offered his remembrances of Wink, I could only think of one word----sincerity. He was not pretentious, not "Mr. Announcer." He was simply himself as he reflected on the achievements of one whom he had introduced to the nation thousands of times. I well remember the week after the great cartoon voice characterizer Mel Blanc died in 1989. Warner Bros. took out a full-page ad with the major Looney Tunes characters bowing their heads in prayer. The only caption: SILENCED. Charlie O'Donnell has been silenced----but only in this life. He has left us with a lifetime of vocal memories and VHS and DVD collections of something priceless----an identity that is unique among broadcast personalities. A new era of good announcers will come and go-------but few, if any, will be great. That adjective is reserved for the legends. We just lost a major legend in Charlie O. TheGameShowFix.com is a non-incorporated news website. The material used is the creation of the webmaster, unless otherwise noted. Use of stillframes from broadcasts is part of fair use news arrangements. Any reproduction or other use of the accounts published here without the expressed written consent of TheGameShowFix.com is strictly prohibited. At no time has TheGameShowFix.com or its predecessor, TVgameshows.net, ever been offered for public sale, such as in a stock offering or any financial transaction. Any attempt to engage in such practice is illegal and strictly forbidden. |
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