A few months ago, Pat Sajak was in Nashville – where he began as a weatherman on the local news – when someone made a startling point:
In nearly 30 years in television, Sajak had never spent a day out of work.
“That ain’t bad,” he says.
As the host of “Wheel of Fortune,” one of the most successful game shows of all time, Sajak, 56, has earned more money than he could spend in several lifetimes. He has logged more air time than all but a handful of TV personalities.
So why did he decide to say “yes” last week when cable news channel Fox New Channel asked him to host a weekend talk show?
“Every now and then, you’ve got to kind of goose your life a little bit and try something new,” he says.
On the surface, it seems an odd combination: a lighter-than-air game show host going to work for a news channel known for its red-meat approach to politics.
“We’re not saving lives on ‘Wheel’,” he says. “It’s a benign, entertaining, mindless half-hour – and I mean that in the best sense – because you don’t have to be totally engaged to enjoy it.
“Nobody gets embarrassed, we’re not out to humiliate anyone,” Sajak says. “Nobody has to eat worms.”
But the question arises now: does Sajak have “something to say?”
In the late 1980s, with “Wheel of Fortune” riding a tidal wave of popularity, CBS offered him a shot at taking on Johnny Carson.
While “The Pat Sajak Show” did not succeed in taking down Carson, for 16 months Sajak was more than a game show host.
“History gets written in strange ways,” Sajak says now. “If I had done a better job, we’d probably still be there.
“But I have 250 shows sitting on a shelf somewhere and I would feel comfortable taking any one of those tapes out, popping it in and saying here’s what I did. They weren’t too bad.
“I wish it had gone on longer. But I wouldn’t take any of those days back – I mean, I got to feed straight lines to George Burns.”
The loss of the show was a lesson in humility, he says
“I’m really a grown-up about these things and I certainly understand television and the problematic nature of it,” he says.
The form of his new new cable show, slated to launch later this year, has not been worked out.
But the idea of getting back on TV without an illuminated answer-board in the backgroundhas its appeal.
“Who knows what else I’ll do down the line? ” he says.
“But I know that when I die – and I hope this is many years from now – but I hope that the opening line of my obituary will say: ‘Pat Sajak who hosted ‘Wheel of Fortune’. . . no matter what else I do.”