Spin the Wheel (game show)

Did You Know?

• Fox entered a bidding war with multiple networks to obtain Spin in 2017.
• The show is a result of three production companies: Glassman Media, Tennman Entertainment, and LBI Entertainment.
• Tennman Entertainment is a 2007 joint venture between Interscope Records and Justin Timberlake.

The wheel

The game show's centerpiece is a vertical roulette wheel measuring 40 feet across, split into 48 LED-lit wedges. Each wedge displays either a cash prize or the words "Back to Zero." For comparison, the Big Wheel on The Price Is Right stands 9 feet 8 inches tall, while the Wheel of Fortune wheel is 16.5 feet wide. The typeface used for the dollar amounts on the wedges takes its design from the lettering on U.S. Federal Reserve Notes. Contestants start the wheel by gripping pegs made from thick metal pipes. A large silver ball then bounces among these pegs inside a glass enclosure, eventually settling in a wedge after the wheel stops, which decides the outcome of the spin. Because of the wheel's enormous size, structural engineer Fraser Smith of Mendenhall Smith Structural Engineers was hired to design and build it along with its support system.

Neither the wheel nor the game itself is rigged to produce a specific result. This follows a legal history: in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Federal Communications Commission v. American Broadcasting Co., Inc. that quiz shows were not gambling, clearing the way for them on television. After a series of quiz show scandals, a congressional subcommittee investigation began in 1959. The following year, Congress amended the Communications Act of 1934 to outlaw fixing quiz shows. As a result, Spin the Wheel, like all American TV quiz shows, is prohibited from rigging the game by leaking questions or tampering with the wheel. According to host Dax Shepard, each spin's length and speed are determined randomly. The final result is based on the first wedge where the ball comes to rest for at least five seconds.