PlutoTV Grabs The Daily Double And Buys A Vowel With 24/7 Jeopardy And Wheel Of Fortune Channels
If you've been craving that old familiar feeling of staying home sick and watching reruns of game shows in the middle of the afternoon, the free streaming app PlutoTV is about to deliver the ultimate gift. Now, I am well versed in the ways of PlutoTV, spending countless hours cheering for roided out slabs of 1980s tanned meat while binging "American Gladiators," and screaming at sweater-clad suburbanites from the early 1990s who can't answer grocery store riddles on "Supermarket Sweep." PlutoTV has always had our back, filling nostalgia voids we didn't know we had, and having 24/7 streaming access that still somehow feels like the golden days of "You watch what's on TV or you watch nothing at all." Well, PlutoTV recently nabbed the deal of a lifetime, and has announced that beginning August 1, 2022, they will be adding 24/7 channels to their lineup dedicated to vintage episodes of both "Jeopardy!" and "Wheel of Fortune."
PlutoTV already boasts an impressive lineup of game shows, including a channel dedicated to "The Price is Right" and one playing reruns of shows from Buzzr and Game Show Central. As of today, they've also launched a channel dedicated to the Wayne Brady-hosted version of "Let's Make a Deal." Including the upcoming "Jeopardy!" and "Wheel of Fortune" offerings will bring PlutoTV's game show offerings up to eight channels. Details regarding just what era of shows we could expect to see have yet to be revealed, but I've got my fingers crossed that we're getting thick-mustache era Alex Trebek and the "Shopper's Bazaar"-inspired era of "Wheel" that I was not alive to have seen.
Sony could still make deals with other streamers
The game show hub of PlutoTV joins their growing array of daytime channel hubs, like talk shows, courtroom reality TV, food programs, and an entire station dedicated to national treasure "Judge Judy." If you have a smart TV or any device that allows for streaming, I cannot stress enough how awesome PlutoTV can be. The algorithm can be exhausting, and sometimes it's nice to just flip on PlutoTV and let their 24/7 livestream tell me what I should sit back and enjoy.
As PlutoTV is a free, ad-supported service, Sony is within its right to license the episodes in a separate deal with subscription-based services, like Netflix, Hulu, or the PlutoTV sister streamer, Paramount+. "Jeopardy!" was on Netflix for quite some time before leaving in August of 2021, and the streamer still boasts 25 episodes of "Wheel of Fortune" for the time being. There are over 7,000 episodes of "Wheel of Fortune" in the catalog, so I can't imagine anyone is shelling out the big bucks for the rights to all of them.
Regardless, whatever episodes PlutoTV gets their hands on will surely be worth watching, if only to see the progression of Pat Sajak being unbelievably done with clueless contestants making bad guesses.