EXECUTIVE PRODUCER HARRY FRIEDMAN
FEATURED IN EMMY® MAGAZINE

Like any savvy game player, Harry Friedman knows when to take a risk and bet the bundle. At twenty-five, the son of a Nebraska television salesman did just that, packing his belongings and moving to Los Angeles in the hope of landing a job in the TV industry.

Problem was, he had no contacts and even fewer prospects. He gave himself six months to land a job, or he'd head for home. As fate would have it, he was down to his last twenty-four hours when he landed a gig as a part-time writer on The Hollywood Squares. The job not only kept him in town, it helped him launch a career as one the industry's most innovative game show practitioners.

Friedman's association with Hollywood Squares' Heatter-Quigley Productions lasted eleven years. He wrote and produced thousands of episodes of the popular series and was involved in the development of other shows such as Gambit and High Rollers.

In 1975 he and other Heatter-Quigley staffers were invited to NBC to watch the first tapings of a new game show created by Merv Griffin: Wheel of Fortune. Over subsequent years Friedman garnered writing and producing credits in network primetime, in documentaries and on home video, but the shows that Griffin created would loom large in his future.

Now, as the executive producer of both Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, Friedman is in charge of television's top two syndicated programs. The Sony Pictures Television shows are both among the most successful game shows in television history: this season Wheel marks its twenty-sixth year on the air with host Pat Sajak and Jeopardy! its twenty-fifth hosted by Alex Trebek. During Friedman's tenure, they also became the first syndicated shows to broadcast in high definition.

Friedman joined Wheel of Fortune in 1995 and two years later added Jeopardy! to his producing duties. Executive producer of both shows since 1999, he is credited with infusing these TV classics with twenty-first-century sensibilities that have kept them at the top of their game.

On Wheel of Fortune he has modernized the set – including the famous wheel and puzzle board (letters now change with a touch of Vanna White's hand) – as well as the prizes (new this season: a million-dollar bonus round). He boosted viewer involvement via the Wheel Watchers Club – a viewer loyalty program – and also initiated versions of the show for play online and on cell phones.

For Jeopardy! Friedman created the Clue Crew, four correspondents who travel the world to tape video clues, and the Brain Bus, which travels the country to conduct contestant searches. Meanwhile, he as continually expanded game categories and clues to reflect changing tastes while championing innovative theme weeks and on-location tapings.

In 2003 Friedman took Jeopardy! to new viewership heights when he discarded the five-day limit on contestants, paving the way for software engineer Ken Jennings to stay on the show for an unprecedented seventy-four days and take home $2.5 million. Audiences increased by 30 percent during Jenning's streak, surpassing some primetime shows.

Since Friedman joined the series Jeopardy! has won Daytime Emmy Awards in many categories; in 2006 he accepted the series' eleventh statuette for outstanding game/audience participation shows, its twenty-eighth overall.

Friedman lives in Los Angeles with his wife; they have two daughters and a granddaughter. He was interviewed in October 2007 by Karen Herman, director of the Television Academy Foundation's Archive of American Television. Following are excerpts of their discussion. The entire conversation may be viewed at the archive office in North Hollywood. Form more information, call (818) 509-2260 or visit emmytvlegends.org.

Q: You started your television career on Hollywood Squares. What was your first job like?
A: I was one of five writers who were writing questions, and two or three of us wrote the jokes. Even though the jokes were scripted, we never gave the celebrities the answers. We gave them bluffs. A celebrity might have a card that would say, "For your first questions, the subject is Shakespeare. The joke is, ‘His tights are too tight,' and your bluff answer is Mercutio."

Q: But they could answer however they chose…
A: Yes, we always encouraged them to do so. We said, "If you think you know the real answer, go ahead and give it. If you get stuck, here's a bluff." We strove more for interesting questions than we did accuracy. We tried to be right, but the show didn't have the pinpoint accuracy that we go for with Jeopardy!

Q: What did you take from that experience that you use today?
A: I learned respect for the audience. The notion of dumbing down anything is foolish. And if something changes, don't whine about the problem, figure out how to address it. One Mother's Day, when I was associate producer on Hollywood Squares, I got a call from our talent executive Mary Marcum. She said, "We've lost two bookings for tonight. Do you know anyone who we can call at one o'clock on a Sunday afternoon?" We went through the list of usual suspects, but nobody was available.

One of our guests was Rich Little, the impressionist. We ended up putting Rich in the center of the top row, and we left the boxes on either side of him empty. Each time one of those squares was called, he would jump over to it, and answer it in a different character. To me that was a defining moment – if you're prepared and you're willing to focus on what needs to be done, you can solve most any problem.

Q: Did you come up with that?
A: I did.

Q: Did you have to give him three checks?
A: No, but I think we sent him a big basket of wine.

Q: What did host Peter Marshall bring to Hollywood Squares?
A: Peter was the perfect traffic cop. He knew when to go, when to stop, when to let it play out, but also when to reel them back in and say, "Come on, we've got to get on with the game." He let the stars be stars. And he has a respect for their place on the show that allowed them to be their best.

Q: When you moved up to producer, what did your job entail?
A: It was almost entirely about the writing and the booking. As Hollywood Squares aged, it was more difficult to book top-tier stars. It became the norm that a celebrity did a game show either on their way up or on their way down, but never at the top. That was unfortunate. At the end of the original run [in 1981], it had just run its course.

Q: When you joined Wheel of Fortune, it had been on for nine years. Was it difficult walking in at that point?
A: For a long, long time Wheel of Fortune had been what could only be described as a mega hit. Pat [Sajak] and Vanna [White] were already on a first-name basis with millions of viewers. But I think the show had become tired; it had become dated. I didn't go in thinking, "Should I be afraid of changing this or that?" I knew – and this is to [creator] Merv Griffin's credit – the fundamental game is solid. It is simple and so playable. You can change the set, the cars, the trips, but don't change the game. Spin the wheel, call the letter, solve the puzzle, buy a vowel.

Q: Did you have any interaction with Merv?
A: Very little. Merv had sold both Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! many years prior. He was still the titular executive producer, although not hands-on. He did not make the creative decisions anymore and was not involved on a day-to-day basis. But he was not in favor of changing producers. So I came in under a cloud in that sense – my hiring was not something that he was in favor of.

Q: Did that make your job harder?
A: It sure did, because there were a fair amount of warnings – not from him.

Q: What are some of the changes you made?
A: We added new elements to the wheel. We have a mystery round now, in which there are two wedges on the wheel that look identical, but underneath one is $10,000, while the other is "bankrupt". So when you land on that, you have to decide whether you want to turn it over and see what's on the other side. That adds a risk-and-reward element. And there's a jackpot round. The jackpot starts at $5,000 and increases by the value of each spin. If you land on the jackpot wedge and can solve the puzzle, you win whatever's in the jackpot. We wanted to make the bonus round more interesting, so we added the bonus wheel.

Q: Have the puzzles changed?
A: A lot. The basic game started out with three categories: person, place or thing, just like [the game] Hangman. We now have something like forty puzzle categories. We've taken puzzles and parsed them into subsets to make it more focused, to make the game move faster, to make the solves come quicker, to make the play-along factor more interesting. In the past, "carving knife" might have been a "thing", but now we would call it "In the Kitchen."

Q: What does host Pat Sajak add to the show?
A: I don't think the show would be the hit that it has been without Pat. He's quick. He's clever. When he's on the stage, he's paying attention to what's going on. Listening is the most important ability. He keeps the game moving. He respects the contestants. He knows when to stop. I've never heard him say anything on the air that's even in questionable taste, let alone bad taste. I just enjoy the hell out of him, as a person and a friend.

Q: And Vanna White?
A: There's a reason America loves Vanna White. I know she's gotten some knocks over the years: "She gets paid so much for doing so little and she doesn't have much to say." Well, she's been America's sweetheart for a long time for a very good reason, and that's because who you see on the air is who she is. She's approachable, she's friendly, she's warm – there's no cynicism in her soul. What you see is pretty much who she is, except that she would rather be in a T-shirt and jeans, with her hair pulled back, than in those gowns, anytime.

Q: What is your philosophy about choosing a contestant?
A: A good contestant really wants to be there, knows how to play the game and has natural enthusiasm. Our contestant coordinators can spot a phony. And if they're not good game players, they're not going to get on the show. Now whether they remain good game players under the lights and in front of the real wheel, that's another story.

Friedman backstage on Hollywood Squares with Jonathan Winter and Joan Rivers

Q: How have emerging technologies influenced the show?
A: When we established our website around 1995, it was more of a novelty than a necessity. Now it's become a very big part of our activities. One of the things I had wanted to do from the beginning was something that mirrored the frequent flyers programs, but it would be a frequent viewer club – the Wheel Watchers Club. You can redeem points for merchandise.

Q: In 2006 you went to high definition with both Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!
A: Steve Mosko, the president of Sony Pictures Television, wanted to use one of the company's familiar brands to show off high-def at a consumer electronics show, so we came up with a truncated Jeopardy! game. We were screening it in the conference room and he said, "This really looks great. How would you like to do Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune in HD next season?"

It really was a major effort. It involved changing everything and had a true domino effect. We got the HD cameras, which shoot wider, and then found that they were shooting off the set. We had to cut back the audience area and reconfigure the set. Our makeup artists had to learn airbrush techniques. It was a sprint to the finish.

Four months and $4 million later, we went on the air in HD. Now it looks so vibrant, so rich – it just jumps off the screen. It's also changed the perception of the shows. Here are two of the oldest shows leading the way. I think that changed the way a lot of the industry looked at us.

Q: How do you see the future of Wheel of Fortune?
A: True interactivity is where we're heading, where people will be able to play along in real time on various devices. The show is a steady evolutionary process. We try not to make changes that are too jarring because it's not necessary. We have to stay true to the game.

Q: How did you come to produce – and later executive produce Jeopardy! concurrently with Wheel of Fortune?
A: I had been producing Wheel for two years, and I guess the company was happy with my work because they said, "Would you like to take on Jeopardy! as well?" I jumped at it in 1997.

Q: What was the state of the show at the time?
A: It, too, had fallen victim to the same sort of malaise that Wheel of Fortune had, maybe even more so. The perception was that Jeopardy! featured a bunch of white, middle aged accountants. I brought in some new writers and kept a lot of the old ones. I brought in Gary Johnson, who I'd worked with at Hollywood Squares. He became head writer, and we began changing the show. We started with the graphics, the categories, the source material – we introduced a lot of video clues, more audio clues. We brought the show to life.

Q: Was it important to maintain a certain level of difficulty?
A: We tried to make the material reflect what we want our audience to be – and what viewers seem to look for. It could no longer be just academic subjects. It had to include pop culture and emerging topics that were being discussed on the internet. We had to find ways to expand the game so that more people would feel comfortable playing and watching it.

Q: How has host Alex Trebek reacted to these changes?
A: In the first two seasons in syndication, Alex produced the show. He had that point of view of knowing the show intimately as the producer, but also as the host. I think there was understandably, a fair amount of skepticism that the changes were going to make the show less challenging, that the caliber of play was not going to be maintained. Again, it was a question of earning his trust and showing him that I wasn't going to mess with the basic game. I was just trying to make it more interesting.

Q: How would you describe his work?
A: When Alex gets out on stage, he is so focused on the game – and it moves like lightening. He is very meticulous in wanting the game to be played right, to be played fair, and to be Jeopardy-esque – operating at a level for which there is no compromise.

We have our meetings before each tape day. The meeting runs about an hour, and he will have read over the games. He will bring up something about a particular clue, and say, "This doesn't sound right to me. I looked it up, and maybe for clarity we should change it to this."Or, "That question seems awfully hard for a $200 question. Maybe it should be $1,000." He doesn't do that a lot – the fact that he does it at all speaks volumes about the care with which he treats the show. He is a ridiculously smart guy.

Q: How important is it to have a studio audience for the tapings?
A: Right after 9/11 we had to continue taping, but for security reasons we had no studio audience. It was terrible. It was so cold and unsatisfying, but it was a necessity for a couple of months. We sweetened the shows, but it's just not the same.

Q: What makes a good Jeopardy! contestant?
A: Clearly, you have to be smart. You also have to be fast, well read. You have to have a tremendous amount of poise and be able to work under pressure. We see a lot of smart people who, unfortunately, melt under the pressure of the competition.

Q: Is there a secret to buzzing in?
A: There's a certain rhythm, a cadence that people eventually pick up if they're any good. Sometimes they never get it. We've seen people with high test scores who never quite get the button down.

Q: Why was the five-show limit repealed?
A: It had been talked about for several years. We approached it with, "What's the worst that could happen? Could someone stay on for ten shows, fifteen shows… twenty shows? Nah. You know how difficult it is to get to five – that'll never happen." Well it did.

The Ken Jennings experience was a bit of a roller coaster. On the one hand, it was exciting. On the other hand, people were wondering when it was going to end. We knew we just had to let it play out. Eventually it came to an end, and it attracted an audience that I don't think we could've gotten any other way.

Q: Why do Wheel and Jeopardy! make such a good pairing?
A: They're compatible, yet different. Wheel of Fortune is a game show. While Jeopardy! is a quiz show. And while you may be able to enjoy both, people generally say they enjoy one more than the other. Wheel is more accessible – the puzzles are simple enough that almost anyone can figure them out. You can walk into the room and if there's a partially solved puzzle on the screen, you're going to try and solve it. And the pace of the shows is very different – Jeopardy! moves like the wind.

But in the hour block that most of our stations carry, there is something for everybody. I think the common trait of both shows is, they're family-friendly. They're a wonderful buffer between the work day or the school day and the evening.

Q: Both shows have been licensed internationally. Are they the same abroad as what we see in the U.S.?
A: We provide a production bible for our licensed productions, and we ask them to follow the show as closely as possible. Naturally, there are local variations and cultural differences. For a long time, a version of Wheel of Fortune in Turkey was part of a variety show. There would be dancing girls, camels and acrobats, and then they'd say, "Let's stop now and play a puzzle." A curtain would go up, and people would spin the wheel. We do make allowances for that.

Q: What is your proudest professional achievement?
A: Probably it's feeling that I'm at least partially responsible for keeping the shows as popular as they are, and for being true to the qualities that got them there in the first place.

Q: What advice would you give to an aspiring producer?
A: Be prepared, listen to people and listen to your staff. Do your homework. Find out what's going on in the world. While it's a good thing to know what's going on in your own industry, have a broader view of the world. Don't just stick to your own business, because today everything affects our business.

If you think that the fallout from the subprime mortgage problem is not going to affect television, you're wrong. It might mean people will have less disposable income to buy HDTVs. It might mean you've got contestants who have a different reason for wanting to win money. Everything affects what we do.

Article courtesy of emmy® magazine