This ‘Wheel’ just keeps on spinning

NEW YORK —  Invented millenniums ago, the wheel has been adapted and refined ever since.

But its steady evolution reached a major turning point with “Wheel of Fortune,” the game show that’s on a seemingly endless roll.

TV’s top-rated syndicated series, “Wheel” is marking its 4,000th show next week with a special half-hour of highlights from two decades on the air.

This retrospective is part of three weeks of “Wheel” staged from New York’s Radio City Music Hall -- quite a grand site for a ritual that’s almost ridiculously simple. (Three contestants take turns spinning a numbered wheel, then compete to guess the letters that will spell out a word or phrase.)

What, then, accounts for “Wheel’s” unmatched popularity? Pat Sajak is at a loss to explain.

“There is no reason we should be sitting here,” the show’s host said backstage between tapings during “Wheel’s” New York visit in September. “Just to be on the air this long is amazing.”

The amazing “Wheel” has been on the air since 1975, when it premiered in a daytime version on NBC.

It was dreamed up by entertainer and “Jeopardy!” creator Merv Griffin, who merged the word game Hangman he had played as a child with the wheel of chance often found at casinos and church bazaars.

Veteran quizmaster Chuck Woolery was the inaugural host. Then in 1981, Sajak, a weatherman on a local Los Angeles station, took it over as his first and still only game-show gig. A year later, Vanna White replaced the show’s original “co-host” (or, more descriptively, “letter turner”), a future broadcasting footnote named Susan Stafford.

In fall 1983, “Wheel” began its syndicated weeknight edition, for which, a dozen years after the daytime version ended, there is no end in sight.

“It’s the kind of family thing that people don’t do enough of,” said White, trying to explain her show’s apparently boundless appeal. “Even babies like to watch the wheel go around.”

A silly way to make a living?

“Let people laugh,” said White, now 46, as she ignited her dazzling smile. “I’m laughing with ‘em!”