Pat Sajak - Career

Career

Sajak won a contest on WLS radio's Dick Biondi Show to be a guest teen deejay. While at Columbia College Chicago, his broadcasting instructor Al Parker told him that a local radio station (WEDC) was looking for a newsman. Sajak applied for the job and was hired to work from midnight to 6:00 AM. In 1968, Sajak joined the U.S. Army, and was sent to Vietnam, where he served as a disk jockey on Armed Forces Radio. On The Military Channel's program, An Officer and a Movie, Sajak admitted to botching President Nixon's 1969 Christmas broadcast to the troops; he accidentally cut the feed off prematurely. Upon realizing the error, he decided it would be best not to resume the feed. In the early 1970s, Sajak began DJ'ing at 50,000-watt WSM in Nashville; at the time WSM was playing pop music during the day, and he was the 3:00–5:00pm afternoon personality. The radio station's television sister, WSM-TV (now WSMV), brought Sajak on screen, first as a voiceover artist doing station identifications and anchoring the five-minute newscasts during NBC's Today Show, then as a weekend and substitute weatherman, where he became acquainted with anchor Dan Miller. In 1977, KNBC-TV in Los Angeles was looking for a weatherman, and spotted Sajak working in Nashville. Sajak accepted KNBC's request for him to be a full-time weatherman for the station.

In 1981, Merv Griffin asked Sajak if he would be interested in taking over the duties as host on Wheel of Fortune from Chuck Woolery. However, Fred Silverman, then president and CEO of NBC, rejected his hiring, claiming he was too local, and Griffin responded by imposing a moratorium on new tapings until Sajak was hired. The issue became moot when Silverman was dismissed due to repeated programming failures and replaced by Brandon Tartikoff. Sajak, who had already hosted a few game show pilots, accepted the position. He hosted both the daytime (NBC) and syndicated evening versions of Wheel from 1983 to 1989, and continues to host the latter version.

Sajak had a small role as a Buffalo, New York newscaster in the 1982 comedy film Airplane II: The Sequel. When his late-night talk show on CBS premiered in January 1989, he left the daytime version of Wheel, and was replaced by former San Diego Chargers place-kicker Rolf Benirschke. Sajak appeared on Super Password several times from 1984–1989, as well as Password Plus in 1981, shortly before taking on hosting duties on Wheel. Other game shows on which Sajak guested were Dream House and Just Men!.

Sajak hosted a late-night talk show on CBS from January 9, 1989 – April 13, 1990. Dan Miller, Sajak's old friend and former anchor at WSM-TV in Nashville, joined Sajak as his sidekick. He later became a frequent guest host for CNN's Larry King Live, effective when King himself was unable to attend. Sajak also became a regular substitute host for Regis Philbin on the syndicated Live with Regis and Kelly. Sajak also hosted a program, Pat Sajak Weekend, on the Fox News Channel in 2003. More recently, he began hosting The Pat Sajak Baseball Hour, a syndicated radio sports talk show.

Sajak is an External Director of conservative publishing house Eagle Publishing and is on the Board of Trustees at Hillsdale College in southern Michigan, currently as vice chairman. He has written for Human Events and served on the Board of Directors for the Claremont Institute.

In 1983, Sajak appeared as Kevin Hathaway in the NBC daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives.

In 1993, Sajak appeared as himself on the popular children's cartoon show Rugrats.

In 1997, Sajak pulled an April Fool's Day prank on fans when he and Vanna White were contestants on an edition of Wheel hosted by Alex Trebek. Both the winnings of Sajak and White were donated to charity (in this case, the American Cancer Society and the Boy Scouts of America). In return, Sajak hosted a regular episode of Jeopardy! in place of Trebek. He would also appear at the beginning of a 2010 April Fool's episode, along with Jeff Probst and Neil Patrick Harris.

In mid-November 2009, Sajak started as the national spokesperson for BigCityDeals.com, which is now Voomerang.com.

Sajak began writing for the National Review Online in 2010. In his first post, he questioned whether public employees should be allowed to vote on issues that would benefit them directly. He has also contributed to the center-right socio-political / social networking website, Ricochet.com.

Sajak is also the author of several puzzle games, the first and best-known of them being "Lucky Letters," which debuted in 2007. The games are syndicated through Universal Uclick.