No stopping for “Wheel of Fortune”. The program will continue apace throughout the summer, as it has done for a year now. In fact, it didn’t end up in the pits at Christmas or even during the Sanremo Festival, with the only breaks involving some Italian Cup matches that the flagship couldn’t relegate to Italia 1.

Like a Formula 1 single-seater that has been running non-stop and without refueling in the pits for three hundred and sixty-five days, “The Wheel” risks melting its engine. An eventuality which, however, is of no interest to Mediaset, which is more interested in monetizing the present rather than planning the future.

The reasoning implemented by the leaders of Cologno Monzese is clear, even logical, and it is Gerry Scotti himself who makes it clear: “It would have made little sense to me to return the favor to our competitors this year, stopping us at the moment in which they could have started to catch up”, the host declared to ‘Chi’.

The reference is to what happened in July 2025, when with the summer schedules launched and with “Paperissima Sprint” already on the air for a few weeks, Pier Silvio Berlusconi suddenly announced the decision to test “La Ruota” in access. In doing so, “Techetechetè”, which regularly surpassed Antonio Ricci’s show, found itself competing with the game show, which had an easy life, imposing itself right from the start with a share of over 24% and a gap from its competitor of at least 7-8 points.

The ‘Techetechetè syndrome’

An episode that marked Rai, which this year will send the display cases to the attic and will propose a daily strip of “L’Eredità” after Tg1, which has abandoned the early evening program to “Reazione a catena”. Stopping, as Scotti suggests, would have meant offering the opponents a free field and allowing them to benefit from the same advantage they enjoyed twelve months ago.

However, there is a big difference between letting a product rest and not counterprogramming. Mediaset could have easily followed both paths, perhaps with a temporary handover with “The Wall”, which Max Giusti has been testing for some time.

What better time than the summer to dive into experiments? Just as a year ago “La Ruota” turned out to be an unexpected goose that laid golden eggs, something similar could have happened this time too.

Channel 5 without courage

But no. Canale 5, which by canceling “Striscia la Notizia” after thirty-eight years demonstrated unexpected courage, unfortunately returns to showing immobility and an inability to dare in the absurd belief that “La Ruota” is eternal and can never face a saturation problem.

Instead of keeping doses of bottled water, Mediaset has chosen to drink everything immediately. There is no perspective, there is no vision. Only the ‘here and now’ matters. Then tomorrow we’ll think about it again.