The writing is so locked in a box. You throw so many words on the board it becomes something that no human being would say. In the main game, you're never going to see a Proper Name category where the answer is something simple like "JOHNNY DEPP". Instead you're going to get "OSCAR-NOMINATED COCAINE ADDICT JOHNNY DEPP".
The writing is dull partially because, well, a lot of the the production decisions are dull. There are a lot of small nips and tucks that could be done that have already been suggested (no variety on the wheel, Prize Puzzles suck, prizes on offer are stale and predictable, etc.)
But I do wonder if the writing is dull because the format is so rigid. When you have to have the puzzle gradually fill in, and you know that a bunch of wrong answers in a row makes for bad TV, you kind of have to engineer insanely long puzzles with lots of consonants so even blind guessers aren't likely to screw up. Every version of Wheel we've seen has been Spin/Guess consonant/Spin/Guess Consonant/Buy Vowel/Repeat as needed/Solve, repeated 3x per episode, highest score at the end wins. What if they stepped away from that rigid format?
I dunno. I'm no producer, and Michael Davies is not likely to do any of this, I'm just brainstorming. What if the puzzles were shorter and punchier, so you could get more of them in per episode? What if you played to first-to-three-puzzles? What if you had games and rounds that cycled in per episode a la a lottery show or Price is Right?
What about a Fame-Game style round where a blank puzzle is revealed and everybody gets one spin, one letter, and a clue is revealed every few spins of the wheel?
A round where every time you spin, the space you land on is replaced by an arrow pointing to the next space, so the amounts on the wheel are constantly shrinking? (Or on an LED wheel, certain spaces keep expanding after every spin?)
What about a round where each space has a player color in addition to dollar amounts on the wheel, and the wheel is spun to determine who gets one turn to guess a letter? If you have a fancy LED wheel, maybe players can "buy" spaces instead of vowels to increase the odds of their turn coming up?
Whatever the faults of the show might be, the brand of WoF, or even the idea of Wheel of Fortune--like, the wheel, the puzzleboard, contestants at goofy podiums, "buy a vowel", etc--is still very, very strong and recognizable. As long as it features contestants guessing letters and slowly filling in a puzzle and spinning a Wheel of Fortune, you might be able to step away from the format that's worked in the past and try to play it in a different way that emphasizes WoF's strengths and unique elements.
I admit it, I'm one of the few who actually liked what Jay Wolpert did with the shuffle format for Millionaire, so take my opinions with a grain of salt
