“I would like to buy a vowel! An ‘E’ please!”

“Why, there are five ‘E’s! Would you like to solve the puzzle?”

Those very sentences will be said Wednesday and Thursday in Omaha at the Westin Aquila Court Hotel when America’s most popular game show comes to the Heartland.

“Wheel of Fortune” producer Harry Friedman is coming home in search of future contestants. The auditions are closed, which means that all participants are pre-selected to participate. Out of over 1,000 entries, 120 lucky people who sent postcards to Omaha’s KETV were picked at random to audition.

KETV is hosting the staff and producer who will audition local contestants. On Wednesday, 60 pre-selected, average citizens will be spinning the wheel for that big chance to get to Hollywood or one of the exciting remote locations.

Thursday, 60 pre-selected college students will be buying vowels and spinning the big wheel for a chance to be a part of a college show. “We hope to find a lot of enthusiastic kids that represent the Midwest,” said Suzy Rosenberg, director of promotions for “Wheel of Fortune.”

Pre-selected contestants will be judged on enthusiasm, knowledge of the game and game-playing abilities. Each contestant will receive five minutes to complete 16 puzzles on paper.

The staff will then narrow the field down to about 20 contestants. Those 20 will go by threes, just like the show, and spin the big wheel (complete with music).

Friedman is an Emmy Award-winning producer who has taken “Wheel of Fortune” into its 13th season of syndication. He has the responsibility of guiding what TV Guide has described as “unquestionably the most popular television game show on earth.”

Friedman, an Omaha native, literally grew up in the television business. His father, the owner of a furniture/appliance store, was one of the first retail TV dealers in Omaha. Friedman developed an early fascination with what he saw on those “magic boxes,” including a young local personality named Johnny Carson. Friedman began hanging out at Omaha’s first TV station and learning the tricks of the trade by “watching and doing.””

He attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln and worked as a reporter/feature writer for the Lincoln Star. He also worked various other jobs in real estate, public relations and advertising.

“What I wasn’t doing,” Friedman recalled in a press release, “was working in television. And I knew there was only one place that was going to happen: California.” So westward bound he went in pursuit of his dreams of working in the industry.

In 1971, he arrived in Los Angeles. Friedman had no industry contacts. He gave himself six months to find a job in television. Less than 24 hours before Friedman’s deadline, he landed a job as a part-time question writer on “Hollywood Squares.”

In 1975, Friedman was invited by NBC to watch some of the first tapings of a new game show created by Merv Griffin — “Wheel of Fortune.”

“We were all struck by the pure simplicity involved, as well as the game’s ability to get viewers to play along instantly,” he said. “But none of us could have guessed that it would remain the world’s No. 1 game show 20 years later — and it’s still going strong!”

Good luck goes out to those 120 pre-selected participants. The words, “I would like an ‘L,’ ‘M,’ ‘N,’ ‘S,’ ‘T’ and the vowel ‘A’ could be heard in the future by a lucky Omaha participant.

— Watch next week’s Daily for a staff writer’s personal play-by-play account of trying out for a spot on “Wheel of Fortune.”