December 1, 2004
JEOPARDY! JEOPARDIZES TRUE AUTHENTICITY
You'll hear a lot this week about how the longest winning streak in television game show history came to an end last night when Ken Jennings lost on JEOPARDY!†After appearing on 75 shows, and winning over $2,500,000.00, Jennings finally met his match in a former actress turned real estate agent from California. A mind-boggling accomplishment for sure, but there's something unauthentic about JEOPARDY's portrayal of the whole thing, and it has been rubbing me the wrong way for some time now. (Mind you, this isn't that big of a deal, but since this is a space to share my thoughts, I'm choosing to rant about this one today.)
Yes, Jennings won a ton of cash--more than anyone else in TV game show history--and he is absolutely brilliant (his IQ is reported to be 168, while Einstein's measured 160), but to be clear, the streak didn't really come to an end last night. You see, the producers film a week's worth of episodes in just one day. Seventy-five episodes since June divided by five episodes filmed a day... that comes out to around 15 days of filming, total... not the five months of filming we're lead to believe because of the syndication schedule of the show. Again, this isn't really that big of a deal, but I did feel that it was worth mentioning... the fact is, Ken Jennings exit came during a show taped in early-September... early-September, not last night. Early-September was like two full friggin months before the presidential election!
And, if you think we've been hearing a lot about Jennings over the last few months, just you wait... we're about to be saturated with coverage of Mr. Jennings. A forthcoming episode of A&E's Biography spotlights Jennings and other JEOPARDY! champions, and Jennings is already scheduled to appear again on Letterman, and on Good Morning America, Jay Leno, Oprah, The CBS Early Show, and Live with Regis and Kelly, just to name a few venues.†He has also been selected by Barbara Walters for inclusion in her year-end special as one of the Ten Most Fascinating People of 2004, has a book deal in the works with Random House, and will surely be invited back for tournament of champions episodes of the show.
The bottom line here is that everyone in TV land knew long ago that Ken Jennings lost on show number 75. Everyone who needed to be in the know was forced to sign a confidentiality agreement about Jennings' impending loss, all in the quest for Sony Pictures Television to drag this thing out for as long as possible. And, it seems to have worked. During the period Jennings appeared on JEOPARDY!, ratings for the show were up twenty-two percent (+22%) over the same period the preceding year; and for several weeks of the winnings streak, JEOPARDY! ranked as television's highest-rated syndicated program. All of this of course translates into television networks being able to raise their advertising rates for the slot in which JEOPARDY! appears, which in turn generates more revenue, which in turn increases shareholder value in all the publicly held companies involved in the process. Again, not really that big of a deal but certainly worth mentioning.
Posted by Mikal at December 1, 2004 6:35 AM
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