Here’s today’s Final Jeopardy (in the category Business & Innovation) for Tuesday, December 31, 2019 (Season 36, Episode 82):
Stuck with 260 tons of unused turkey in late 1953, this co. ordered aluminum trays & sold 10 million units of a new item in 1954
(correct response beneath the contestants)
Today’s contestants:
Bill Coulter, a bartender from San Francisco, California
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Susan Stoltzfus, a senior marketing manager from Seattle, Washington
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Karen Farrell, a political consultant from Woodbridge, Virginia (3-day total: $57,601)
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(Content continues below)
Correct response: What is Swanson?
More information about Final Jeopardy:
In the early 1950s, Nebraska-based C. A. Swanson & Sons had national brand recognition as a producer of canned and frozen turkey. According to a 1996 story in the Omaha World-Herald, former Swanson executive Gerry Thomas claimed that the company had a large surplus of turkey after the 1953 holiday season. The company, already well-known for frozen pot pies, packaged turkey, cornbread dressing, frozen peas, and sweet potatoes on an aluminum tray, calling them TV Brand Frozen Dinners. TV dinners played into the public’s new love for television and the company was able to leverage its national brand recognition to sell ten million TV Dinners in 1954. The original TV dinners were oven-heated as the microwave oven would not be in widespread use until much later. Desserts were added in 1960, breakfast in 1969, and Swanson introduced its “Hungry-Man” brand, with pitchman “Mean” Joe Greene, in 1973.
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Looking to find out who won Jeopardy! today? Tonight’s results are below!
Scores going into Final:
Karen $18,400
Susan $7,000
Bill $100
Tonight’s results:
Bill $100 + $0 = $100 (What are TV dinners? Swanson
Susan $7,000 + $6,799 = $13,799 (What is Swanson’s?)
Karen $18,400 – $1,600 = $16,800 (4-day total: $74,401) (What is Butterball?)
Scores after the Jeopardy! Round:
Bill $6,400
Karen $3,600
Susan $3,400
Opening break taken after: 15 clues
Daily Double locations:
1) COLLEGE ENDOWMENTS $600 (20th pick)
Bill 2200 +2200 (Susan 3400 Karen 3000)
2) PSEUDONYMOUS WRITERS $2000 (11th pick)
Karen 8800 -2000 (Susan 5400 Bill 5200)
3) HIS-TORY $800 (27th pick) ($1200 remaining on the board)
Bill 6000 -5900 (Karen 18000 Susan 7000)
Overall Daily Double Efficiency for this game: -21
Unplayed clues:
J! round: None!
DJ! Round: PSEUDONYMOUS WRITERS $400; DON’T DROP THE BALL $400
Total $ Left On Board: $800
Number of clues left unrevealed this season: 135 (1.65 per episode average), 1 Daily Double
Game Stats:
Karen $20,400 Coryat, 20 correct, 1 incorrect, 34.55% in first on buzzer, 1/1 on rebound attempts (on 6 rebound opportunities)
Susan $7,000 Coryat, 8 correct, 1 incorrect, 16.36% in first on buzzer, 0/0 on rebound attempts (on 5 rebound opportunities)
Bill $4,400 Coryat, 14 correct, 6 incorrect, 32.73% in first on buzzer, 0/0 on rebound attempts (on 1 rebound opportunity)
Combined Coryat Score: $31,800
Lach Trash: $14,600 (on 14 Triple Stumpers)
Coryat lost to incorrect responses (less double-correct responses): $6,800
Karen Farrell, stats to date:
92 correct, 12 incorrect
8/11 on rebound attempts (on 25 rebound opportunities)
38.25% in first on buzzer (83/217)
3/6 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: -$2,500)
3/4 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $18,050
Karen Farrell, to win:
5 games: 55.976%
6: 31.333%
7: 17.539%
8: 9.817%
9: 5.495%
Avg. streak: 5.271 games.
Andy’s Thoughts:
- During calendar year 2019, Jeopardy! gave away $9,426,741 in prize money.
- A reminder to everyone that Jeopardy!’s rules are such that leading articles may be omitted or changed to a different article without penalty; thus “The Seven Nation Army”, “a Seven Nation Army”, and “Seven Nation Army” are all considered equivalently correct by the judges.
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An easy final to close out the year! Happy New Year!
As someone who got Stouffer’s and Swanson’s mixed up when putting this post together, I’m going to disagree with you here.
You’re probably too young to know that Stouffers frozen dinners didn’t exist in 1953.
I honestly didn’t know that Stouffer’s didn’t exist in 1953. I just knew that Swanson created the first TV dinner which was Thanksgiving food.
Yes, it’s probably easy for those of us who remember eating Swanson frozen TV Dinners in the 50s and 60s but otherwise not so!
I’m 17, so I obviously never ate Swanson TV dinners but, I just know that they made the first one. I suppose I just know a lot of random facts.
Karen may or may not make the next TOC, but hoping she does if she loses or better insures it with another win. Her first two wins were rather average, but her last two runaways with Coryats > $20k.
I had a feeling that, given her youth, Karen would not know Swanson.
With her skill on the button and her cautious betting, I am daring to hope she makes it to $100K.
I thought the same thing. Bill and Susan appear to be in about the same age demographic as me, and remember putting those foil dinners in a conventional oven. I think Swanson was, by far, the biggest player in the market back then. Karen appears to be younger, and if she has eaten TV dinners at all they were made for the microwave.
The year ends with the best FJ ever, said the person with the same last name.
LOL!!! Happy New Year Mr. or Ms. Swanson, hope you’re related!
Thank you! When introduced to people, I like to say I’m the frozen-food heiress. I’m typically met with a blank look.
Well, being 80+, I’d like to think I would know you, Ms. Swanson!
I remember best the Banquet turkey dinners that did go in the microwave oven and were cheaper than Swanson dinners. I grew up having no fast food at all, as my mother, who wanted to be a doctor, especially liked Adelle Davis’ “Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit.” Her chapter on Vitamin C is still relevant today, as large doses fight both viruses and bacteria, whereas the antibiotics do not help fight viruses and the bacteria adapt and resist the antibiotics that are supposed to kill them but instead kill off the good gut bscteria. It’s really a mess healthwise.
14 Triple Stumpers?? Is that some kind of record?
No; it is far from the record (I believe the known highest total is 23).
What about Birds Eye? I guessed Birds Eye and was sure I nailed it. Forgot about Swanson, even though I’ve slopped down hundreds of those things…
my answer was Birdseye, they were in front of freezing vegetables, figured they branched into poultry for the surplus