It’s been an interesting week in J!Land—here are my thoughts on some happenings:
What Will Likely Happen Now That The WGA Strike Is Ending
The major news in Jeopardy!-land this week is that the WGA strike is ending. So, what’s going to be happening with the show? Firstly, episodes through to Wednesday, November 8 have already been recorded. Over the next five and a half weeks, we’ll see boards similar to those we saw this past week, somewhere between 25 to 50% repeated clues. However, I would be surprised to see nearly as many repeated clues from November 9 onwards. As a member of the Jeopardy! team said to Questionist in early September, “as fast as feasible, we’d try to nudge the repurposed material out in favor of new material“. That process begins Monday— show writer Mark Gaberman has posted on social media that he returns to work then. I also believe that the show has committed to finishing this Champions Wildcard, which means that the originally intended “Season 39 postseason” (though, technically, Season 40) will begin around December 19. I should also note that the Jeopardy! website itself has referred to this as “the first Jeopardy! Second Chance competition of the season“.
This Isn’t Your Parents’ Jeopardy Any More
Yes, this means there will be significantly more tournament play in 2023–24 and significantly less regular play. This is by design, and we will see more of this in the future.
Jeopardy! has a major long-term issue that critics refuse to acknowledge: linear broadcast television and cable are dying slowly in North America; more households are “cutting the cord” yearly. (I don’t think I would be incorrect if I said the National Football League was a tourniquet preventing the four major US networks from immediately bleeding to death.) Thus, in my opinion, doing nothing to increase the number of people thinking about and talking about Jeopardy! (that being 85% regular play and the occasional tournament) is going to see the show not have a viable broadcast outlet by the end of the decade. (If you actually believe that any streaming service will pay for the production costs of a 230-episode season, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.) Thus, to keep the show viable in the long term, Jeopardy! has decided that it is more important to focus on “bankable” personalities (personalities like James Holzhauer, Amy Schneider, Mattea Roach, Matt Amodio, etc.) with potential future stars entering the pipeline at a slower rate. Michael Davies is doing his best to ensure that Jeopardy! can still exist in 2030, even if it comes at the expense of changes in 2022 and 2023 that might bother a few die-hards now.
The Jeopardy! of the future is going to be “more tournaments” and much less “regular play” than we’re used to—because streaming services will be much more willing to commission a self-contained tournament of 13 episodes featuring players that America already knows than they would 200 episodes of “new” contestants.
My friends over at Geeks Who Drink have introduced a daily trivia game—Thrice! Existing to make daily clever trivia content accessible to a wide audience, it's a daily challenge that tries to get you to the answer via three separate clues. It has a shareable score functionality to challenge your friends and new questions every day will give you a new daily social ritual. You can find it at thricegame.com.
Are you going on the show and looking for information about how to bet in Final Jeopardy? Check out my Betting Strategy 101 page. If you want to learn how to bet in two-day finals, check out Betting Strategy 102. In case the show uses a tournament with wild cards in the future, there is also a strategy page for betting in tournament quarterfinals.
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That Wasn’t An Angus Cattle…?
On Friday, there was a minor controversy surrounding one of the video clues, where numerous fans claimed that the show displayed a picture of Scottish highland cattle instead of Angus cattle. So, what happened?
In my experience covering the show, Jeopardy!‘s mistakes usually happen because the show’s sources are incorrect—this was exactly the case here. This photo came from DepositPhotos and was captioned “The herd of aberdeen angus [sic] eating grass on spring meadow — photo by CaptureLight.” CaptureLight happens to be Czech photographer Radomir Rezny; thus, it appears this mistake was made because Rezny, likely not knowing the difference, mistakenly captioned a photograph of Scottish highland cattle as Angus cattle. Rezny was contacted for a statement but failed to reply to The Jeopardy! Fan before publication.
This is a worrying problem with the show that has come up multiple times over the past few years—for whatever reason, there seems to be less of a “sanity check” regarding the show’s material. This isn’t the first time the show has relied on poor sourcing and has ended up looking less credible as a result; it is clear that DepositPhotos should not be trusted as a source in the future and that a stock photo supplier that checks its captions should be relied on instead.
Because I Know At Least Some Of You Are Wondering Why I’m Not Talking About Champions Wildcard In This Column
Since the Questionist team has provided me with research assistance over the last few days, there will be specific thoughts on this in tomorrow’s column in Questionist.
In Closing
Enjoy the first week of Champions Wildcard next week!
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Well, the obvious reason why there wouldn’t be any Champions Wildcard discussion here is, aren’t you going to bring out a preview tomorrow? That being so, I look forward to that column tomorrow and what the GWD staff were able to come up with, given our conversations over the last several days.
I do stand on my remark made elsewhere as to the tone of the second segment, and how you chose to frame this editorial on other platforms. That being so, I appreciate the editorial. You are really making the best possible argument for Davies’ long-term vision for Jeopardy!. And the force of that argument is enhanced by the fact that it’s openly and explicitly capitalist; let nobody ever think Andy Saunders is any sort of ardent free marketeer. It is better than many others on the opposite side — including points that I’ve put forward, as well as retorts I’ve considered and discarded. Looking back over some comments from a few weeks ago, one from Robert K S hits the mark well: “Although I’m not sure I’m sold on the ‘super long postseason’ concept as it was described even before the strike, I find the [comparison of Davies’ stewardship of Jeopardy! to Elon Musk’s of Twitter] an overstatement that does a disservice to the genuine love Davies has for the show and its history and the visible efforts being made by the producers to keep the show going under trying circumstances.”
Among those arguments is one that Davies is setting Jeopardy! on a course similar to the ABC version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over two decades ago. I find that wanting, if for no other reason than I’m not sure whether he or the network bears primary responsibility for that overexposure and downfall. I also don’t buy the claims that Davies simply doesn’t get the tradition or ethos of the show, and is looking to do nothing more than put his personal stamp on it, in a way that Harry Friedman never did, at least to them. But you set out well why this isn’t “mutare causa mutationis.” (Change for the sake of change, or at least how Google Translate renders it.)
There seems to be a feeling across much of the community — and I confess, I share it to an extent — that what Davies is bringing in is trying to cross a bridge too far, too fast, and that it contrasts to the “small-c conservative” stewardship of Friedman. (Think the “big, structural change” championed by Elizabeth Warren, vice the “incrementalism” associated with Joe Biden.) But does that hold up under scrutiny? Davies is early in his third season at the helm, including the time with the interim tag. Within three years of taking over the reins on his own following Merv Griffin’s retirement, Friedman had: doubled the dollar values; executed the first reunion tournament in nine years, and the first ever with a seven-figure top prize; and probably most significantly, lifted the five-game win cap, paving the way for Ken Jennings (and as you’ve argued before, quite possibly saving the program entirely). In retrospect, those changes have become part and parcel of the program. But for their time, could they not possibly be classified as “big, structural change”? I wasn’t closely watching the show in the early 2000s, so I have no recollection upon which to draw.
My final note is, as I mentioned elsewhere, an apparent contrast with the way you closed the post-mortem on Mike Richards. The vibe and tenor of the second segment is very much “this cash cow won’t milk itself.” Here’s what you said two years ago, and I include the full sentence:
What I’d remind you was that Davies had not been on board during those years and decades, and Steve Mosko left Sony in 2016. You do thus seem to admit with respect to the quoted sentence — and only that sentence, not any other part of that editorial — you got it wrong. How respond you?
Do you think other shows like Wheel of Fortune, The Price is Right, and Family feud need to change how they go about broadcasting shows as well? All three of those shows seem to be comfortable with the business as usual format and not changing anything.
No, because those shows don’t have the same continuity issues (returning champions, shows needing to air in a specific order) that Jeopardy does. You can very easily produce a smaller number of Wheel/Price/Feud under an identical paradigm. You can’t easily produce a smaller number of regular Jeopardy episodes.
Family Feud would have to alter things slightly as they have champs that can return return up to 5 days and win a car and retire after 5 shows. I guess jeopardy going back to the 5 day champ limit wouldn’t solve anything either.
I would bet that a very large part of the viewing audience is mostly interested in hearing (and guessing) the answers and either don’t care at all which family wins or just chooses each day between whichever two families it happens to be, whether new or returning. [Probably beginning to root for one or the other (as the game advances) based on things like how funny some of them are or how clueless they seem to be or how close their guesses where to their own.] So I really don’t think it would affect viewership all that much if they dropped the ability to come back after winning so they can show in any order.
my September stats:
12/15 on FJ! missed on the 13th, 25th, and 29th.
36/45 on DDs, which feels good to me… I’ll have to compare to the rest of the season.
Missed DD1 twice (18,28), DD2 three times (22,27,29), and DD3 four times (13,19,20,25).
Got the quadfecta (FJ! + all three DDs) six times.
I imagine some might think “Who cares?” but I do. I find such info about other fans interesting even though I do not keep up with my own stats.
Lisa:
I appreciate that you’ve mentioned this.