J! in the Media

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brick
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by brick »

triviawayne wrote: Tue Apr 19, 2022 10:16 am
MarkBarrett wrote: Tue Apr 19, 2022 10:05 am Ken made the cover of TV Guide (Apr. 25 - May 8) and is featured on two pages inside:
Spoiler
Image
Image
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Ken keeps getting better, Mayim keeps getting worse
I agree. I would change that headline. It's not about what Ken deserves. It's about what the viewers deserve!
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Re: J! in the Media

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Suppose they never lift the five game limit. Then we never have Ken’s 73 game streak and the UTOC. Some sort of reunion tournament might still have happened but it wouldn’t have been that huge and Brad Rutter doesn’t become the Jeopardy god that he is. Even if James still goes on a five game rampage he isn’t seen as the mega champ he is but just another guy who won a bunch of money in a week.

So then there is never a GOAT tournament. Again, they probably still have super-TOCs every now and then but the general public doesn’t really care.

So would be the host now? Ken is just another random undefeated champ and not known otherwise.
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Re: J! in the Media

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Bamaman wrote: Tue Apr 19, 2022 12:28 pm Suppose they never lift the five game limit. Then we never have Ken’s 73 game streak and the UTOC. Some sort of reunion tournament might still have happened but it wouldn’t have been that huge and Brad Rutter doesn’t become the Jeopardy god that he is. Even if James still goes on a five game rampage he isn’t seen as the mega champ he is but just another guy who won a bunch of money in a week.

So then there is never a GOAT tournament. Again, they probably still have super-TOCs every now and then but the general public doesn’t really care.

So would be the host now? Ken is just another random undefeated champ and not known otherwise.
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by Xu Donym »

Bamaman wrote: Tue Apr 19, 2022 12:28 pm Suppose they never lift the five game limit. Then we never have Ken’s 73 game streak and the UTOC. Some sort of reunion tournament might still have happened but it wouldn’t have been that huge and Brad Rutter doesn’t become the Jeopardy god that he is. Even if James still goes on a five game rampage he isn’t seen as the mega champ he is but just another guy who won a bunch of money in a week.

So then there is never a GOAT tournament. Again, they probably still have super-TOCs every now and then but the general public doesn’t really care.

So would be the host now? Ken is just another random undefeated champ and not known otherwise.
Let's take that in a different direction. Of all the hypothetical just-five-day champs, Ken is one of the handful with a serious pedigree in other quiz environments, and who might still have stood out as the one worth hiring as a Consulting Producer because he both knows the game so well and has that odd mixture of nerdery and extroversion that lets him communicate well his thoughts and ideas, and who can serve as a kind of bridge between show-making and show-playing priorities.

From there, the leap from Consulting Producer to "oh crap, our EP is a misogynistic office-politician who just got shanked as host; who can step in?" is quite plausible.
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by Golf »

Xu Donym wrote: Tue Apr 19, 2022 1:22 pm
Bamaman wrote: Tue Apr 19, 2022 12:28 pm Suppose they never lift the five game limit. Then we never have Ken’s 73 game streak and the UTOC. Some sort of reunion tournament might still have happened but it wouldn’t have been that huge and Brad Rutter doesn’t become the Jeopardy god that he is. Even if James still goes on a five game rampage he isn’t seen as the mega champ he is but just another guy who won a bunch of money in a week.

So then there is never a GOAT tournament. Again, they probably still have super-TOCs every now and then but the general public doesn’t really care.

So would be the host now? Ken is just another random undefeated champ and not known otherwise.
Let's take that in a different direction. Of all the hypothetical just-five-day champs, Ken is one of the handful with a serious pedigree in other quiz environments, and who might still have stood out as the one worth hiring as a Consulting Producer because he both knows the game so well and has that odd mixture of nerdery and extroversion that lets him communicate well his thoughts and ideas, and who can serve as a kind of bridge between show-making and show-playing priorities.

From there, the leap from Consulting Producer to "oh crap, our EP is a misogynistic office-politician who just got shanked as host; who can step in?" is quite plausible.
But Ken only got those other opportunities because he was a 74-time Jeopardy champ. He gets no such privilege as a 5-time champ even with a ToC win.

There are a lot of great trivia minds out there on par with Ken, it's getting that foot in the door that's the hard part.
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Re: J! in the Media

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triviawayne wrote: Tue Apr 19, 2022 10:16 am Ken keeps getting better, Mayim keeps getting worse
Let's be kind. In the whole vast universe of potential game show hosts, Mayim is one of the better ones by far. Go back and watch Alex Trebek's first season of Jeopardy! and you might find yourself becoming far more charitable toward Mayim.

Happily, though, while Ken would be a decent host of many possible game shows, he has shown himself to be uniquely qualified to host Jeopardy!. At this point it would be silly for Davies/Sony not to offer him the daytime host gig permanently. And yet, when we look at the chaos following Alex's death, it also makes a lot of sense to have another non-chaotic interim host waiting in the wings. Thus the value of having Mayim signed up for special projects and as a first-choice substitute if Ken must miss some daytime tapings. Can they trade up from Mayim to someone even better? Perhaps. But why not give her some time to hone her skills, just as Trebek had the time to hone his? If she becomes a disaster, find another host for prime-time and special projects, but one way or another it seems silly NOT to have someone ready on deck in case Ken can't go on.
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Re: J! in the Media

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Xu Donym wrote: Tue Apr 19, 2022 2:02 pm
triviawayne wrote: Tue Apr 19, 2022 10:16 am Ken keeps getting better, Mayim keeps getting worse
Let's be kind. In the whole vast universe of potential game show hosts, Mayim is one of the better ones by far. Go back and watch Alex Trebek's first season of Jeopardy! and you might find yourself becoming far more charitable toward Mayim.

Happily, though, while Ken would be a decent host of many possible game shows, he has shown himself to be uniquely qualified to host Jeopardy!. At this point it would be silly for Davies/Sony not to offer him the daytime host gig permanently. And yet, when we look at the chaos following Alex's death, it also makes a lot of sense to have another non-chaotic interim host waiting in the wings. Thus the value of having Mayim signed up for special projects and as a first-choice substitute if Ken must miss some daytime tapings. Can they trade up from Mayim to someone even better? Perhaps. But why not give her some time to hone her skills, just as Trebek had the time to hone his? If she becomes a disaster, find another host for prime-time and special projects, but one way or another it seems silly NOT to have someone ready on deck in case Ken can't go on.
It is not my intent to be unkind, but she is not getting better. She's getting worse. Many of her little comments serve to pull focus to her, rather than keeping the focus on the contestants. It seems like the anecdotes that are selected for the contestant interviews are being chosen to give her an opening for a one liner, rather than showcasing them. I actually have watched some early Trebek games recently, and I agree, he evolved and improved a lot over the years but he began with a strong skill set and a clear interest in serving the game and showcasing the contestants.
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by davey »

To me it's remarkable that Ken, without a background in (or inclination toward?) broadcasting or show business inhabits that stage as if he were born to it, where MB, living on sound stages since she was a child, seems to be working much harder to show her abilities. Having a mind full of facts can't account for that difference...
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by triviawayne »

Xu Donym wrote: Tue Apr 19, 2022 2:02 pm
triviawayne wrote: Tue Apr 19, 2022 10:16 am Ken keeps getting better, Mayim keeps getting worse
Let's be kind. In the whole vast universe of potential game show hosts, Mayim is one of the better ones by far. Go back and watch Alex Trebek's first season of Jeopardy! and you might find yourself becoming far more charitable toward Mayim.

I never said she wasn't one of the better ones, in fact, I said she is one of the better ones. I have even in the past hoped she would be the permanent host. But the fact is, she is getting worse, while Ken is improving in leaps and bounds.

I don't have to go back and watch Alex's first season of Jeopardy, I already know he kept improving from the start. Mayim is not improving, but going backwards. That is the statement I made.
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Re: J! in the Media

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It's also worth mentioning that Alex had 20 years experience as a TV game show host when he took over Jeopardy. His learning curve as it's described here wasn't so much about having to learn to be a host as to moderate his more energetic impulses from hosting shows like The Wizard of Odds and High Rollers.
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Re: J! in the Media

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Alex was also starting with a blank slate when hosting the show. Other than the brief revival in the late 1970s, the show had been off the air for a decade.

Ken literally followed Alex’s footsteps in hosting the show. He was not only a great player, but a regular viewer and an employee of the show the last year of Alex’s life. How often did Mayim watch the show?
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by harrumph »

One of the differences between Ken and Mayim is that Ken knows every aspect of the game cold and instantly processes all that is going on in a game. Mayim really is a decent host, but she will never have Ken's sure handed immediate grasp. The dude is quick.
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Re: J! in the Media

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I thought Alex was great on day 1.
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Re: J! in the Media

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Robert K S wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 8:24 am I thought Alex was great on day 1.
And he had lovely things to say about you, too.
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Re: J! in the Media

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Kidding aside, I think that over time the show shaped Alex and Alex shaped the show. In early shows he uses more of that specific “game show host” tonality and verbal pattern. As the show grew in its reputation as “the thinking man’s game show” or a more *serious* game show, he shifted more to the more moderate delivery we associate with him.
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Re: J! in the Media

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Global News interview with current champ
I can't remember whether links like this are usually posted in this thread (and if so, do they need a spoiler warning) or in the daily show threads. One interesting thing she says is, while they are taping sans studio audience, contestants are told they don't have to keep the results of their game completely secret; they are allowed to tell anyone who would have been in the audience if it weren't for Covid.
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Re: J! in the Media

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Mattea is one of the top stories on CBC

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian ... -1.6434158
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Re: J! in the Media

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Re: J! in the Media

Post by opusthepenguin »

Nice! I notice the author makes the common mistake of thinking the archive is complete. I want to mention in a comment that it's not, primarily to solicit contact from anyone who happens to have a missing game. But I'm not sure how to tell them to get in touch. I'd just post here. But a newbie would have to create an account and then reply to a random thread (or make three posts, I think, and earn the right to PM or start their own thread). Where should I direct people who have a trousseau chest full of old VHS Jeopardy! tapes?
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by Robert K S »

This is another article that mistakenly says the J! Archive is complete. You can check my math, but I believe that after today there will have been 8,564 gameplay shows, of which 1,260 are missing from the J! Archive and 61 are incomplete in the J! Archive. This means that the Archive is somewhere between 84.57% and 85.29% complete, depending on how much you care to count the game fragments that have been entered. (Note that #196-#260 and #4088 are not gameplay shows. #196-#260 are Season 1 summer reruns that were given new numbers. #4088 was a clip show done at the time of the Million Dollar Masters tournament.)
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