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Re: December 21-January 1 Reruns

Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2020 10:16 pm
by twelvefootboy
In Re the Tuesday game, "Michael Falk wins his first game".
I don't recall his name as one of the J! heavyweights, but I would put that teaser in third place behind:

1) The Muppets present a category, just one day after the first "Muppet Night Football" broadcast. (MNF was a hoot, and I'm glad I didn't jump right to the kickoff)

2) A contestant named "Lizard" who owns a 3 foot iguana is working on his dewlaps

3) the Michael Falk thing

I'm finding these old games (I've only seen one other) to be very frantic. Alex's delivery in this episode particularly feels phony. His clue reading cadence is much faster than modern shows to my ears. The contestants cadence seemed to vary, especially depending on their length of sentence. This may be confirmation bias for my suspicion that these shows are edited using that software (?) that speeds up speech without changing pitch. I think it is done by trimming dead air and pauses. Do any of our media or tech savvy know? Or is it just the evolution of the host and the tempo of the show?

Re: December 21-January 1 Reruns

Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2020 11:47 pm
by opusthepenguin
twelvefootboy wrote: Tue Dec 22, 2020 10:16 pm I'm finding these old games (I've only seen one other) to be very frantic. Alex's delivery in this episode particularly feels phony. His clue reading cadence is much faster than modern shows to my ears. The contestants cadence seemed to vary, especially depending on their length of sentence. This may be confirmation bias for my suspicion that these shows are edited using that software (?) that speeds up speech without changing pitch. I think it is done by trimming dead air and pauses. Do any of our media or tech savvy know? Or is it just the evolution of the host and the tempo of the show?
I think it's that last thing. I have dozens of show videos from the 80s and 90s in really crappy quality. So no digital trickery has been applied. I'm always amazed at the speed with which Alex used to move things along. I wonder if they'll try to get a new host who can do that again. If so, I'm thinking Steve Buscemi.

Re: December 21-January 1 Reruns

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2020 9:29 am
by jeff6286
They might speed things up slightly to account for the fact that there are more commercials in 30 minutes of TV today than there were 10-15 years ago. I don't know exact figures but it may be that an episode of Jeopardy! is :30 or :60 shorter. I recall when they showed some rerun episodes this summer I thought the same thing, even in the super early episodes from the first season, Alex would be reading at light speed trying to squeeze every last clue in before time runs out, making it even more baffling that they often still didn't clear the boards. Maybe the average length of a clue was a lot longer then. If today's clues were the same length it's hard to imagine theym ever being cleared with Alex moving at his more traditional leisurely pace.

Re: December 21-January 1 Reruns

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2020 9:57 am
by Bamaman
jeff6286 wrote: Wed Dec 23, 2020 9:29 am They might speed things up slightly to account for the fact that there are more commercials in 30 minutes of TV today than there were 10-15 years ago. I don't know exact figures but it may be that an episode of Jeopardy! is :30 or :60 shorter. I recall when they showed some rerun episodes this summer I thought the same thing, even in the super early episodes from the first season, Alex would be reading at light speed trying to squeeze every last clue in before time runs out, making it even more baffling that they often still didn't clear the boards. Maybe the average length of a clue was a lot longer then. If today's clues were the same length it's hard to imagine theym ever being cleared with Alex moving at his more traditional leisurely pace.
The games I have seen from S1 never cleared the boards. The rule where you could ring in at any time led to a lot of negs along with the audience clapping for no reason. I wonder if any games from that season had 61 clues played.