Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

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Harley R
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Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by Harley R »

Even as a very long-time fan of the show, I think a move toward real time broadcasts is here.
Everyone knows that TV sitcoms and movies, etc. are pre-recorded, but there is a certain pretense that Jeopardy! is not, even though shows are months old.
It is like watching secretly recorded baseball games at Christmas and calling it the World Series.

Real time Jeopardy! would be a hugely entertaining and, I think, popular improvement.
I have some particulars I'll share if anyone reads this and feels like commenting.
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by AndyTheQuizzer »

And I think it's a terrible idea.

There are way too many moving parts for actual live play to be viable.

Also, your suggestion is far from novel. This has been literally been discussed on the podcast—where Michael Davies has basically said that there are a lot of moving parts to worry about.

(Maybe you should listen to the podcast, or even read the writeups.)
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by Bamaman »

I think a live event might be fun for a one time special event but not on a regular basis. Too many unforeseen issues could crop up, throwing off the 30 minute time slot.
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by alietr »

If you've ever watched a taping, you'd understand why this is a non-starter. Besides, what exactly would you gain from it?
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Robert K S
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by Robert K S »

The show you see on TV is the live show but with all the bits that would have brought it over 22 minutes edited out.

With a live show, you would have the benefit of seeing some of the seams and bobbles and with the risk that airtime would run out before a winner was decided.

If they wanted to test it out, they could just make a special-play taping a livestream for subscribers (special play so as not to spoil a returning champ). Yeah, an 8-hour-long livestream. I'm guessing that even with a lot of fanatical J! watchers out there, the viewership would only be in the hundreds.

I'm not against the idea of live Jeopardy! I would be among the watchers. But, having already sat (or stood) through four days of tapings in my life, I know that making it live wouldn't be missing anything, and I think the chances for failure in any of a dozen mundane ways exceed the chances of spectacular success that would enduringly enliven the brand.
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by opusthepenguin »

Bamaman wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 1:56 pm I think a live event might be fun for a one time special event but not on a regular basis. Too many unforeseen issues could crop up, throwing off the 30 minute time slot.
The 30 minute time slot would have to go, of course. We'd bring in Seaborgium and Cheezguyty as commentators who could fill the time while play has stopped to review calls or whatever.
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by Woof »

opusthepenguin wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 4:57 pm
Bamaman wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 1:56 pm I think a live event might be fun for a one time special event but not on a regular basis. Too many unforeseen issues could crop up, throwing off the 30 minute time slot.
The 30 minute time slot would have to go, of course. We'd bring in Seaborgium and Cheezguyty as commentators who could fill the time while play has stopped to review calls or whatever.
Sg as the color commentator and Cheezguyty as the play-by-play guy?
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by Bamaman »

Woof wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 5:31 pm
opusthepenguin wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 4:57 pm
Bamaman wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 1:56 pm I think a live event might be fun for a one time special event but not on a regular basis. Too many unforeseen issues could crop up, throwing off the 30 minute time slot.
The 30 minute time slot would have to go, of course. We'd bring in Seaborgium and Cheezguyty as commentators who could fill the time while play has stopped to review calls or whatever.
Sg as the color commentator and Cheezguyty as the play-by-play guy?
Stay tuned for Final Jeopardy!, with our wagering analyst, Golf!!!
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by opusthepenguin »

Woof wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 5:31 pm
opusthepenguin wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 4:57 pm
Bamaman wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 1:56 pm I think a live event might be fun for a one time special event but not on a regular basis. Too many unforeseen issues could crop up, throwing off the 30 minute time slot.
The 30 minute time slot would have to go, of course. We'd bring in Seaborgium and Cheezguyty as commentators who could fill the time while play has stopped to review calls or whatever.
Sg as the color commentator and Cheezguyty as the play-by-play guy?
Exactly! Cheezguyty's the one who would come up with off-the-cuff observations about the last time we saw a back-to-back DD conversion from a player at the middle podium. Sg would compare current players to those from the past and would also speculate on what considerations would be influencing the judges in a particular ruling.
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by alietr »

Bamaman wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 5:36 pm
Woof wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 5:31 pm
opusthepenguin wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 4:57 pm
Bamaman wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 1:56 pm I think a live event might be fun for a one time special event but not on a regular basis. Too many unforeseen issues could crop up, throwing off the 30 minute time slot.
The 30 minute time slot would have to go, of course. We'd bring in Seaborgium and Cheezguyty as commentators who could fill the time while play has stopped to review calls or whatever.
Sg as the color commentator and Cheezguyty as the play-by-play guy?
Stay tuned for Final Jeopardy!, with our wagering analyst, Golf!!!
We could equip him with buckets of slime.
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by squarekara »

alietr wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 6:19 pm
Bamaman wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 5:36 pm
Woof wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 5:31 pm
opusthepenguin wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 4:57 pm
Bamaman wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 1:56 pm I think a live event might be fun for a one time special event but not on a regular basis. Too many unforeseen issues could crop up, throwing off the 30 minute time slot.
The 30 minute time slot would have to go, of course. We'd bring in Seaborgium and Cheezguyty as commentators who could fill the time while play has stopped to review calls or whatever.
Sg as the color commentator and Cheezguyty as the play-by-play guy?
Stay tuned for Final Jeopardy!, with our wagering analyst, Golf!!!
We could equip him with buckets of slime.
That'll be for the "LOL Corner" segment.
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by Golf »

Bamaman wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 5:36 pm Stay tuned for Final Jeopardy!, with our wagering analyst, Golf!!!
Real time DD wagering as well!

And the champ, a classic lit professor, finds the first round DD in the 2nd row of Shakespeare and the champ has already accumulated $5k! Naturally, a perfect time for a TDD, a correct answer would increase winning chances by at least 30%. Let's see what happens..... a $1k wager? NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sg and Cheez: Golf just destroyed another microphone, the third this week. We hope to have a replacement ready in time for the next DD.....
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by goongas »

They could partner with Draftkings and have real time betting as well. Some viewers think the show is live or taped the same day, going live would not add much.
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by Trevor807 »

Aside from the fact that Jeopardy! itself is already live-to-tape anyway (as others have pointed out), watch the UK Millionaire's live specials (during Chris Tarrant's final, less enlightened years) and you'll see a major reason why a live quiz with too many moving parts wouldn't work. And those were occasional specials on ITV, not a daily syndicated show.

Michael Davies has made a lot of idiotic decisions (on Jeopardy! and throughout his game show career), but even he knows how idiotic that would be.
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Harley R
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by Harley R »

Turns out I was right about "hopeless."
Not because of the reasons you all gave, but because of the reasons you gave them.
Too bad.
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by Robert K S »

(a) It's not hopeless--Davies has said on the podcast that live Jeopardy! remains a dream and a hope for him--and (b), the reasons why we gave the reasons that it wouldn't be a profitable idea are not because any of us who are down on the idea lacks vision or enthusiasm, but because we fail to see the cold fiscal upside of the kind of intensive resource input live Jeopardy! would entail. For each completed episode, it takes hundreds, possibly thousands of person-hours of highly skilled, (for the most part) highly experienced, (in many cases) highly-educated individuals working in concert to bring the show to the realm of being 90-95% live. That last five to ten percent--to ensure against all failures in the technical apparatus and in the material, to anticipate and pre-research any possibly correct response, no matter how unorthodox, to train and rehearse and block do all the things that go into live theatrical entertainment, could possibly double the needed effort. But for what? Will ratings also double? Are advertisers willing to pay doubled rates for live Jeopardy!? It's a pessimistic proposition at best, and at worst could be a budget-busting folly that the accountants and execs would later scratch their heads to make sense of.
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by Trevor807 »

This. It's not that a live game show can't feasibly work. It's just that, as we've all pointed out, a live Jeopardy! can't feasibly work; another thing is that the show, being syndicated, airs in different times of day depending on the station, and the show would have to move to, say, ABC, if they were to make a move to real-time broadcasts. I'd like for Harley to dispute the reasons we "gave them".
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by Robbo »

Though I too agree that a televised live Jeopardy would not work - I do wonder what people would think of a Jeopardy live stage show - a la what Price is Right and Wheel has done. Doing this for Jeopardy would have some additional hurdles though. You would need unique enough material from city to city - lest you have sharing of answers via the internet. Also, in the prior two cases - anyone randomly selected from the audience could reasonably play - you can’t say that for Jeopardy! Thoughts?
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Robert K S
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by Robert K S »

Robbo wrote: Tue Apr 18, 2023 12:55 pm anyone randomly selected from the audience ... Thoughts?
"Raise your hand if you've already been on Jeopardy!"

Problem solved :-)
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Re: Hopeless great idea for Jeopardy

Post by Game Girl »

I understand if you thought he was not talking about that I got confused about if you meant live episodes as in (Price is right live or wheel of Fortune life) when he first said that until episode in which he was talking about how to do the masters in editing which made it very clear what he meant (more on The live idea later). but what the person above I think is actually saying from I can tell is to do it closer to the air date weather than two months. (It's News To Me) (There was also a recent events themed game shows in the 1990s that I cannot find right now.) The way the one that I can I think of the name when was the recorded it very close (like around three days in advance on a Friday) and showed the day in the corner of the screen. if you are talking about that I am not sure obviously that idea is more possible then the 'live idea' but if Covid has tried anything is good to have a good stock pile of stuff just in case something bad happens. if people did not stock pile all the episodes in advance we would have been out of new shows a lot faster but there are benefits I can see like Contestants can get their prices closer to winning them answers of things closer to the date or contestants not getting into a situation of looking bad for not knowing something everyone knows a month later but not when it was filmed. (which someone pointed out happened sometime this season about a movie released 6 days before the air date.)
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