Hey, Jeopardy!: Radio and Television Are Different
Last night's ToC exhibition suffered because the producers lost sight of this
The three top winners in the upcoming Tournament of Champions – Adriana Harmeyer, Isaac Hirsch, and Drew Basile – played an exhibition game so they’d have the same buzzer practice as the eighteen other players who played in the quarterfinal round. Last night, the episode was released on TuneIn Radio.
And… oh, boy. I have thoughts. When Harmeyer found the Daily Double on the second clue of the game and I heard how it played out, I thought “uh oh.” And as the show returned from the mid-first-round break for the interview segment, that became “oh, no.”
Adjustments MUST be made for an audio-only presentation
This is something obvious to every sports fan, and innately understood by broadcasters who work in both television and radio. In the case of the latter, if the announcer doesn’t verbalize a piece of information, it isn’t available to the listener. One sport where it’s particularly notable is tennis — a radio play-by-play person must describe the movement of both players and ball throughout, while the television crew generally allows the video to speak for itself, interjecting only between points. The TV call would be unsuitable to radio; listeners would barely have any idea what was going on while the yellow ball was in play.
Jeopardy! did the same with the 2025 ToC exhibition game — and the end result was a game terribly presented. It was an episode produced for television, but aired on radio — I’d liken the experience to sitting down in front of a TV set, but then having a thick blanket draped over the screen so you can’t see it, but can still hear the sound.
This would’ve been far better suited to the show’s official YouTube channel than TuneIn.
Scoring
Without a video component, the players’ scores aren’t visible to the audience. I tried to track their totals throughout the Jeopardy! round (along with my own Coryat), but abandoned that before Double. Ken said “Isaac has a $5,000 lead over Adriana,” which didn’t match the numbers I had. Moreover, there was no indication of where either was positioned in absolute terms, nor where Drew was relative to the two of them. Without the ability to see the lecterns and scores clue-by-clue, it’s easy for listeners to lose track of the state of the game. At a minimum, scores for all three players should be given going into each of the three commercial breaks, and at each Daily Double.
Category details
I had no idea until this morning that the second category in Double Jeopardy! was BIRD “E”s, not BIRD-ESE. Ken never mentioned the existence of quotation marks in that title. Again: if he doesn’t say they’re there, then as far as the consumer is concerned, they’re not. Curiously, that contrasted with the first round, when Ken did mention the presence of quotation marks in “IME” ON IT; my thought is there, the fact that those three letters were required to be at the end of the response had to be mentioned, while in the case of the birds, they all started with that letter.
Visual elements
On one of the clues in the category about birds, Ken said after the response: “and I feel bad for our TuneIn listeners, ‘cause that was a very cute photo.” Surely, he thought he was just inserting a timely quip. In fact, he was stating why that clue had no business being in this episode at all. Jennings effectively admitted that listeners could not play the clue at home on the same basis as the contestants in studio. Speaking of that…
Suitable types of material
Double Jeopardy! had a category titled ANAGRAMMED BIBLE PEOPLE. Contra the players on stage and members of the studio audience, the TuneIn listeners were unable to see the letters in the anagram of the correct response as Ken read the description, getting them only at the end when Ken read the anagram. Accordingly, categories such as this (and possibly also ones requiring similar wordplay) may not be best for inclusion in audio-only Jeopardy!.
What takes this from bad to worse
Last year, after the first two Champions Wildcard play-in games, I made some suggestions on how their presentation could be improved. Andy Saunders of The Jeopardy! Fan had thoughts on the same lines. By and large, these were effected during the third play-in game, released a few weeks later.
So regarding the presentation defects I’ve mentioned, this isn’t a case of the show being unfamiliar and/or not knowing what to do. The show was aware of what adjustments to make for an audio-only game, made them — and then a year later, reverted to prior practice. I originally gave this game a C-; Saunders opined that was too generous. After searching high and low for reasons to downgrade only to a D or D-, I can’t summon any. This level of whiff is wholly deserving of an F.1
It’s as though either (a) all the institutional memory associated with those Champions Wildcard play-ins walked out the door with Buzzy Cohen, their host, or (b) Davies, Foss, et al. collectively forgot about last year.
Seeking reasons (but NOT excuses)
Two have come to mind.
The show drew the wrong parallel when deciding how to present this game. That is, it didn’t think “here’s another audio-only game, let’s model it on the play-in games,” as it should have. It thought “here’s another exhibition game, let’s model it on what we did in 2022.” Of course, it’s obvious in hindsight why that shouldn’t have been the plan; 2022’s ToC exhibition was aired on the syndicated program — indeed, specifically to place a non-meaningful game on Election Day, when it would be widely preempted.
The exhibition was taped at the end of an especially long day. It was the seventh of seven games recorded on Wednesday, December 4, 2024, after the six quarterfinals. Those six games, of course, were run of the mill televised episodes. Though I imagine few or no technical changes would’ve been needed for the shift in presentation format, it’s still a change in mindset at the end of a production day longer than most on Jeopardy!. This could have been alleviated by recording the exhibition first, as was necessarily done for the Champions Wildcard play-ins. Get the one outlier game out of the way up front when everyone is fresh, and then change over to the normal state of mind for the bulk of the taping day.
Final thoughts on this…
Why were this particular date and time chosen?
7:00 p.m. Eastern time is when the syndicated Jeopardy! program is seen in New York, Dallas/Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Orlando, Charlotte, Raleigh/Durham, and Baltimore, among others. On a usual night, 22% of the United States usually sees it in that half-hour.2 While the exhibition game is available on demand afterward, fans who wanted to hear it as soon as possible had to choose between that and the deciding game of Champions Wildcard. I see no benefit from creating such a conflict.
Why COULDN’T this game have simply been put on YouTube?
Doing so would have alleviated the concerns about audio-only formatting changes. This was done with the 2022 ToC exhibition, as well as the last game of the final of that Tournament of Champions. Is there contractual language somewhere precluding Jeopardy! from posting the game video on its official YouTube channel?
This game was a lot more subdued than the one in 2022
It had a much more business-like feel to it. There weren’t any quips about correct responses being popular when contestants were younger. Nor were there references to forms of currency other than United States dollars on the Daily Double wagers.3
I’m not counting this game for win-loss record purposes
I rest this decision on the acceptance of “Sushi” in place of “Siouxsie” (pronounced “Susie”) on GIMME SOME BACKUP $1000. I’m of the mind that decision would not have stood had anything been on the line — thus, like the snafu in NUMBER, PLEASE in 2022, it places the game “outside the normal rules of Jeopardy!,” so to speak.
In his own recap of this game, Saunders’s feelings again mirror mine.
This percentage was lower on Friday, on account of CBS’s coverage of the PGA Tour.
For example, Mattea Roach wagering “2,800 magic beans” on one of theirs. (For my part, were I in such a situation, I’d reference bars of gold-pressed latinum.)