I elect… to object to a casting decision

Technically, Jeopardy! did nothing wrong earlier this week — but it could have and should have done better.

According to Google Maps, the straight line distance from the center of Frisco, Texas, to the Alex Trebek Stage is 1,241 miles (1,997 km). From Palm Springs, California, it’s only 107 miles (172 km). You might already know why I’m telling you those figures. But if you don’t…

What we know

Burt Thakur first appeared on Jeopardy! in the episode aired November 5, 2020. After victory that Thursday, Thakur returned the following day — the last episode to air before the tragic passing of Trebek, losing. He became widely known to the public through his interview in that second game, where he recalled that Alex Trebek had been helpful in his learning English.

As part of Michael Davies’s “holding pattern” due to the recently resolved Writers Guild of America strike, Jeopardy! is producing four Season 37 & 38 Champions Wildcard (CWC) tournaments; each will have 27 players going for a spot in the Tournament of Champions later this season. As a 1-time champion in Season 37, Thakur was eligible to play in these events, and he contested the first quarterfinal in the first one this past Monday. He finished in third place, taking home $5,000. The episode was taped on August 29.

Last year, Thakur was a candidate for the United States House of Representatives in California’s 25th District, which covers much of southeastern California, including parts of the Coachella Valley, in which Palm Springs lies. In California, all candidates contest a single nonpartisan primary, and the top two, regardless of party, advance to the general election. Thakur placed fifth in the primary, getting 3% of the vote.

Thakur is an actively declared candidate for the 2024 election for United States House of Representatives in Texas’s 3rd District, which covers suburbs northeast of Dallas. According to the Wayback Machine, his candidacy website has been active since February.

So, what’s the problem?

When the field for this first Champions Wildcard (“Spades”) was announced last Tuesday, September 26, I recalled Thakur’s first campaign, and discovered the second and current one. This raised my eyebrows. I’ve never reached the Jeopardy! audition phase myself, but I distinctly recalled people who have saying that were was something in the contestant paperwork about not being a candidate for public office. I put out feelers on social media, and received replies from several show alumni, spanning six years, confirming the existence of that language. One from 2019 quoted it:

I am not a candidate for any public office, and I agree not to accept any candidacy or become a legally qualified candidate under applicable FCC regulations until after the initial broadcast of my appearance on the Program.

More discussion ensued. Andy Saunders of The Jeopardy! Fan requested an official comment from the show. He got one, two days later; it was reported in his column at Questionist on Sunday. The show’s statement, in full, reads: “Burt Thakur’s participation is within the parameters of the official rules of the show.” It is clear that the conclusion of Sony Pictures Television on the matter — be it based on advice from in-house counsel, Sullivan Compliance, or elsewhere — is that Thakur did not fall foul of the quoted provision of the contestant agreement or any other, nor did he misrepresent his status to them. I’m not aware of any fact that supports a challenge to the show’s determination, or to Thakur’s representations.

Why is that even IN the fine print, anyway — and what leg is being stood on?

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has regulations that govern political programming; the relevant part here is requiring “equal opportunities” for candidates running against each other (with “bona fide news exceptions”). Here’s a brief rundown. (Thanks to Andy Saunders for sending me that link.) Failure to comply with those regulations could impose programming obligations on KTVT, the CBS station in Dallas-Fort Worth that airs Jeopardy!.

What Andy thinks could be the case, and I concur with him on this, is that the third prong of the definition of “legally qualified candidate” is not met — and indeed, nobody meets it. Texas is a “Super Tuesday” (March 3, 2024) primary state; its filing period for primary ballot access is November 11 to December 11. Since that period hasn’t even begun yet, nobody has qualified for a place on the ballot under Texas law, nor can anybody be running as a write-in (which would necessarily entail having failed to qualify). We also went directly to the text of the relevant section of the Code of Federal Regulations, which didn’t get either of us any further.

The letter, the spirit, and good business practice

Rhetorically: so, Matt, if Jeopardy! says it did nothing wrong, and you’re inclined to agree, then why are you banging on about this?

Chris Rock once put it quite well: “You can do it… but that don’t mean it’s to be done! You can drive a car with your feet if you want to, that don’t make it a good [expletive] idea!” And I said as much at the start of Monday’s episode.

Questions arise as to whether follow-on effects downstream were fully considered. Thakur was eliminated in the quarterfinal. But what if he’d made it to the final on October 18 & 19, and won? As noted above, the winner of each of these CWCs advances to the ToC. What if Thakur had been a “legally qualified candidate” at the time the Tournament of Champions taped and/or aired? And what if, having done so, he wins the primary and advances to the general election? It seems to me that those implications weren’t thought all the way through.

It was argued to me that Jeopardy! is blameless in this, because the FCC’s regulations would not impose obligations directly on the show were they to be violated. But that’s a distinction without a difference here. With respect to the syndication of Jeopardy!, Sony Pictures Television has arrangements with nearly three dozen station operators across the country, including three of the Big Four television networks. Whether or not those agreements impose responsibility on Jeopardy! to stay within the political programming rules, it certainly would be the hallmark of a good business partner not to do something that will require a station to air programming to compensate.

Besides, benefits accrue to Jeopardy! from eschewing involvement with active candidates. Funnily enough, we just had a category on Wednesday titled “We Try to Stay Neutral.” The show gets challenged on that from time to time — from both the left and the right — but by and large, that seems true to me. And so it should be. Lending its imprimatur to someone who has publicly declared for office could inflict reputational damage on the show — and that’s not good business practice either.¹

Consider the following. Same game, same night. Let’s say that instead of Texas’s 3rd Congressional District, Thakur, or someone similarly situated, were a candidate for the riding of Selkirk, or of Fort Garry. Those are districts for the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba — where a provincial general election was held one day after Thakur appeared. I know Jeopardy! is syndicated to a few Canadian stations, in addition to those American affiliates it’s seen on in Canada. So far as I’m aware, there’s nothing in the contestant paperwork pertaining to regulations of the CRTC², as opposed to the FCC. So, it would seem that in such a hypothetical case, Sony would be just as much in the clear as in this actual one. (The CRTC’s regulations themselves appear to only apply “equitable time” requirements to broadcasts of a “partisan political character,” without defining that term.) But the same calculus would apply — an active candidate potentially getting a boost by appearing on a widely televised trivia game show. Opposing candidates and those supporting them would be chagrined, and justifiably so.

Additionally, I think this is disrespectful to those Jeopardy! alumni who presently have or previously had political aspirations, and have reconciled those ambitions with the dream of appearing on the program, without direct conflict.³ The lode star example of this is Richard Cordray. Five-time champion in Season 3 and ToC semifinalist in Season 4, Cordray has sought and held numerous offices at both Ohio local and state, and Federal level. At the time of the Ultimate Tournament of Champions in 2005, Cordray held the elective office of Treasurer of Franklin County, Ohio (where Columbus is). (EDIT, 2023-10-09 — see Robert K S note in the comments; as Cordray’s winnings total was insufficient to qualify him into the UToC, the question of his political activity was not directly tested.) He did finally come back to the Alex Trebek Stage for the Battle of the Decades in 2014. Then, he cut a much higher profile — Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. While that’s not an elected position, it is a U.S. Senate-confirmed one. Given his stature, I have to think both he and the show crossed every ‘t’ and dotted every ‘i’ prior to his appearance. Cordray exited in the quarterfinals — and declined the $5,000 for that finish, on account of his government position.

Finally, two other things we know

For one, when the field for “Spades” was first unveiled on the show’s website last Tuesday, Thakur was listed as being from Frisco, Texas. Hours later, and without acknowledgment, this was changed to Palm Springs, California — where he was introduced as being from in November 2020. See the image below.

And for two, while Johnny Gilbert introduced Thakur as “a project engineer from Palm Springs, California,” at the interview segment, Ken Jennings addressed him as “a project engineer from Frisco, Texas.”

This is the eighth season I’ve compiled Jeopardy! contestant origin data. In all that time, this is the first instance in which I’ve attached a condition to what the show provides — here, noting that discrepancy.

1. There are already small things that call into question the trustworthiness of Jeopardy!’s public statements. When Ben Chan unexpectedly couldn’t return to defend due to COVID, the show’s preview of contestants for Monday at the end of that Friday’s episode still showed him as returning, alongside only two of the three challengers who actually appeared on April 17. And on a recent episode of Inside Jeopardy!, Sarah Foss was provably flat-out wrong when she said that Ken assigned control of the board to the wrong player because the small light on the lectern to aid him indicated the wrong contestant; it was on the right one, and he simply reflexively gave the honor to the player at the leftmost lectern.

2. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, our northern neighbors’ equivalent of the FCC. Most notable for promulgating and enforcing the regulations governing Canada’s cultural protectionism in media the requirements widely known as “Can-Con.”

3. Coming to mind here is Erin Zwiener — 3-time champion in 2012, Texas State Representative since 2019. I didn’t include Zwiener in the main body because it appears that she didn’t first seek office until 2017, years after her Jeopardy! appearances.