More Musings: Sunday, October 27
Two topics held over from Friday, since I'd been running a bit long
The set changes
October 14 was the first game of Jeopardy! filmed following the show’s summer production hiatus. (The first five weeks of Season 41 were put in the can in late May and early June, as a guard against the possibility of IATSE going out on strike.) On that date, we saw the debut of several new features of the set. There was a remodel of its floor, allowing Ken Jennings to do contestant interviews at each player’s podium, as opposed to from his own.1 Another change is one visible to both players and home viewers on every clue — the practice of highlighting the category of each selected clue with a white outline, carried over from Season 2 of Celebrity. I'm a fan of this; it's a helpful prompt, something the show was able to add without taking anything away.
But the main one is the replacement of thirty-six individual monitors for each clue and category with a single screen for the entire game board. On the October 14 r/Jeopardy game recap thread, u/roo24680 described the in-studio presentation of clues — which has significantly changed from the prior setup. To demonstrate how it had previously been, here's an image of the Jeopardy! set from 2019, marked up by me to demonstrate how video clues were handled.
Here's the explanation of how things work now:
The text of the clue expands now for the players to take up the whole board. Video clues appear on one side of the big board, with the clue text next to it. The side monitor now contains the progress of the game board at all times so you can keep track of what dollar amounts are left if you need. Overall, the presentation is very slick for the players.
I recall that user mentioning in a follow-up comment that "expands… to take up the whole board" doesn't include the top row where the categories are displayed.2
I think this is a big improvement, and I'm happy that the show has taken advantage of the technological upgrade in this manner. It seems to me that it'll improve contestants' ability to interpret clues. And video clues should also be clearer to the players. But with this comes additional risk. I've written before here about the "Wedgwood problem," so named by me for a clue in 2015 in which the correct response was visible in a clue's image, at least to the home viewer. With those images and videos appearing larger to the players than previously, responses that wouldn't have been discernible to the players now may be. The show will have to be attentive to this possibility going forward.
The host situation
I’m going to lead this segment off simply by quoting you what Emily Heller said on What Is… a Jeopardy Podcast on October 15, in the “JFAF”3 segment: “100% of it is bullshit. Just top to bottom. It is full of, I’m like, who do they talk to? This is full of lies, None of this can be real. It’s from Closer Weekly. It’s an exclusive.”
The whole of the piece is an extended bloviation, entirely anonymously sourced, about how the job security of Ken Jennings is very much in question, in no small part due to the purported impact of Ryan Seacrest’s arrival as the host of Wheel of Fortune. As Heller and John Cullen point out, of course there was going to be a bump in week one this season, simply due to the novelty factor. Heck, even I kept the TV on Wheel after J! for the first episode or two. They say Closer Weekly’s claim that Ken is working with a comedy coach “can’t be true”; I’m with Heller and Cullen there. Ken wrote Planet Funny in 2019 — an entire book about comedy! I appreciate the WI…aJP hosts taking a few minutes to skewer this steaming pile, whose author’s name I shall not dignify with a mention here.
You might think, such tabloid clickbait garbage wouldn’t get much traction in the discussion areas of the fandom, would it? If so, cue up Faux Sean Connery: "well you were wrong, you mountebank!" The r/Jeopardy moderators declined to kibosh a post linking to that word salad, and said post eventually received 227 comments as of publication. To me, it clearly falls into the category of "rage-bait," ostensibly prohibited by the subreddit’s rules, much as any links to The U.S. Sun and TV Insider are. More particularly, I contrast it to the removal of two posts, respectively, one and two months earlier, which were of far greater relevance to the community. (Full disclosure: I was the OP on both.) Of course, it’s the moderators’ sub, their rules, their enforcement, which is final. And while I disagree with all three of those moderation calls, they are defensible; none is an outright abuse of their discretion.
Interviews at each contestant’s lectern was the practice prior to COVID. The change to the host interviewing from his position was originally introduced as a pandemic safety measure. But as explained on Inside Jeopardy! this past Monday, that was kept in place even after all COVID protocols stopped. The separation of the contestant lecterns, retained after COVID, created a safety hazard for the host walking between the separate lecterns; the remodel of the set over the summer removed that risk.
Both these comments were subsequently deleted from the recap thread. The first one was mentioned on JBoard; the second was not, hence my not quoting it directly.
“Jeopardy! Fans are Fuming”; initialism pronounced “ja-faff.” As Heller explains, “where we save you some clicks on the most sensational Jeopardy! headlines of the week.”