Well, I forgot that crappy logo pretty fast.
I like John a lot. I thought he'd be too staid, but he is doin' fine in these samples. Just his bit with not being able to accept an answer twice in a video showed you what he has over Karn. John was able to look offstage, notice he couldn't accept that answer, and made some pretty funny banter out of it. I've seen it at least once where they had to edit to show Karn not accepting an answer. I'll have to watch this season to see if John keeps it up.
Hope I'm not treading into spoiling here, but I noticed in one episode's worth of clips that the points in the first three questions still do not add up to 300. I didn't watch much Karn, so I don't know if they had this or not, but they will not be adding the steal to the bank this season (at least, based on the clips).
The set is very neat, but I agree with Matt in that it is perhaps a bit too small. Well actually, the area the host and contestants can actually use is - why does the audience have to take up all that real estate in the middle of the floor? Some of the new shots are cool. I especially like the one where they go from the faceoff podium to the board with the same camera. In the promos I didn't like the in-the-round crowd, but I didn't even notice they were there when the game got going.
-Jason