[quote name=\'fostergray82\' post=\'240579\' date=\'May 9 2010, 10:39 PM\']It's nobody's fault, and it would be insane to realign a game show taping just because one of nine contestants had a sudden obligation*, no matter how badass they played. I would've loved to see him return, but the show had a schedule to meet in order to get the tournament on the air by May, and they weren't going to jeopardize (pardon the obvious pun) tjat for one person.[/quote]
Exactly. I don't see any way you fault Jeopardy for this. These are nine (or ten) people with wildly divergent careers. Change the taping date, one that had been set far in advance, in order to accommodate one player, and you'd likely bump into someone else's conflict.
On our much smaller scale, we find ourselves faced with this surprisingly often on QuizBusters. Schools frequently ask us to change a taping date or time in order to accommodate one student or another who's involved in something else. They don't seem to realize that there's another school involved, with their own schedules and conflicts, much less our own production schedule to consider.
What surprises me is that Richter didn't participate anyway. He was a dominant player who stood a decent chance to win [DR.EVIL]ONE MEEELION DOLLARS[/DR.EVIL] for his charity, and was guaranteed $100,000 for showing up. Fly into LA for the single day of taping and you miss one, maybe two nights of the tour. I'm told he's heavily involved in the live show, but it seems for a couple of nights they could give his bits to a writer and let Conan make jokes about Andy bailing on them to be on a game show.