Was this also a problem in the Fleming version? They maintained the \"ring in when the answer is exposed\" rule throughout the run and from what I\'ve seen, there weren\'t many awkward pauses.
I\'d like to answer with a quote from Bill Cullen about game show contestants:
\"They used to play it for fun, to get on the air and have their friends see them. You\'d give them a thousand dollars and you made their year. Now, unless it\'s twenty or thirty thousand dollars, they look at you like you suckered them into a deal that really didn\'t turn out as well as they perhaps had hoped.\"
In the case of Jeopardy, the original game, for all its highbrow reputation, was not all that different than other daytime affairs of the day. It was a harmless trifle, played mostly by East Coast housewives. When the 80s stakes were a lot larger (not to mention all-or-nothing), more people started taking the game more seriously, and exploiting its modest flaws became a LOT more commonplace. The powers-that-be, which were an essentially different group than for the original show, decided a change was necessary
Aw, you\'re just bitter because you lost against Ken Jennings. :-P
FWIW, I\'m pretty sure I was better at the hand-eye thing than he was. His depth of knowledge, though, was off the charts.
