ABC to air Jeopardy GOAT tournament

[BillCullen1]

Robert Mills announced on his twitter that they’re going to rerun the first 3 eps this Saturday (8-11 EST) if you missed them or aren’t interested in the Ravens/Titans game...

https://twitter.com/millsy11374/status/1215729189833232384?s=21

Yay. I get to see the second episode, which I missed.

[tpirfan28]

Need to give the writing crew a major thumbs up for the design of the games for this tournament.  I figured there would be plenty of wordplay/pun categories (looking at you, "before, during, and after"), but it's been balanced with a healthy amount of "easy" play-at-home content.  I'm absolutely not good enough for the show but I've gotten a few correct from the armchair.  Twitter's borderline meltdown when those three didn't get GOOD DAY, SIR was pretty neat to see.

I think ABC scheduled this brilliantly as well...they had the NFL wildcard game, at least a couple bowl games on the big network, and other holiday programming to promote this.  I saw an ad on GSN, have there been ads on ESPN?

[jage]

The pair of triple stumpers on the cyber security category surprised me, or maybe it's just my bias toward IT.

[Jeremy Nelson]

Going into this, I thought Ken would be the most motivated to win, as he's the one who stands to lose the most clout (relatively). When Ken finished his run, he was thought by a good number of people to be the GOAT. Then Brad came along, pantsed him in the first tourney, and has beat him ever since. James winning this could have put Ken at #3 in some people's minds.

I thought it was interesting that Brad talked about his diminished skills in the Game 1 interview, then played like a guy who fell back to Earth- my first thought was "yeah, they diminshed in your eyes, but you're still Brad Rutter"- but he wasn't lying at all. It was like he was trying to manage expectations moving forward.

My thought was that ABC could host a Masters series each year, starring the GOAT winner, the reigning ToC winner, and an all-star/classic player selected by fan vote. Winner gets $250K and comes back for the next series, kinda like Super Sale of the Century in Australia.

[Fedya]

Jage: I was a bit surprised too.

The one category where I really hated the video clues was the one on The Crown, where I felt four out of the five clues didn't need the video clip at all.  The contestants have talked about anticipating when Alex is going to finish reading the clues so they can buzz in, but I think trying to anticipate when such a video clip is going to end would be maddening.

[whewfan]

I noticed that there's only one episode scheduled to air this upcoming Tuesday. Is the tournament now going to air weekly on Tuesdays?

[Unrealtor]

I noticed that there's only one episode scheduled to air this upcoming Tuesday. Is the tournament now going to air weekly on Tuesdays?

The scheduled airdates for all seven episodes were part of the original announcement, and there was more than one next week. Which leaves us with two possible explanations:

1. ABC's scheduling department is waiting until after Tuesday's episode airs to put the next one on the schedule so as to not spoil the outcome.

2. ABC's scheduling department knows that Tuesday's episode is the last one and doesn't care about giving that away.

[snowpeck]

I noticed that there's only one episode scheduled to air this upcoming Tuesday. Is the tournament now going to air weekly on Tuesdays?

According to whom? Every listing I've seen (including on ABC.com) has the tournament scheduled Tues-Fri at 8 p.m.

[TLEberle]

My thought was that ABC could host a Masters series each year, starring the GOAT winner, the reigning ToC winner, and an all-star/classic player selected by fan vote. Winner gets $250K and comes back for the next series, kinda like Super Sale of the Century in Australia.

I remember discussing this idea back during the Battle of the Decades--I would love for Super Jeopardy to close out each season. I would prefer that the TOC winner gets to choose someone to play against rather than fan favorites getting passed through or less memorable winners getting passed over.

[colonial]

Based on this interview, ABC is at least considering a follow up on this, but what that is remains a mystery …

https://deadline.com/2020/01/jeopardy-primetime-specials-possible-followup-with-goat-trio-ken-jennings-brad-rutter-and-james-holzhauer-jeopardy-the-greatest-of-all-time-1202827437/


JD

[Joe Mello]

I wonder if anyone's considered trying to break this apart into half-hour chunks to air during summer reruns. NBC effectively does this for past seasons of American Ninja Warrior put out into syndication, and I bet there's demand for another airing of this.

[weaklink75]

Based on this interview, ABC is at least considering a follow up on this, but what that is remains a mystery …

https://deadline.com/2020/01/jeopardy-primetime-specials-possible-followup-with-goat-trio-ken-jennings-brad-rutter-and-james-holzhauer-jeopardy-the-greatest-of-all-time-1202827437/


JD

I’m wary of them trying....however, say Alex decides to retire at the end of the season, you could do something to introduce the new host in a big way (frankly, if ABC wasn’t doing the Millionaire specials, I’d say do a celebrity pro/am tournament- a celeb plays the first game, a J! Champion plays the 2nd)

[tvmitch]

I'll just add that the lightning-in-a-bottle nature of this GOAT special has a few things going for it - popular names, Alex's health in the news, great buzz and great gameplay. It reminds me of the initial run of Millionaire episodes that caught everyone by surprise all those years ago.

I think the idea of Super J! at the end of every season in primetime is a great idea. Adding in elements of MLB All-Star voting would be fun.

[WhammyPower]

(frankly, if ABC wasn’t doing the Millionaire specials, I’d say do a celebrity pro/am tournament- a celeb plays the first game, a J! Champion plays the 2nd)

Or there's always doing Celebrity Wheel of Fortune.

[Chuck Sutton]

A prediction for tonight:  one of the late night hosts makes a joke along the lines:

Tonight the nation was riveted as a group of people at podiums competed to show who was the best. . . And there was a political debate.