Jeopardy champ takes on the world

[tvrandywest]

You couldn't ask for a more photogenic and personable champ, but that guy was deadly competition for another friend today!

Joining Matt Ottinger among those good players who fell to the champ's mastery of the buzz-in button  was game show producer Leonard Koss on today's (Thursday's) show. Check your EOTVGS for his full credits. Leonard and I worked together on "Couch Potatoes", and he is presently producing "On The Cover".


Randy
tvrandywest.com

[zachhoran]

[quote name=\'tvrandywest\' date=\'Jul 8 2004, 09:34 PM\'] game show producer Leonard Koss on today's (Thursday's) show. Check your EOTVGS for his full credits. Leonard and I worked together on "Couch Potatoes", and he is presently producing "On The Cover".
 [/quote]
 Is he any relation to Wink TTD producer Allen Koss?

[tvrandywest]

[quote name=\'zachhoran\' date=\'Jul 8 2004, 06:35 PM\'] Is he any relation to Wink TTD producer Allen Koss? [/quote]
 They are brothers!

Randy
tvrandywest.com

[Dbacksfan12]

[quote name=\'tvrandywest\' date=\'Jul 8 2004, 09:34 PM\'] You couldn't ask for a more photogenic and personable champ, but that guy was deadly competition for another friend today!

Joining Matt Ottinger among those good players who fell to the champ's mastery of the buzz-in button  was game show producer Leonard Koss on today's (Thursday's) show. Check your EOTVGS for his full credits. Leonard and I worked together on "Couch Potatoes", and he is presently producing "On The Cover".


Randy
tvrandywest.com [/quote]
 I'm surprised that he was even elegible for the show.....I would think that some staffer would be in common...

[SplitSecond]

Skycastle/Sullivan does S&P for Jeopardy!

Who does S&P for On the Cover?

[sshuffield70]

ABC does S&P for "Jeopardy" and has for many years.

I believe PAX would be responsible for "On The Cover".

[SplitSecond]

ABC does S&P for J!?  Where do you get this information?

[zachhoran]

[quote name=\'SplitSecond\' date=\'Jul 9 2004, 08:40 AM\'] ABC does S&P for J!?  Where do you get this information? [/quote]
 Perhaps Shuffield remembered reading it in the 1990 J! paperback book, and thinks they still are their "network of record".

[SplitSecond]

Well, the point is that Sullivan/Skycastle has been doing S&P for them (and Wheel) for several years.

Since "On the Cover" is a network show, PAX is a good educated guess, but does anyone know for sure?

[tomobrien]

[quote name=\'zachhoran\' date=\'Jul 9 2004, 07:50 AM\'][quote name=\'SplitSecond\' date=\'Jul 9 2004, 08:40 AM\'] ABC does S&P for J!?  Where do you get this information? [/quote]
Perhaps Shuffield remembered reading it in the 1990 J! paperback book, and thinks they still are their "network of record".[/quote]
IIRC, at least for their first season, they used NBC for S&P.  (I'm thinking this because I challenged a question given by another player, and I seem to recall the response coming back in an NBC envelope...)

[sshuffield70]

[quote name=\'SplitSecond\' date=\'Jul 9 2004, 09:00 AM\'] Well, the point is that Sullivan/Skycastle has been doing S&P for them (and Wheel) for several years.

Since "On the Cover" is a network show, PAX is a good educated guess, but does anyone know for sure? [/quote]
 First off, who the hell are they?

Second, if ABC O&Os and a number of ABC affiliates all run both, wouldn't they be the network of record?

[tvrandywest]

[quote name=\'sshuffield70\' date=\'Jul 9 2004, 01:12 PM\'] [quote name=\'SplitSecond\' date=\'Jul 9 2004, 09:00 AM\'] Well, the point is that Sullivan/Skycastle has been doing S&P for them (and Wheel) for several years... [/quote]
First off, who the hell are they?...
 [/quote]
If anyone who worked in television in the 1980s spent twenty years in a coma and woke up today, they'd find a very different business. The only broadcasters in a coma these days seem to be running the show. (All week; veal)

With the sole exception of "The Price Is Right" to my knowledge just about everything on every game show currently in production is farmed-out to independent suppliers. That includes everything from the game electronics and set design and construction, to the contestant name tags and cue cards. Even furniture rental and the daily supply of coffee are farmed to outside sub-contractors. You can even add the polling for the "Family Feud" questions as the tasks once performed by the network or production company that are now out-sourced. The primarily motivation behind this practice is.... what else, cost savings.

On the issue of S&P, this once high and mighty wing of the three networks' legal departments is not what it once was. In fact, the only network S&P people I've seen in recent memory were at NBC's network run of "Weakest Link", FOX's pilot for "What The Blank", and of course, at "The Price Is Right".  I never met the FOX "Broadcast Standards" rep. At NBC the junior attorney's presence was pretty traditional as they oversaw the procedures and game play. At "Price" it appears to me that the S&P duties are incorportated with other network legal-like functions, such as assuring that the prize copy I read potrayed accurate representations of the items, and incorporated the advertising language the suppliers contracted for.

And to my knowledge, that is pretty much it for network S&P. I don't know who is out on the island with the "Survivor" folk or counting the worms for "Fear Factor". I would like to think a network staffer or two is observing the late night partying at the "Big Brother" house. But that could just be my voyeurism fetish talking.

To my knowledge game shows on lesser networks, as well as all syndicated and cable game shows have all contracted with independent firms to cover their S&P behinds. Syndication's the long held concept of "the network of record" seems to be entirely an artifact of a different era. Sullivan/Skycastle is the biggest of the indie S&P firms.

Very briefly, they perform the same traditional S&P functions of overseeing procedures and working with the producers to assure that no contestant is unfairly disadvantaged in the game play. They maintain the paperwork and on-set staffers necessary to substantiate the fairness of the competition to the benefit of all parties who would have liability should there be a claim of impropriety.

Most importantly, Al, Alex, Joe, Mei Ling and the rest of the Sullivan/Skycastle folks are far more fun to hang around with all day than the mostly pompous old network folks I've met.    ;-)


Randy
tvrandywest.com

[rmfromfla]

At least for the first few months of S1,  NBC was J!'s "network of record"
 since WNBC in NY was carrying the show, albeit at 2AM......

[chris319]

Jeopardy! runs on all or nearly all of the ABC O&O's, correct? And it has since some time in the '80s, correct? If so, it's logical to assume that ABC has handled S&P for Jeopardy! since then, when ABC's S&P department was set up to handle whatever daytime game shows were in production at the time.

That's a longwinded way of saying that in times past, when a show was sold to a network station group, that network's S&P department was in charge. The theory was that the network was protecting the licenses of its owned stations. That tradition may have continued with ABC and Jeopardy! since the '80s. If PAX has a network censor I doubt they have any experience doing game shows, thus the decision to farm it out.

The NBC station group ran the nighttime TPIR back in 1979 - 1980. NBC handled S&P, and you can see one of the NBC reps, Peri, in the front row of the audience behind the producer table. She is easy to recognize because she always wore sunglasses in the studio.

I don't know where the phrase "network of record" comes from. It doesn't mean anything. You go by the network which runs, or whose owned stations run, a given show.

[tvrandywest]

[quote name=\'chris319\' date=\'Jul 9 2004, 02:57 PM\'] ... That's a longwinded way of saying that in times past, when a show was sold to a network station group, that network's S&P department was in charge. The theory was that the network was protecting the licenses of its owned stations...

... I don't know where the phrase "network of record" comes from. It doesn't mean anything. You go by the network which runs, or whose owned stations run, a given show. [/quote]
And that's what was referred to as the "Network of Record". When syndie shows aired on more than one network's O&Os the S&P task was not duplicated by two sets of reps and rules. One of the two networks became the "network of record" insofar as being responsible for S&P, and their equivalent of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval was relied upon by BOTH networks in protecting their O&Os,  and by the hundred+ indidvidual indie stations and network affiliates airing the show. I gotta back Zach on this one; "network of record" was the phrase used.

But as indicated before, that is all but a memory. It's now almost all farmed-out to independent firms. If anyone can provide ANY reasonable evidence that ANY of the 4 networks has/had ANY S&P person at ANY set for ANY of the following shows, I will gladly award that person a genuine box of actual Lee Press-On Nails: WOF, J!, FF, Pyramid, HSquares, Street Smarts, Press My Pants, Earn Your Vacation, Celebrity Poker, In the Dark, Extreme Dodgeball, High School Hopscotch, Family Challenge, Wild Animal Games, Supermarket Sweep, Combination Lock, Boggle, Couch Potatoes, Double Dare, Debt, Win Ben Stein's Money, Dance Fever, Guess My Sandwich...


Randy
tvrandywest.com