The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: BrandonFG on December 12, 2014, 08:27:27 PM
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The Sony leaked emails have been a pretty big story this week, and now it looks like Sony's two games are involved. This is related to how the NFL (mis)handled the preemptions of Wheel and Jeopardy! for NFL coverage. The article also explains how this might impact the two shows' ratings situations.
http://deadspin.com/how-cbs-and-the-nfl-teamed-up-to-screw-wheel-of-fortune-1670315974
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I feel a little dirty reading somebody else's e-mails when they weren't for public consumption, but I did, and holy cow.
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Yeah...I stayed away from the emails, especially the more controversial ones, but the back story itself here is pretty fascinating.
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How is the NFL supposed to know what the OTA affiliates are going to do with preempted programming? Or is this another example of people deciding to dump on the easy-to-hate Roger Goodell because they can get away with it?
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Or is this another example of people deciding to dump on the easy-to-hate Roger Goodell because they can get away with it?
Not sure where I stand on that, though I did find this comment following the Buzzerblog story amusing:
Looking forward to Goodell appearing on Celebrity Jeopardy and being unable to phrase his responses in the form of a question and changing his Final Jeopardy wager after the fact.
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Does this seem overblown to anybody else?
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Does this seem overblown to anybody else?
No, not really. Not if you read the e-mail chain.
1) The NFL mislead (because I'm too classy to say "lied to") Harry Friedman about the severity of how his two properties would be affected by CBS channels carrying the NFL on Thursday night.
2) At the same time it also wanted Jeopardy to write a category promoting the NFL Thursday games. Said category involved Jeopardy doing all of the work, paying for photos because the NFL didn't bother to provide any, and having the clear the material with the NFL. The NFL called it "cross-promotion" but never reciprocated.
3) This all happened in Wheel and Jeopardy's renewal year, which has a lot to do with how much Sony can charge for its shows, and for that matter whether stations are even willing to carry them.
4) The result of this will be many millions of dollars of lost revenue to Sony.
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2) At the same time it also wanted Jeopardy to write a category promoting the NFL Thursday games. Said category involved Jeopardy doing all of the work, paying for photos because the NFL didn't bother to provide any, and having the clear the material with the NFL. The NFL called it "cross-promotion" but never reciprocated.
Where I'm curious is to how NFL would reciprocate back. Ads on NFL network or during NFL on CBS?
From what I've read, Jeopardy is very willing to do synergistic things when it comes to categories for New York Times, National Geography Week or several other cross-promotional opportunities and NFL has burned a bridge here.
I think what might be the most galling thing for Sony is the fact that the TNF games have been awful; Plan 9 from Outer Space levels of bad.
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This is related to how the NFL (mis)handled the preemptions of Wheel and Jeopardy! for NFL coverage.
I dunno if I'd call it "mishandling." They got what they wanted and farked over Sony just fine.
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What the NFL fails to realize, is that with their misleading (to borrow Gene's phrase), that's a bunch of Sports Jeopardy material that might not happen should it get a second season. SJ, from what I've seen, uses quite a few pro football clues, as it should.
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This is related to how the NFL (mis)handled the preemptions of Wheel and Jeopardy! for NFL coverage.
I dunno if I'd call it "mishandling." They got what they wanted and farked over Sony just fine.
Good point.
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How is the NFL supposed to know what the OTA affiliates are going to do with preempted programming? Or is this another example of people deciding to dump on the easy-to-hate Roger Goodell because they can get away with it?
Should that matter? Do affiliates air Wheel/J! early if it is going to be preempted? Some stations might not want to preempt their news or other syndicated programming to shoehorn Wheel/J! in early. The latest a preempted episode would air would be sometime after midnight after the post-game show, the news, and late night programming, and CBS had to know that.
Reading the e-mails, it seems as if Harry was way too trusting of CBS and the NFL. If I were told that CBS picked up a four hour block of football to air in primetime, I'd immediately know what was up instead of being somehow blindsided by it.
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From what I've read, Jeopardy is very willing to do synergistic things when it comes to categories for New York Times, National Geography Week or several other cross-promotional opportunities and NFL has burned a bridge here.
I for one have always found the synergy categories mildly off-putting, although I can't quite put my finger on why. Probably the same reason some of the in-game sports advertising (eg. The team is in the [insert sponsor name here] red zone) is off-putting.
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I for one have always found the synergy categories mildly off-putting, although I can't quite put my finger on why. Probably the same reason some of the in-game sports advertising (eg. The team is in the [insert sponsor name here] red zone) is off-putting.
(http://lh4.ggpht.com/_S6rBQZdHEX8/TTsWqa77IzI/AAAAAAAAB7I/A6C00FmfHks/swayze_JohnCameron.jpg)
"Say what, now?"
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From what I've read, Jeopardy is very willing to do synergistic things when it comes to categories for New York Times, National Geography Week or several other cross-promotional opportunities and NFL has burned a bridge here.
I for one have always found the synergy categories mildly off-putting, although I can't quite put my finger on why. Probably the same reason some of the in-game sports advertising (eg. The team is in the [insert sponsor name here] red zone) is off-putting.
The borderline product placement aspect? Although the CFB (Sponsor) Red Zone is prolly a bit worse. When my employer's football team started up a few years back, they had sponsors for the red zone and first down whenever they played on offense. The local paper had a field day with it.
I'm more bothered by everything from the starting lineup to the halftime show to the highlight reel having a sponsor.
/Don't even get me started on the bowl games
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Some of those categories are worse than others. I'm assuming that there's some kind of clause in some of these that the category has to be played all the way through, and I noticed one game around Thanksgiving where the first round seemed to drag on forever because they left that one for last and it used video clues, then they seemed to try to race through the DJ round but there were still a ton of clues left on the board when time ran out.
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I'm assuming that there's some kind of clause in some of these that the category has to be played all the way through
That would surprise me a great deal, though your evidence is compelling. Do they ever do those clearly-sponsored categories in DJ? It would very much bolster your case if they didn't.
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I'm assuming that there's some kind of clause in some of these that the category has to be played all the way through
That would surprise me a great deal, though your evidence is compelling. Do they ever do those clearly-sponsored categories in DJ? It would very much bolster your case if they didn't.
Monday's Round 1 had a category filmed at a Post Office distribution center and it only four out of five got shown.
I suppose a company who wishes to partner with J! could ask for such a clause (I imagine it's something you have to ask for), but how would you enforce it?
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I've been thinking about it a bit more, and you're all welcome to tell me I'm inconsistent and thoroughly illogical. Part of it is certainly the perception of product placement, but there's something about the visual breakup if you will that accompanies many of these categories. A category about the Smithsonian Institution is one thing; a category in conjuction with Smithsonian magazine with their logo above it would be murh more likely to make me roll my eyes. By the same token I also find something mildly jarring about the categories that have one celebrity doing videos for all five clues and have them announcing the category (or even when it's a member of the Clue Crew). Those seem to break up the flow of reading the category names, too.
Like I said, it's illogical, but for whatever reason I don't care for it.
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Like I said, it's illogical, but for whatever reason I don't care for it.
It's not illogical, it's change. Which is hard.
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I'm assuming that there's some kind of clause in some of these that the category has to be played all the way through
That would surprise me a great deal, though your evidence is compelling. Do they ever do those clearly-sponsored categories in DJ? It would very much bolster your case if they didn't.
The ones which are obviously about promoting something tend to be in the first round, but I don't specifically remember other times when I noticed the round running long. However, J-archive tells me the category I was thinking of was about Tesla cars, and if anyone has both the spare cash and the ego to throw a few extra bucks at Harry Friedman in exchange for a guarantee that the rules will be stretched so that every last second of paid-for content will be aired, I think it would be Elon Musk.
I suppose a company who wishes to partner with J! could ask for such a clause (I imagine it's something you have to ask for), but how would you enforce it?
What I assume they did for Tesla seems reasonable as a way to make sure that certain clue(s) are revealed--put it in the first round and don't allow the round to end until that category has been finished, then take time out of the Double Jeopardy round if that means that the first round ran long.
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I noticed one game around Thanksgiving where the first round seemed to drag on forever because they left that one for last and it used video clues, then they seemed to try to race through the DJ round but there were still a ton of clues left on the board when time ran out.
Was it the episode where the Clue Crew spent five clues talking about Tesla's amazing electric cars (http://j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=4735)? I saw that episode and wondered the same thing you did, and even checked the end credits to see if Tesla was listed as one of the episode's sponsors. (It wasn't, though I don't know whether other branded categories show up there. I assume they had some kind of "special thanks to Tesla" credit in with the photo licensing disclaimers.)
On the other hand, I see that they had not one, but two categories of very short clues on that first-round board, undoubtedly to make up for the extra time the Tesla clues would take. But I too was surprised that I didn't remember hearing the "less than a minute" warning in round one, only to see nearly a full category left on the board in round two.
(Edit: I see we were typing at the same time.)
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I've been thinking about it a bit more, and you're all welcome to tell me I'm inconsistent and thoroughly illogical. Part of it is certainly the perception of product placement, but there's something about the visual breakup if you will that accompanies many of these categories. A category about the Smithsonian Institution is one thing; a category in conjuction with Smithsonian magazine with their logo above it would be murh more likely to make me roll my eyes. By the same token I also find something mildly jarring about the categories that have one celebrity doing videos for all five clues and have them announcing the category (or even when it's a member of the Clue Crew). Those seem to break up the flow of reading the category names, too.
Like I said, it's illogical, but for whatever reason I don't care for it.
I won't go so far as to snipe about the difficulty of entropy, but I'll say "so what?" They've been doing it for years. We're only talking about it because of the Sony leaks.
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Does this seem overblown to anybody else?
I thought so at first, then reconsidered. Remember, Harry Friedman making a big deal about Jeopardy and Wheel being pre-empted is an entirely different thing than when Brian Henke does it. He did everything right -- fighting fiercely for his properties, while keeping it out of the public eye. The electronic paper trail makes it pretty easy to see why he was miffed.
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Remember, Harry Friedman making a big deal about Jeopardy and Wheel being pre-empted is an entirely different thing than when Brian Henke does it.
There have never been any truer words more spoken in this forum than this. :) You reading, Brian?
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I suppose a company who wishes to partner with J! could ask for such a clause (I imagine it's something you have to ask for), but how would you enforce it?
It wouldn't be terribly hard provided the sponsored category was in the first round. A quick briefing from the stage manager before the show is all you need.
"Hey, players. That category's sponsored. You can leave it for last if you really want, but we're playing it out whether there's time or not. If the first round runs late, that means less time for Double Jeopardy, where the real money is. Catch my drift? Solid."
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Hmm, I'm not so sure they would tell the contestants ahead of time. Is there anything in the rules about round length? Seems like it can be arbitrary, but does that go against S&P?
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I'm more bothered by everything from the starting lineup to the halftime show to the highlight reel having a sponsor.
The NFL, to its credit, allows far fewer sponsorship mentions during its national TV broadcasts than any other league does. (You can get a good sense of that by comparing local preseason game broadcasts to a regular-season game.)
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Hmm, I'm not so sure they would tell the contestants ahead of time. Is there anything in the rules about round length? Seems like it can be arbitrary, but does that go against S&P?
Someone with more first-hand knowledge can answer, but I'm pretty sure it's been mentioned that contestants are sometimes briefed that a certain category must be taken top-to-bottom. This wouldn't be too much different.
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Hmm, I'm not so sure they would tell the contestants ahead of time. Is there anything in the rules about round length? Seems like it can be arbitrary, but does that go against S&P?
S&p are there to make sure the show follows its own rules. I presume the only rule is that the show comes in on time, and Friday had a long credit roll.
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Someone with more first-hand knowledge can answer, but I'm pretty sure it's been mentioned that contestants are sometimes briefed that a certain category must be taken top-to-bottom. This wouldn't be too much different.
That has been mentioned here before (http://www.gameshowforum.org/index.php/topic,3802.msg36833.html#msg36833).
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Remember, Harry Friedman making a big deal about Jeopardy and Wheel being pre-empted is an entirely different thing than when Brian Henke does it. He did everything right -- fighting fiercely for his properties, while keeping it out of the public eye.
If he really wanted to make a stink, he could have left the million-dollar win as the Thursday episode. He could have promoted the hell out of it, watch it get pre-empted, then watch for the uproar. He was more diplomatic than that, though.
I was surprised CBS ran that half-hour of pregame. They could have left in on NFL Network and start coverage at 8 eastern, which included 20 minutes of pregame anyway.
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Hmm, I'm not so sure they would tell the contestants ahead of time. Is there anything in the rules about round length? Seems like it can be arbitrary, but does that go against S&P?
Someone with more first-hand knowledge can answer, but I'm pretty sure it's been mentioned that contestants are sometimes briefed that a certain category must be taken top-to-bottom. This wouldn't be too much different.
I've shared first-hand that this is what happened in my game. There was one category that featured visual images, and we were told that we had to take that category from top to bottom. Something about how their server was loaded. I can't say whether they still do that or not.
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In this recent episode (http://j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=4744), video clues were taken out of order ($400; $600; $1,000; $800), so I assume that they've updated their technology to be able to handle contestant bouncing.
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Bumping this up to note that CBS will do Thursday Night Football again in 2015, so expect more producer wars down the road ... :)
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2015/01/18/cbs-and-nfl-to-continue-thursday-night-football-partnership-for-2015-season/351537/
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Why couldn't CBS just say to Harry, "if you've got a problem, go find yourself another distributor?" I would think that'd be their biggest bargaining chip.
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Why couldn't CBS just say to Harry, "if you've got a problem, go find yourself another distributor?"
Because then they lose whatever money they get carrying Jeopardy. And I'm guessing that's a large-ish sum these days.
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Why couldn't CBS just say to Harry, "if you've got a problem, go find yourself another distributor?"
Because then they lose whatever money they get carrying Jeopardy. And I'm guessing that's a large-ish sum these days.
But couldn't they say "we've got other properties that we can use to absorb whatever potential hit losing Jeopardy, and by association Wheel, would do to our bottom line?" if it came to that?
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But couldn't they say "we've got other properties that we can use to absorb whatever potential hit losing Jeopardy, and by association Wheel, would do to our bottom line?" if it came to that?
If they in fact do, sure. But it's way more complicated than that: not only do you have to have other properties, but you have to cover the loss of WoF and J! *and* still pull in whatever you would pulled in from those properties in the first place, and all you have to do that with are whatever resources you are currently applying to WoF and J!. And if they have properties that they think they can do *that* with...well, they'd find a way to get the resources they need to accomplish that now.