BLANKS
The final statement has been made and shown clearly on the television screen. That’s the moment for a panic to begin, because you realize your do not know the right question?
It’s considered “trivia” by many and you are without the required information needed to connect properly. You make special efforts, attempting to dredge up any hint which might led to the proper response, but it’s not there. Ten seconds remain. They go by as one!
You are , at that moment chagrined to become another unsuccessful watcher of Alex Trebec’s regular TV series called “Jeopardy”. It is on of my continuing favorites on all of TV – then and now. Jeopardy has been around for two decades and getting stronger than ever now with a recent adjusted rule which allows the winner to return day after day ...week after week ... month after month until he or she is defeated by a challenger. The current stayee on the Jeopardy set right now is a young man from Salt Lake City, Utah. His name is Ken Jennings. He is in to software. If he continues his nightly “take” of somewhere around the thirty-thousand dollar mark, he will hit the half-million area before this month of June wanes.
The “Jeopardy” format was devised by Merv Griffin and it has been in steady use for twenty years or so. It can be confusing to newcomers at first, until you realize that Jeopardy reverses the usual quiz show format by making statements and asking the contestant to ask the proper question. All replies must be stated in the form of a question, and this little quirk has clipped many an all-too-eager participant.
Ken Jennings, with a warm, boyish manner, appears to have taking up residence on the show in recent weeks and interest in “Jeopardy” is growing steadily with each repeated win. One of the strongest lures in television is, as it has always been, the sight of money in motion.
Television producers, one would think, would see this change taking place and realize that it is not new, startling TV program we have been importing recently in lo-budget hunks. A creative touch, applied to established shows, can engage the new generation of viewers while retaining the old. American television has been suffering a senseless depletion of established favorites due to this lack of any means of change and growth.
In you are considering changing to a new line of work, consider boning up on your trivia information skills. It is amazing how often you, or a member of your family, know the proper response “Final Jeopardy” when all three contestants draw blanks! And think about this we are often far to hard on ourselves when we grade our at-home “Jeopardy” test-runs. You are not expected to reply perfectly to all statements: just a bit over one- third of them makes you a winner.
A.L.M. June 18, 2004 [c666wd]
