ABC 7 in L.A. 'breaks' the news that Ken and past champions will compete in a 15 week 'ultimate' tourney to find the absolute best Jeopardy! player ever. Top prize - $2 million. The games will start in February and conclude in May.

Wow, sweep to sweep. What a concept!

Josh

Well the staff would be complete idiots not to find a way to bring him back.

I like this idea better than having Ken face people who gave him the most competition.

I'm sure at least one person here doesn't. ;-)

Any word on how the format will work.

Linkage?

The addy for KABC Channel 7 in L.A. is abc7.com. However, I did a search for "ultimate jeopardy" on that site and the first headline to come out is "Saddam Hussein deserves 'Ultimate Penalty'".

(BTW, Andy, I thought One-Word-Post day wasn't until January 8--the anniversary of P+'s debut. :-D)

No link yet... it was broadcast on their 4PM news. I checked the website to post a link and I didn't see any. Alex mentioned that 150 past players will be funneled down to Ken and 2 other players. Last place $$$ is $250,000, 2nd place gets $500,000.

I'm sure the story will show up somewhere on their website...

Josh

I wish I was given a guaranteed berth in a tournament final where I could walk away with no less than a quarter mil.

I'm glad I'm not one of the other 150.

WHo would one pick for the two players most likely to challenge Ken in that final game?

I'd wait to see the full field myself before picking, personally...

Since I was sworn to secrecy, I'll give it in a math problem. Ken needs two opponents. Those two opponents won their games against four other opponents. Those other four opponents also won a game at some point. Using this information, how many players will be needed to fill 75 shows?


--Mike

Hmmm. Three full months where the contestants are playing for points--not for dollars. This would then be going longer than 1986's All-American Scrabble Tournament.
I thought the Jeopardy! web site might have something on this. Stosh's Place has nothing, either, but maybe he's waiting for confirmation from cbs.com

Why do I get this gut feeling I smell a major dud story here? I've searched high and low on the net to no avail. And 15 weeks? That sounds vaguely familiar to an idea posted on here...

But soon, I bet someone high up in the realm will pick up on this as true news... I'm just waiting for it...

This is yet another one of those times when our own members are ahead of the curve on a breaking story. I too have been sworn to secrecy (strangely, by two different sources...), but I'm sure all the details will come out soon enough. I see huge plusses and huge potential minuses for the stunt, and there will be plenty of opportunity for us to discuss them all between now and...whenever.

Not enough information. With an extremely high number of wild card slots in the early rounds, I get a possible field as low as 57. There may be a lower possible number--I just added brackets in reverse, each bracket letting all but three players advance until the quarter-finals, and then tacked on players to get to a round 75 shows at the end/beginning.

Changing the number of wild cards gives lots and lots of different possible answers.

No wild cards means either that some games will have a number of players other than 3, or that some game winners will not advance to the next round(s), AFAICT.

Color me skeptical but it seems way too soon to be retapping into The Ken Jennings Well. And for a tournament that is to last in excess of three months? Sorry. The ol' spider sense is tingling on this one. I'll be happy to be mistaken. We shall see what we shall see when we see it.

I think the producers are just afraid that people will forget who Ken is if they wait too long. I would sincerely hope that this means Ken will not be participating in a traditional ToC, though. (No offense to him, of course.)

Here's all I can think of:

48 sixteenths = 144 players
16 eights = 48 winners
6 quarters = 18 players (16 winners + Spangenberg + Forrest)
2 semis = 6 winners
3 game final
= 75 shows

Or:

3 game Final: 2 players + Ken
2 semis: 6 players
6 quarters: 18 players (9 winners + 9 new)
9 eights: 27 players (15 winners + 12 new)
15 16ths: 45 players (40 winners + 5 new)
40 32nds: 120 players
= 75 shows

(By "new", I mean players that got "byes" to that specific round)

I also figure the field is 146 challengers (hence the "almost 150" in the news report)...

For those of you who wonder if Steve jumped on it already, here you go.

The Inquisitive One

Yeah, like this means anything at all... We'll see what happens with this. At this point, I'd be willing to bet it disappears by tomorrow without any reason.

Wow.
This made me chuckle, and I don't know why; except maybe the fact he's only been registered a month...and already figured out Steve is usually full of....generic brand beef stew.

This is legitimate; Beverly is pulling verbatim from a press release that went out to media fairly late today. I'm sitting here looking at it.

An excerpt: "Invited to compete in the tournament will be all previous winners of Jeopardy!'s annual Tournament of Champions, College Championship and Teen Tournament, and over 100 of the top-scoring, undefeated, five-time champions in the show's 21-year history. Nearly 150 players will compete in a series of games which will narrow the field to two players, who will compete against Jennings in the finals, to air in May 2005."

Wish I was doing a story on this instead of the local stuff.

- CA -

Yes, I may be only registered here for a month, but I've been with GR over a year now.. I know the ropes! :-)

Now as for the above quote.. I've been searching the AP and the major media outlets all night, and IF, and I use that term LOOSELY, it did break at 4pm on the west, it would have hit AP by now, and would have at least made Top Entertainment News, if not Top Stories. Nothing. Not a thing at all. And I can't even find anything other than here and on Steve's site. So there is no outside verification on this story at all.

I have a great idea for a title of this tournament...

WIN KEN JENNINGS' MONEY!

I think it'll sell. :)

Andrew M. Greenstein

Proof #1: I've seen the paperwork players had to do.

Proof #2: Here's ABC's story, which is from AP. I believe there was an embargo on the story until this morning.

Since it has broke, here's the format. This may be subject to change based on player availability/and or my failing memory:

First round: 135 players play over 9 weeks. Losers take home $5K.

Second round: The 45 winners from round 1 plus 9 players who were given byes into round 2. Losers take home $15K.

Third round: The 18 winners play. Losers take home $25K or $50K (I can't remember which).

Fourth round: The 6 winners play. Losers take home $50K or $100K (I can't remember which).

Fifth round: The 2 winners vs. Ken in a three-game final. Third place gets $250K, second place gets $500K and the winner gets $2M.

What was unclear to me is whether a first round winner gets to keep accumulated money or simply earns what the loss limit was for the round they eventually lost.


--Mike

Players in other tournaments don't keep the dollars earned in the maingame until the final(augmented to whatever the minimum amounts are/were for second and third place in the final when needed).

WOW!! Now this is how you hold an all-time tournament! American Idol, eat your heart out. Anyway, do you think the finals of this tourney will be held in New York or something of that variety like the first one?

The initial poster said he saw the story on the ABC affiliate in Los Angeles. Two of us (myself included) confirm it without going into details. Steve posts a story that was clearly taken from a press release, including attributed quotes from Jennings, Trebek and Friedman. And yet you express your doubt not once, not twice, but three times?

A healthy skepticism is one thing, this borders on denial.

Try Google News. It searches 4,500 news sources at one time.

Personally, I prefer to see it on Yahoo! News. Sure enough, here it is.

Generic brand beef stew?

Matt.. I hate to be the voice of dissent on this, but it did NOT hit the AP wire until about 8:15 this morning. The news was not posted from an accredited source that I could find. I personally do not get my daily news off of a message board, or through word of mouth. I choose to take my news from accredited sources that have been shown reliable throughout many many years.

Steve's site posted it, but as we all remember, he also posted the Pyramid debacle a while back, as well as a Price blunder on MDS's not too long ago, not to mention the other small blunders. I for one, see through the bible stance that media outlets have known him by, only by the Jeopardy fiasco. Many of us know the site for more than just that. And as for a press release... Usually a release as such would be either posted on Jep's site, or the production company, neither of which had it posted.

ABC7 in LA did NOT have the story on their site at all, at least last time I checked at 8AM this morning. So as for that, I don't know what to say. You would think if a story that big were to break, they would have at least posted it on their website.

So you tell me. Given the information, if you did not know about the scenario beforehand, would you be reluctant to keep a thread as such up, not being able to confirmed the report through a major source?

No, my impression is that you actually take great delight in being the voice of dissent on this. Waiting for a source that satisfies your mindset is one thing. Actively assuming the information to be false because your source hasn't reported it yet is what I have a problem with.

You're new here, so you don't know yet how seriously we take false or even unfounded rumors. The original poster said what his source was. The guy before you told you he was reading from the press release! I don't know what you're used to at Golden Road, but around here, someone who is that specific and is lying about it doesn't stay a member very long.

Also, you don't mean "accredited". The AP isn't licensed by the National Bureau of Reliable Sources. You merely mean "credible". Telling one of the moderators (as well as three other valued members) that you don't find his information credible is perhaps not the right foot to start out on around here.

Finally, and not incidentally, you were wrong.

So anyway, welcome to the Game Show Forum. You are going to get a lot of information here ahead of the AP or other mainstream sources. You're also going to get information that the AP doesn't even bother to report. Ultimately, I'm not all that concerned whether you'll believe it or not. But if you're going to make a big deal about NOT believing everything that we have before Steve or the AP does, you're going to be very busy, and more than a little annoying. And the vast majority of the time, you'll be wrong.

I hate to be the voice of dissention on this, but Steve's site was probably the only outlet on the continent that did not report on Ken Jennings' defeat until after it happened!

I also have the utmost confidence in Matt and Chris that had the information been false, the poster would have been dealt with seriously. So, why does Steve (or) anyone have to report it if we have our own credible sources confirming the reports?

Tunahead, I understand your skepticism, but given Matt O.'s stature around here, I'd take his word as gold (and that details would emerge soon enough).

Let me go the other way for a moment as far as a "breaking story" goes. I actually knew of GSN's plans for their 3/15/04 rebranding and doing away with a lot of shows about two months or so before the info was publicized. My mother works in an ad agency and representatives from GSN came to her office to pitch their future plans (Mom saved for me a hard-to-read fax with names of the new shows). This obviously wasn't for public consumption (not even here), and I didn't want to jeopardize any potential relationship between GSN and my mother's agency by going public (I grappled with the question of whether to E-mail our moderators what I knew before opting against it because I didn't want to take any chances--I hope Chris and Matt [David was not yet a moderator at that point] aren't mad at me for doing so, but I also supposed that they'd find out in some other way, shape or form).

Point being--the story of GSN rebranding was major (in the grand scheme of this board) but wouldn't be picked up by any of the media outlets until the appropriate point in time. If I had violated the trust and posted something about it, some might've believed me while others might not have (even though I knew it was true). But eventually details would come out.

Doug

Having personally revoked the posting privileges of the last person who felt it necessary to post "news" without regard to either the accuracy of the information or the credibility of the source, I can attest to the fact that we deal with such matters seriously.

I might also note that earlier this year, one of the AP's political reporters filed a story claiming that at a rally for President Bush, Bush's supporters booed at the announcement of former President Clinton's hospitalization and that "Bush did nothing to stop them." The story was false -- there was no booing -- and the AP reporter who was at the rally had earlier said outright that his "mission" was to make sure that Bush didn't win re-election. I'd sooner trust many of the fine folks on this board than I'd trust the AP... particularly when it comes to game show news.

Absolutely. Because New York is the center of the universe. Ask any New Yorker. They'll tell you.

*mutter*

And besides, for something this long I have the feeling they'll stick in Culver City for the whole thing, rather than try to move it elsewhere--probably cuts down on the spoiler factor, too.

15 weeks of additional special shows this season really will piss off the contestant pool, as the number of contestant spots will decrease by 150 due to this tournament. This assumes they don't bother with the Teen tourney or celeb week or second Kids' week, delete those four weeks of special shows and it's still 110 contestant spots decreased.

As I passed the test in June, I say it's too bad for me. I, nor anyone else, has a Constitutional right to be on a game show. It is their show, they can pick whoever they want. They have an obligation to put the best show they can in order to get maximum ratings. If they feel this will do it, more power to them. (I don't think the ratings will change too much except for the final shows of the tournament).

That is to say..."Not I, nor anyone else, has a Constitutional right to be on a game show." Right?

It's what J! had to do after the Ken-run.

My biggest PROBLEM with this is that they can't top it. Once they do this, they really run a risk of J! becoming obsolete.

As far as the contestant pool is concerned, I just don't see what they can do with all the Ken-mania around. I certainly would not want Ken in another ToC after this situation, though.

I just think that they had to do this, and people are just going to have to live with the results as far as being in the pool is concerned.

Another question...will they be doing this in lieu of a ToC with Ken in the Fall?

I mean, after a $2Mil competition with him, where he has a one in 3 shot at the megabucks, what's the point of a $250K tourney where he has a 1 in 15 shot at a lot less?

Isn't it "Neither I, nor anyone else?"

:-)

Doug -- and the countdown to 900 continues

Will there even BE a regular TofC next Fall? Clearly they won't have 13(if Ken is a part of it, and Kermin the college champ is a part of it) or 14 champions who have won four or more games(they've had only one three time champ in the four weeks since Ken lost), with all these weeks of regular games being taken up by this tourney. I don't see a regular TofC happening until May 2006 at the earliest.

My prediction on the next TOC: November 2006.

Well heres to hoping that the ending doesnt leak everywhere.

So Ken doesn't appear until the end. Not really much chance for over-exposure then.

But then, there's also little draw until the end for the casual fan who just wants to see Ken. I don't foresee huge ratings increases, should be pretty much normal.

If it's done like the Masters tourney from a few years ago, then I think keeping a secret might be fine. Then again, word about this tourney has already hit the press, so it might be a problem.

BTW, did the Masters score any significant ratings?

As far as the Masters went ratings wise, I saw no ratings higher than a 7.5 at max. Keep in mind it was aired in May 2002 & the sun's still in the sky at 7PM in the East(6PM Central)(arbitrary time slot because most stations air it at that hour). Therefore, many viewers tend to be outside at that point during the late stages of the season.