Surprising that not one person has mentioned this yet, but J! on GSN has jumped ahead on the Monday-Friday Noon run of J! to the 18th season(2001-2002) as of today's airing.

Hmm...now I can get a chance to see the first ep. with clean-shaven Alex. IIRC, that was around Nov. 2001, so it'll be a couple of months.

Probably because no one here watched the '97 / '98 season anymore so we wouldn't have known. Who would have thought they would FINALLY get a new season??

Massive conjecture on my part, but perhaps this is one of the benefits of the "improved" relationship between GSN and Kingworld/Sony that was mentioned with the Amazing Race deal last week.

If nothing else, should be interesting seeing the Million Dollar Masters tourney again.

Actually, it should be coming up in the next couple weeks. A check of the USENET archives says September 21st OAD, which would put the episode as airing on July 1st (Friday)

That's right...they DOUBLED THE POINTS!!! oh sorry, dollar values in Nov. '01.

OK, I talked to GSN and got a reason. Just for more publicity for my site, it's at Buzzer! in the link in my sig. Just to sum it up, GSN lost the season they ran for ages. And got new episodes.

FYI, that's the most recent episodes Sony will allow GSN to get.

So, can it now be inferred that GSN will rerun these ad infinitum for the next four years, then? Or, perhaps, is it just inside the realm of possibility that they might only go through these once (twice counting weekend run), and then change seasons (I know, strange concept).

It's beginning to look like a case of same shit, different day.

Jesus, you people whine a lot.

When will you get it through your heads that GSN does not care about the twelve of you who watch it enough to notice these things?

Truthfully, I couldn't care if they strip the episodes in seven slots per day every day until I'm drawing social security. I'm just wondering what the logic behind running a show until the eleven people who watch the shows enough to give a rat's ass get absolutely sick of them is.

They do it to save money. In fact, I'm surprised they went through the trouble to get the 2001-02 season, when they could've just replaced J! with another show that they already had the rights to.

well, if they're limited to 3-4 years being the most recent shows they can get, that would explain why we've never seen H2 on GSN. But hasn't GSN shown Whoopi's last episode? Or am I just dreaming on that?

It's the 2001-02 season of Squares they currently show, and Whoopi's last show was the season finale that season, so yes, they've shown it.

Actually, while watching some of the GSN shows, there is a brief bug mentioning that H2 is coming September 16. Little did I realize that this was from the original run and not a GSN placed bug (It was mentioned some time ago, with no proof, that GSN would eventually start airing H2)

I'll bet they're not even trying to get the 1978-79 NBC version.

If the 78-79 NBC version hasn't had an unfortunate meet-up with Mr. Bonfire already.

It seems that GSN is only trying to get the really recent stuff (with the exception being "The Men from GSN"). Are they just trying to attract the 18-29 demographic, or something?

Welcome to the world of broadcasting, where you just found out what the most coveted demographic is :-)

18-34.

However, GSN says that 25-54 is their overall target demo.

The 1978-79 run of "J!" seems to be intact in whole or in part. It's just that to a generation, Alex Trebek is Mr. "Jeopardy!", and the 1978-79 run has the additional hindrance of a revised format from "J!"'s other runs. And under the current arrangements, if they wanted to air it, they'd have to pay Sony another license fee that they don't want to pay.

Maybe they want the most recent version of J! so that the questions kind of coincide with the era so people at home can try to answer them.

Same reason for using the most recent season of Hollywood Squares that they have. So people might recognize the celebs easier.

Tomorrow's GSN airing of J! will feature Ramsey Campbell going for his fifth win. This will be an episode not seen in most of the country, until tomorrow(unless the episode aired in the cities that aired Saturday night J! reruns in 2002-03). Original proposed airdate: 9/11/01.

Does anybody know when the first ep. taped after 9/11 actually *aired* in syndication? I believe a number of eps. were taped without an audience for security reasons, and IIRC, didn't Alex make a mention?

The 2001 TofC were the first shows taped post-9/11, and they were done without an audience. They aired just before the conversion to the current dollar values in November 2001

Most of the nation didn't see the remaining 4 episodes from that week due to the continuing 9/11 coverage. In SF on 9/15, we only saw Mark Dawson's first game.

Ramsey's games were not repeated during the Saturday night J! reruns in 2002-03.

On a side note, I seem to remember a website that had the complete database of games this season, including contestant names and winnings...

Anyone know where I can find that?

www.j-archive.com

Amazingly, I couldn't find THAT?

Thanks for the quick response, Mike....

To quote one of the sitcom stars(can't remember name) "If I haven't seen it, IT'S NEW TO ME!!!". And in this case, Jeopardy really is new , with 4 never seen before episodes. Cool.