I don’t think so. Besides, he answers way more questions right than his competitors. If you make the questions harder, you just make it less likely that his competitors can get any points at all. If you want to get him off the show, you make the questions first-grade easy, Make it a contest to determine who can ring in first. Then change the timing of the lights that allow people to buzz in and put him up against champion race car drivers and fencers.
Then go to jail.
Besides, as noted above, James is ratings gold, at least for now.
Jail?
After the quiz show scandals of the 50s, any attempt to “get rid of” a successful competitor by altering the way the game is played or manipulating the board would get the producers in a butt-load of legal trouble.
I don’t think that anyone from the quiz show scandals went to jail and most of the big shots were back on tv several years later. Back then, they gave answers to people directly. Making the questions relatively easier doesn’t fall into that category.
I think the FCC has rules about altering a competition while it is still going on. They can change the rules after James craps out, but not before.
Jail might be a bit of hyperbole, I’ll admit. But the blow to the reputation of the show and people involved with it would be tremendous. I’m pretty sure Trebeck wouldn’t stand for it.
That’s for sure. Plus, as stated earlier, he has created a huge spike in ratings. It would be silly to get rid of him.
How far in advance do they tape? I think that I read that they have finished the season already. It may be a long wait to see how the streak continues or he may be done already.
I think they finished filming in February. Anybody know when the end of the season is?
I’ve seen interviews with this guy all over the place. It’s gotta be weird to be doing these interviews, when he know when it all ends.
He may not know if he kept it up until the end of the season. Finding information on when the season ends has stumped me so far but it looks like the end of July is typical.
It will be interesting to see him on the annual Tournament of Champions; how will he do against the best recent players?
When is the ToC? Is he eligible for the next one?
If not the next one, surely he’s eligible for the one after that. There’s one every year. I think Ken Jennings was still winning at the end of the season and so he wasn’t in the tournament until his second year?
Who said anything about changing the rules? I just said they were using harder questions*. There’s nothing illicit about that. Also nothing provable.
*I was also half-joking.
Also, it’s weird to see Trebek in the introduction commenting on how much social media attention James is getting. Like you’d know, Trebek, as that was recorded months before the show airs.
It was a good prediction, but not accurate when he said it.
Is it possible they could splice in the intro later? Because at the beginning of one of James’s earliest games, Alex Trebek commented on how his performance was resembling Ken Jennings’s.
I agree with Just Asking Questions. I certainly didn’t suggest changing the rules. The rule says respond to the clue with a question. There is no rule that says how hard the clue has to be. The rule says ring in after the lights come on. I suggested changing the regularity with how long after the question is asked that the light comes on. Thus, players have to watch the light and use their reflexes to buzz in rather than anticipating when the buzzer will be unlocked. I don’t see how changing the difficulty of the questions or the timing of the lights is changing the rules.
I also agree that he is ratings gold so they should want to keep him on for a while.
I remember that and like Dewey Finn, I suspect they can splice those shots in later. I remember the line about Ken Jennings and I thought the comment was premature. In retrospect, it looks prescient but it was probably just a post-production trick made simple by keeping Alex’s suits, shirts, and ties in wardrobe.
If you couldn’t change anything while anyone was still competing, then you’d never be able to change anything, because there’s always one of the three players who’s the returning champion. Whenever someone eventually unseats Holzhauer, then that person would still be competing.
How do they avoid the fact that those who attended the taping of the last *Jeopardy * of the season will know who was the champion and have no incentive to keep it a secret?
I think upthread someone wondered when the season ends, so I Googled and according to the J! Archive, this season runs from 10Sep2018 through 26Jul2019. And the Tournament of Champions for 2017 was in November. I don’t see one in 2018.