Jeopardy! (04/17/19)

[Axl]

Daily Doubles & FJ are supposed to be perceived as difficult. Just raising the difficulty of, like one DJ Daily Double & FJ would stop any crazy runs. That leaves 59 clues that don't need to stump people.

The relative difficulty of all clues in the first two rounds is determined solely by their position on the board.  Daily Doubles are not designed to be extra hard.  They do have a little more leeway in Final Jeopardy! which they may choose to exercise, but I don't think they can do the kind of Budget Mode that Roger did.  Making the climax of every show too hard for even James Holzhauer is a pretty blatant tell.

I'm sure that Harry Friedman and his crew will be doing some evaluation.  Some behind-the-scenes changes were made during the Jennings run, but nothing that affected the difficulty of the clues.

Probably looked that way after Michael Larson and the Perfect Bid incidents caused their respective shows to add clearly reactionary changes.

I don't think those situations are comparable.  PYL and TPiR made changes that were basically imperceptible to anyone but game show fanatics.  It never occurs to most viewers that a Lucky $even game with lots of 2s and 9s is deliberately set up to be lost, or that they're suddenly using 12 oz. jars instead of 8 oz to throw contestants off.  Most people just think of it as bad luck.  Certainly, no PYL viewer except a Larson wannabe would think, "Wait a minute, they added more board patterns!"  But if Jeopardy! started using significantly harder clues and payouts start falling to, say <$20,000 on average, ordinary viewers will notice quickly.

[MSTieScott]

I'm sure that Harry Friedman and his crew will be doing some evaluation.  Some behind-the-scenes changes were made during the Jennings run, but nothing that affected the difficulty of the clues.

When he finished his regular-season run, Ken Jennings averaged about $34,000 per episode. James is currently averaging twice that much. I don't know what the average expected payout per episode is, but I'd guess that $25,000 is a high estimate. If I'm right, James is currently winning about two and a half times as much as the show is budgeted to give away. That kind of deficit adds up very quickly.

A small overage for the season can be justified, especially when it comes with a bunch of free publicity. But let's say James sticks around for just ten more episodes (which seems extremely plausible). If the producers don't do something to lower the payouts between now and the end of the season, that alone is a budget overage of nearly one million dollars. Publicity or not, spending an extra $1,000,000 of your company's money is cause for concern.

[Bluescreen_ODeff]

My idea to curb the budget is to end "the sky's the limit" rule and, say, award a huge cash bonus (like $1 million) for reaching 25 games, almost as if to say, "Will you take a million dollars to leave?"

Another idea is to buy insurance (seeing as there may be some copycats after James' run).

[gamesurf]

The Atlantic just published an interesting article about possible budget ramifications, including an interview with Bob Boden.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/04/james-holzhauer-vs-jeopardys-prize-budget-game-show/587668/

Highlights:

Whatever his method, Holzhauer is far exceeding the show’s average single-day winnings, which a Jeopardy fan website calculated to be $19,980. With his sometimes six-figure daily prizes, how much damage is Holzhauer doing to the show’s finances?

“Every game show has a prize budget,” says Bob Boden, a former head of programming at Game Show Network who has worked on dozens of shows there and elsewhere, including Family Feud. “Typically, for a long-running show the prize budget is determined by way of averages of what has been won in the past.” Large deviations from such averages can strain these prize budgets. “James’s performance, I’m sure, is causing grief for an accountant somewhere,” says Boden, who’s now an executive at the production company Entertainment Studios.

Estimating payouts is easier for some types of shows than others. “You know that the winner of Survivor is going to get $1 million, and you know what the second- and third-place players will get, so the prize budget on that is locked,” Boden says. Budgets for shows such as Jeopardy with variable winnings are harder to project.

Some production companies protect against that unpredictability by taking out insurance policies that cover abnormally large jackpots. This is common, Boden says, for shows such as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, in which giving out the top prize is rare but really costly. But he says he’d be surprised if Jeopardy, which has a prize structure less prone to extremes, has such a policy. (Representatives for Jeopardy and Sony Pictures Television, which produces it, did not respond to requests for details about the show’s financial workings.)

Jeopardy, though, should fare just fine during Holzhauer’s reign, for two reasons. First, prize budgets are generally not game shows’ biggest expenses. Boden says that the bills for paying production crews and on-air talent tend to be higher. (The salary of Alex Trebek, Jeopardy’s host, has been reported to be $10 million a year.)

Second, Holzhauer’s stellar performances are drawing in more viewers. Normally, Boden says, it’s not compelling TV for a single player to run up the score, “but in a situation like this, where records are being set and broken every night, the excitement, I believe, outweighs the lopsided results.”

That excitement will almost definitely help the show’s bottom line. Increased viewership often translates to more lucrative ad sales (though, Boden notes, this uptick in ad value isn’t immediate and would take some time to kick in). Spikes in popularity are also good for whatever additional revenue streams a show may have, such as merchandising or interactive gaming. More symbolically, Boden says, a thrilling contestant like Holzhauer can further burnish the reputation of a long-running game show like Jeopardy, solidifying its place in the canon of American TV.

Jennings was extremely valuable to Jeopardy in this regard, but with average winnings of about $34,000 an episode, he was a bargain compared with Holzhauer, who’s averaging roughly $71,000. In fact, if reports of Trebek’s salary are indeed correct, Holzhauer is currently outearning even the show’s host on a per-episode basis—though, of course, he has a bit less job security.

Lol at the last bit--has there ever been another example of a contestant potentially earning more than their host over multiple episodes?

[pannoni1]

Lol at the last bit--has there ever been another example of a contestant potentially earning more than their host over multiple episodes?

PYL's Michael Larsen could presumably count, since they had to split his appearance into two episodes, and I'm pretty shore Peter Tomarken didn't earn $55K a show back then. This is just a once-in-a-generation performance that is causing one of the great game show performances of all time in the field of Thom McKee and of course Ken Jennings.

If a cap were to return, I'd do winnings cap over appearances. IMO a million (plus anything earned on that final appearance) would be a good cap, since by most accounts, that's what most people think nowadays as the "top possible prize", with Wheel and WWTBAM offering similar maximum payouts. A more venusian player (more conservative wagering strategy) would be easier to unseat, but prove their durability. There could even be a secondary limit where all winnings above a set amount would become an annuity and/or a percentage gets donated to a charity.

At least when you had The Joker's Wild and Tic Tac Dough, the payouts were reasonably placed, though with one short-term budget windfall. On TTD, The Secret Category disappeared IIRC after many contestants chose it, but on those shows, the payouts are remarkably steady: about $4000 per episode, which is about $10,000-$15,000 when adjusted for inflation. I'm sure that the return of a cap/appearance limit may cause some fans to be appalled, but sometimes, you have to trim the fat and be reasonable. I'd probably expect a difficulty spike in some of the questions, especially those written for the Daily Double though before any of the "caps' that I described above.

[JayC]

I don't know if I could see them instituting a winnings cap just because of James-- double-digit day runs are a rare case. Many more returning champions are defeated on their 5th day or earlier.

James' winning average being higher than Alex's per show salary is certainly noteworthy though. I wonder if James' run would incline them to look for a significantly less expensive replacement for Alex once he retires (someone with little prior TV experience) rather than a more established name who would command a salary similar to Alex's.

Are the prizes awarded in the show's tournaments covered under an insurance policy?

[PatrickRox80]

Are the prizes awarded in the show's tournaments covered under an insurance policy?

I'm pretty sure they're sponsored by Consumer Cellular now.

[bigblue999]

I'm pretty sure they're sponsored by Consumer Cellular now.

The Teacher's Tournament is sponsored by Farmers Insurance.

[gamesurf]

PYL's Michael Larsen could presumably count, since they had to split his appearance into two episodes, and I'm pretty shore Peter Tomarken didn't earn $55K a show back then. This is just a once-in-a-generation performance that is causing one of the great game show performances of all time in the field of Thom McKee and of course Ken Jennings.

Technically, yeah. Larson’s run was multiple episodes. One game though.

Also, found a few sources claiming Howie only made $75K per DoND episode, and Regis $100K per Millionaire ep, so pretty much any big winner on those shows would beat the host’s salary. But those are one-time only wins, it’s much harder to do find examples of it happening consistently and reliably to the same contestant.

The only show I could find where it could have happened over multiple games was Twenty-One, since its ridiculous original payout structure gave $100K-$400K per win. Rahim Oberholtzer won $1.2 million before they revamped it—hard to imagine Maury’s salary came close to those numbers. And since Rahim won his games rather quickly and they played multiple games per episode, even THAT run only lasted two episodes.

Are the prizes awarded in the show's tournaments covered under an insurance policy?

I mean, there's a 100% chance that those amounts are going to be given away at the end of the tournament, so there's nothing to insure against...

[ooboh]

For the sake of technicality, Michael Larson’s run was actually only one episode — it was split into Episode 188A and Episode 188B.

[pricefan18]

James is now at $942,000 + after tonight for 13 wins, got another $90k this time. He should crack a million tomorrow with how plays and bets.

[Axl]

A small overage for the season can be justified, especially when it comes with a bunch of free publicity. But let's say James sticks around for just ten more episodes (which seems extremely plausible). If the producers don't do something to lower the payouts between now and the end of the season, that alone is a budget overage of nearly one million dollars. Publicity or not, spending an extra $1,000,000 of your company's money is cause for concern.

Given the ratings -- especially in the sales demo, where they are beating almost everything except sports -- I think the last thing Sony and CBS would want now would be for James to lose before the start of May sweeps, which begins on Thursday.  If this leads to a big boost in the most important sweeps period of the year, that could give Business Affairs some massive negotiating leverage for upcoming renewals.

This may not be the ideal situation for the show, but they've got to root for him now because, to use terminology James would appreciate, they are kind of "pot committed."  I'm sure they'd rather go over budget, say, $1.5 million and get a sweeps bump vs. $1 million but be pissing air when it counts.

I wonder if the show is already making back some money on this.  Typically, these ratings would take a while to filter into the ad revenue bloodstream, but they've had 2-3 months to prepare.  The show keeps a minute of advertising time for itself.  I'm totally speculating here, but maybe they worked with Sales on this early and are already getting higher rates for the barter spots.  They semi-spoiled it on their own Facebook page, which is very unusual for Jeopardy!  They've clearly been feeding stories to Vulture to keep control of the narrative.  I don't know whether it will ultimately pay off for Jeopardy!, but they seem to be exploiting it very effectively.

[MSTieScott]

I admit that I know very little about the advertising side of the television-making process. My assumption is that any ratings spike the show is currently enjoying will mostly go away when James loses. It's great if the show can turn its May sweeps numbers into increased advertising revenue, especially in the here and now (I have no idea what advertising rates are these days; I'll assume that higher ratings will allow them to take in more than the $50,000 per episode James is costing them). But if James isn't there in November (and assuming the ratings consequently drop back down closer to normal), will the show then be forced to give away a bunch of make-goods?

It still wouldn't surprise me to see tougher Final Jeopardy!s in the near future. If three out of five per week are designed to result in triple-misses, it wouldn't look too blatant. And heaven knows the company isn't afraid of looking blatant about it, considering some of the bonus round puzzles Wheel of Fortune uses.

[Axl]

My assumption is that any ratings spike the show is currently enjoying will mostly go away when James loses.

Once he's out, the ratings will definitely go down (and maybe sooner than that if people start finding him boring), but it would be better for the show if that drop happens in June rather than within the next month.  They have the usual Teachers Tournament coming up soon to cool off their money woes for a couple of weeks... and coincidentally make it more likely for James to play all the way through sweeps. 

It still wouldn't surprise me to see tougher Final Jeopardy!s in the near future.

It may be my imagination, but it feels as though main game clues have gotten a bit tougher just in the last couple of days.  Most clues with an obscure question have a hint built in to guide players to a reasonable guess.  Seems like there are fewer of those hints now.  Perhaps they are trying out a few strategies around the edges to see what they can accomplish without being too obvious about it.  Looking ahead, another sneakier way to save some cash after James is gone might be to start casting lower-scoring auditioners.  The alchemy they use to select contestants has always been a little mysterious.

[GRWHAMMY the 2nd]

I wonder what The Beast (from The Chase) is thinking, considering James once beat HIM on the US version of that show