A Thought on Game Shows

There is this theory floating out there that traditional game shows are being "dumbed down" to make them more "accessible" to everyday viewers. The lifelines on Millionaire, the lack of any skill whatsoever on Deal or No Deal, and the very title of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader are cited as evidence.

I'm not so sure.

What seems to be disappearing is not the quiz itself, but the "game" element. Deal or No Deal is one player against the Banker. Millionaire and Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader are one player against the question stack. Even 1 vs. 100, a show which has come a long way since its dreadful early days, portrays the "Mob" as a faceless, nameless bogeyman present only to put an obstacle in the way of the One.

Not coincidentally, I think this is why so many of the other quizzes in the Prime Time Millioonaire era failed. 21, Winning Lines and their cousins had too much competition for the taste of the American consumer.

Even Jeopardy is not immune to anti-competitiveness. Remember when Jeopardy was the most-watched show on TV three years ago? Thank you, Ken Jennings. Ken turned Jeopardy into "one guy against the board," and America lapped it up. Since becoming an actual "game" again, Jeopardy's ratings have returned to their pre-Ken levels.

Need evidence? See if you can name these four Jeopardy legends. If you're a fan of the show, ask somebody who has heard of Ken Jennings but doesn't watch the show regularly.

1 -- Who won the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, breaking Ken's record for most money won?

2 -- Who finished third in the UToC Finals?

3 -- Who won the most recent Jeopardy Tournament of Champions?

4 -- Which Jeopardy champion won 19 games in a row over two seasons, second only to Ken Jennings?

As long as TV quizzes have "winners" and "losers," they will struggle in the ratings.

But if "everybody wins," everybody watches.

Blech.

SILT -- 4/4/07

Stuff I learned:

Tito was Croatian.
The Sava River separates Croatia from Bosnia/Herzegovena.
Merton College is part of Oxford.
In Japanese, kohhi is coffee, kaji is fire, and atsui means "heated."
Cardial Wolsey was an advisor to Henry VIII.
Other Voices, Other Rooms is the first novel by Truman Capote.
The Christmas Rose has black roots.
Betty's Blue and Twickle Purple are varieties of lavendar.
Cameron Diaz was dating Justin Timberlake in 2006.
Stedman's last name is Graham.
Shannon Tweed is the wife of Gene Simmons.
Jackie Onassis once had a relatioship with a man named Maurice Templesman.
The Pierce Arrow is a kind of car.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is also a Broadway musical.
Harker and Morris teamed up to kill Count Dracula.
Jean Valjean dies in the presence of Cosette, his beloved.
Randall McMurphy is smothered to death in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Kingfisher is a brand of Indian beer.
The Battle of Inkerman was during the Crimean War.
There was a Czar in 1604 named "The False Dmitri."
Boris Coudanov's death triggered the "Time of Troubles."
Carl Sagan wrote the first scientific paper on nuclear winter.

SILT -- 3/28

SILT:

• Rome fell to the Allies in 1944, not 43.
• The Jazz Singer came out in 1927, not 1929.
• Amundsen reached the South Pole in 1911, not 1917.
• There is a rite involving witches which use a bell, book, and candle.
• More yiddish -- a Jewish wedding canopy is called a chuppah.
• Sinatra won an Oscar for From Here to Eternity.
• Nancy, Ava, Mia, and Barbara are Sinatra wives.
• The runners in Blade Runner were called replicants.
• Battle Bots is Conedy Central's answer to Robot Wars.
• Robby the Robot appeared in Forbidden Planet and The Invisible Boy.
• W. B. Yeats wrote the poem "Easter, 1916."
• Victoria Woodhull ran for President in 1872.
• A nix is a water spirit.
• Gerald Ford represented Grand Rapids, Michigan in Congress.
• Carel Fabritius was Rembrandt's most prominent pupil.
• Rembrandt was also known for self-portraits.

Look up:

• More about Rembrandt.
• English words from the Yiddish.
• A biography of Sinatra.
• The whole "Bell, Book, and Candle" deal.

Weakness Exposed -- Rat Pack trivia, Visual recognition of artistic style, Yiddish.

SILT from the Calendar

From the desk calendar:

• Faulkner wrote "A Rose for Emily."
• Pan is the moon of Saturn closest to the planet
• Pan played the pipe.
• Elmore Leonard wrote Hombre.
• Memorial Day was originally set on May 30.
• Stevie Wonder had a hit with "Happy Birthday." Now that is talent.
• King Arthur was in The Gododdin and Daughter of Tintagel.
• Moose and elk are basically the same.
• Janus had two faces.

SILT -- March 26

Stuff I learned:

• Director John Carpenter also composed the scores to "The Thing," "Halloween," and "The Fog."
• That famous picture of the sailor kissing the girl in Times Square celebrated V-J Day, not V-E Day.
• No one knows which Johannes is the namesake of Johannesburg, South Africa.
• The chariot pulled in a harness race is called a "sulky."
• Emerial Lagasse is from the Boston area.
• Paul Prudhomme is the Pavlovian response for cajun chef.
• Irma Rombauer wrote The Joy of Cooking.
• Martin Yan wrote The Joy of Wokking.
• Italian chef Giacca de Laurentiis is the granddaughter of film producer Dino.
• "A Horse with No Name" was a hit by America.
• Brasil 66 sang "Mas Que Nada" and "One Note Samba."
• "No More Words" and "The Metro" were by Berlin.
• Asia sang "Heat of the Moment."
• A nebulizer turns asthma medicine into a mist.
• The bulb syringes we used to use on the girls' noses when the were babies are called "irrigation syringes."
• Abe Fortas resigned from the Supreme Court in 1969 because of a financial scandal.
• Jacob Riis was a socially-conscious photographer.
• Lillian Helman wrote Watch on the Rhine and The Children's Hour. I should really know that by now.

Look up:

• Pictures from V-E Day celebrations, especially in New York.
• The connection between Crosby, Stills & Nash and the city of Marrakesh.
• The movies of Dino de Laurentiis.
• Balfour's Declaration

Weakness exposed -- Pop Music, Famous Chefs. Look for a list of "Exposed" categories to appear here sometime soon.

SILT -- 3/22

More SILT from yesterday:

• North Korea is north of Japan. I thought it was south.
• A pogrom is an attack on Jews. The word derives from the Russian word for "destruction."
• Babe Ruth once coached first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Things to look up:

• The history of pogroms.

Jeopardy has had several diabolical coin-flip clues lately. Rumor has it there's a new writer in the crew. I hope so, because clues like this reek of inexperience.

Re: today's show -- I was 51-4 going into the last category, about Hal Prince. I finished 52-8. Still a good day, but what might have been . . .

Stuff I Learned Today

• To remove an appendix, first make a McBurney's incision.
• The first disease known to be caused by a bacterium was anthrax.
• The Tugela waterfalls in South Africa are over 2600 feet tall.
• A guy named Pissarro was a famouos impressionist painter.

Look into:

• Who was this McBurney, anyway?
• Who was Pissarro?
• Was there ever a guy named Tom Collins?

Fun category I'd like to write someday: "People From -Stan"