Ahira's Hangar

Hangarites,
This might be a fairly long message about Jeopardy, the long time TV quiz show. And this message has two points.

FYI, there have been two versions of the show from around 1961 till the early 1970s (1972 - 1974) there was a version hosted by Art Fleming based in NYC, and had the famous Art Pardo as its booth announcer. Then in the mid 1980s (1984 - 1986) the quiz show was brought back to air in more or less its current version hosted by Alex Trebeck and based in the Los Angeles area. FWIW, when I was in grade school several of my elementary school instructors allowed their classes to watch the Fleming version.

Through these years and with some authorized and unauthorized spinoffs (Win Ben Stein's Money(an unauthorized spinoff) and Rock and Roll Jeopardy(a licensed alternative version), both can be seen in reruns on Game Show network), the shows format has remained the same. Most recently, a about two years ago, Ken Jennings from Utah, won the quiz for a record run of 72 days and a total record winnings of ca. $1,700,000.

Mr. Jennings record winning streak was the topic of discussion on another bulletin board, where the unsubstantiated statement was made that it's easy to win on the current version of the show since the questions are now much easier than in past versions of the game.

My last point, in 2005 and 2006, the show's staff started to use the Internet as part of their contestant search process. Previously, the first stage of their search was to conduct mass in person contestant screenings in many cities across the country. During the last week of January 2007, the show conducted one of its online screening quizes, and I took it. The online quiz was very similar in format to the current game, and took the form of fifty timed response questions; IMO, these fifty questions were harder than the ones currently on the show. After finishing the online quiz one was not told ones score, but only told that if ones score passed their selection criteria one would be contacted by them in the future. So on Tuesday, June 26, I heard from the contestant selection staff, that based on my online score I was elegible for their next step in the selection process. This is an in person interview, including a mock version of the onair game, to be conducted in Chicago on August 3, 2007. And to quote another NBC personality "and so it goes".

Oh, that is interesting. I had no idea they screened initial applicants from the internet!

And good luck with the next round of the process!

very cool taras! Good luck!!!

Hey taras, good luck!

I did the massive city search tryout in Cleaveland a few years ago. My sister and I signed up together and we drove from her home in Pittsburgh for the tryouts. While neither of us got past the initial round, the Jeopardy people made it a lot of fun. :::blushing::: I won a small prize for contestant who traveled the farthest for that city's tryouts...

Another time when I was visiting my sister, a week's worth of shows were filmed at the University of Pittsburgh. We got to watch a couple of those shows be taped at well. There is a lot of stuff in the taping that is cut. I would say each episode took at least an hour to film.

Paul's (my husband) community college Brain Bown academic team coach was a one day champion a few years ago. That was cool to see as well.

You should have a good time. Be sure to tell us all about it afterwards.

Hope you get on the show and slaughter the rest of 'em, taras!

Good luck Taras.

--A