The good, Hollywood Squares, and the bad, Lucky 13

This week had good and not so good news in the world of game shows. 

The best news, perhaps, is that CBS is planning a prime time version of Hollywood Squares next winter. So far we know Drew Barrymore is going to be the center square, and that's about all we know. We don't know who will host or how it will be staged. Forget returning champions, I suspect, but expect bigger money than we've seen in the past, most likely. 

I should be excited about such a development. A classic quiz show being reincarnated for the third time, or more, depending upon how you count versions such as Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour and Hip Hop Squares. 

I should be excited, but these days I'm expecting to be disappointed. 

I have said, time and time again, that I miss the days of the basic quiz show served with a slice of luck. Take shows like Hollywood Squares, Tic Tac Dough, Joker's Wild, Sale of the Century and High Rollers. They were all quiz shows in some way. Hollywood Squares was played for laughs far more than Tic Tac Dough. High Rollers and Sale of the Century had plenty of trivia mixed in with general knowledge questions. But the outcome of each game depended, to some extent, on an element of luck.

I enjoy simple shows like that. I like Jeopardy, and there's a degree of luck involved, but less so than the others. And that's the only one out there five days a week, not counting anything GSN is producing, which I don't have access to. 

We have some fun games in syndication at the moment, but nothing that's a classic quiz show, interjecting a tic-tac-toe board or dice into the outcome. I miss those. 

So I should be excited about Hollywood Squares. I hope I'm pleasantly surprised. I hope they pick a good host, one that doesn't irritate me. I'm a broken record at this point. I don't want to watch a long-in-the-tooth comedian pretend to orchestrate a game. I just want a skilled emcee, a broadcaster who isn't trying to play to the crowd every chance s/he gets, or an actor who hasn't had a big hit movie in a while but would like a steady paycheck. 

But I expect the worst. The few comments I've read about the new version of Hollywood Squares didn't exactly lavish praise on its choice of a center square. I don't think anyone considers Drew Barrymore to be quick-witted or naturally funny. She's had roles in comedy films, but she's not exactly telling knock-knock jokes in Vegas during her off weeks from her current talk show. She seems to have time for a second job, and somehow a prime time game show is the best way to showcase her talent. I'm skeptical. 

I hope to be pleasantly surprised, and I'm not rooting against it. I'm just prepared to be disappointed, because I'm a traditionalist who doesn't need gimmicks and over production to enjoy a quiz show where knowledge is king and lady luck is queen. But I get it, I'm in the minority. 

The not-so-good news is that we're also getting a brand new prime time game show this summer from ABC. This show, called Lucky 13, is a quiz show, the kind of show I should be welcoming, even if it doesn't feature a giant slot machine at center stage. It has a twist on the traditional question-and-answer quiz format, of course, and offers $1 million as its top prize. That sounds like a recipe for prime time success. 

So why am I disappointed by the news of a new summer quiz show? It will have co-hosts, Shaquille O’Neal and Gina Rodriguez. O'Neal is well known by anyone who has watched TV to some degree during the past 30 years. He strikes me as personable and entertaining, and he has done his share of NBA commentating in recent years. Given he's a multi-time NBA champion, he should know a thing or two about the NBA. 

But his broadcasting skills, or lack thereof, doesn't seem like a good fit for a big money quiz show. I doubt he's going to be smooth, and he's not a broadcaster. That's fine when he's talking NBA. When he's trying to emcee a quiz show, his lack of vocal skills are going to stick out like a sore thumb. 

Perhaps that's why he has a co-host. I have no idea if she'll take the lead, or fumble through the game alongside O'Neal. I couldn't have told you who Rodriguez was when I read the news. And I'm not sure I've seen any of her work. Perhaps she'll surprise me. Perhaps she'll dazzle me with her emceeing prowess. I'll wager $5 she doesn't. 

It might be a fun show, and the co-hosts may step up to the challenge. But it's disappointing to read O'Neal and Rodriguez will be at the helm of a new, big money prime time quiz show. 

Somewhere between my cautious optimism about Hollywood Squares and my inevitable skepticism regarding Lucky 13 is the news that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is also coming back. Jimmy Kimmel returns as host, because one job is not enough to pay the bills in Hollywood these days. It's unknown if the show is returning with another round of celebrities playing for charity or if Joe Public will actually get a chance to win life changing money. 

It's a solid format that has been tweaked plenty over the years and continues to entertain, albeit to far smaller audiences than it did when it premiered in 1999. But the audience numbers have been good enough to encourage ABC to keep trotting Kimmel out there for another run. This is not the worst news we've had, certainly. 

Now who wants to bring back All-Star Blitz?  

In memory of Game Show Follies

I was a daily reader of a quirky game show blog called Game Show Follies. 

In the early years of the internet, I was a regular reader of a game show blog run by a guy named Steve Beverly. Steve has a diverse resume in broadcasting, and he is a big fan of game shows. As I recall, he launched his website to gather and disseminate all sorts of game show news in the late 1990s. I visited it frequently. 

Steve discontinued that website after several years, and despite my unwavering love of game shows, I didn't replace Steve's website with another. There were alternatives to get my game show fix online, but nothing seemed to capture my attention in the same way that Steve's website did. 

Until years later, when I stumbled onto Game Show Follies. 

I discovered it by chance one day during a Google search for some game show topic. A link to an entry at Game Show Follies was amongst the search results, so I took a look at the blog and soon became a regular reader. 

The blog had been around for years at that point, and yet I hadn't stumbled upon it until that day six or seven years ago. Whenever I found it, it took a while before it became habitual reading. But it became a daily destination within a few weeks or months. 

Game Show Follies featured one man's daily musings about the world of game shows, allegedly. The listed author's name was Casey Abell, and almost every day the author would post an article. Once in a great while s/he would miss a day. And once in a while s/he would post twice in one day. 

I never took notes, as I never considered I would reflect upon my years of reading, and commenting, on the author's daily postings. But I certainly wish I had saved screen shots of some of the most memorable, and ridiculous, posts in the long, glorious history of Game Show Follies. They were both brilliant and brutal. 

I wish I had screen shots because the blog's author dumped years of writing. After announcing, quickly and unceremoniously, that the author was retiring from the blog immediately, the author zapped thousands of blog posts spanning more than a decade, about a week after retirement. Erased from existence with a click of a button. Sure, I can probably find random memories from the blog at archive.org if I search for them, but that would require effort. No thanks.

I'm going to guess that most readers who perused the author's ramblings have wacky memories akin to mine. At times Game Show Follies was like a car accident. You couldn't look away. 

Early on I had a sense that the author of the blog had a penchant for talking down to her/his audience. It wasn't every week, but it occurred often enough.

I don't remember the comment, but the author's tone in making the comment certainly suggested the author was smarter than the readership, and that you were foolish for holding your opinion. 

So I came up with a stock response that I started using. I would comment on a blog post with some sort of response about how I don't know what to think about the subject, but perhaps I would be told what I should think... or something close to that. It didn't take long for the author to take offense to a redundant comment that suggested the author was arrogant in her/his thinking. I was quickly warned that my malfeasance would not be tolerated. 

What fun is it to be king or queen of your kingdom if you don't berate the peasants once in a while? 

The author liked to make assumptions and generalizations about readers, as well. (Don't we all?) If you didn't like Steve Harvey's shtick, if you didn't think sexual innuendo was hilarious, you had to be an "older is better" viewer. If you didn't like today's overproduced, overly dramatic games with hosts who think they're as important to the show as the game, you were a dinosaur who only lived for the past. 

It was an idiotic conclusion, but I was labeled as one of the "older is better" crowd in response to some comment I made, probably about Family Feud. The game is relatively dull, and has been for decades. With or without sexual innuendo, it's just not very entertaining until you get to the bonus game. 

There's no debating that a show I've found to be dull through multiple hosts is doing well more than four decades later with Harvey at the helm. I watched it plenty in my youth, but as an adult, it fails to entertain me. But I can't find a show to be slow and boring for decades unless I'm an "older is better" guy. 

Yeah, that's the kind of flawed logic that permeated throughout the blog for years. 

Conversely, I agreed with the author about its GSN knockoff, America Says. It took years for me to watch America Says, as I haven't had a cable television package for about 15 years now. But America Says is a lot of fun. It's a fast-paced version of Feud, the host isn't trying to do improv comedy during the show and the questions aren't filled with lame sexual innuendo. If I was 17, I'd find Harvey's Feud to be hilarious. I'm not. Irony, newer is better when it comes to the Feud format.

So how else was his blog both memorable and ridiculous? 

Comment moderation

I have accused the author of kayfabe, a wrestling term that means to present a staged performance as authentic. Pro wrestlers usually don't hate each other outside of the arena. They're working together and are often friends. But they want you to believe they really hate the other guy when they don't. That's kayfabe. 

The author had weird polices and procedures over the years when it came to moderating her/his comments. S/he contradicted her/his fluid policies periodically, which were published on her/his blog and treated at times as if they were federal law. I eventually accused her/him of hypocrisy. S/he was outright fraudulent at times in what s/he said and did when it came to her/his blog comments. Sometimes the only explanation was kayfabe.

When I started, there was no comment moderation, as I recall. If you submitted a comment, it showed up on the blog post. 

This allowed for a lot of idiocy, and readers long before me were already jerking the author's chain. I don't recall if s/he was deleting comments or not, but s/he did have a policy regarding profanity on her/his blog. I appreciated that, as it's really unnecessary in the world we live in, and it adds nothing to a game show discussion. It just doesn't. 

At some point, the author was getting hit with a lot of nonsense. I don't recall if it was insulting, offensive, profane or simply pointless. The author issued some sort of warning, which only stirred the hornet's nest. As more ridiculousness spewed forth, the author would respond with some silly comment like, "I'm really getting upset!" Seriously, that was the tone of the response. And I'm supposed to believe that the author's actions weren't kayfabe?

Well, that soon ushered in an era of moderated comments. No instant gratification any more, and the author was now the ultimate gatekeeper. 

Yet the absurdity continued. 

The author liked to cite her/his adhering to those terms and conditions of the blog, golden rules s/he proclaimed s/he would live by when it came to comments on the blog. These were nothing more than rules posted on the blog that could be applied arbitrarily when the author was in a cranky mood, and proved that the author was really just a hypocrite.

One of the rules was "no spam," or something akin to that. That's great, except there's no definition of what is or isn't a spam comment. I would submit silly comments sometimes just to see what kind of mood the author was in. Some of which I knew would be rejected. I'd type all sorts of nonsense, including claims about drinking and intoxication. 

I'd also pass along feedback, a news tip or send other info that wasn't important to have displayed in a blog comment. When I'd submit such info or feedback, I'd start the comment with profanity, and sometimes note the comment wasn't for posting. The author didn't edit comments before publishing them, so they wouldn't be posted. Worked out well for both of us. 

There were comments that weren't published, however, that were sans profanity. They'd be simple, vague comments. For a while I was submitting comments simply praising the great work. Nothing about the daily blog post, just a compliment. Eventually those stopped being posted, because the author deemed them to be spam. What a clown. Generic praise on a daily basis was spam? Kayfabe or hypocrisy. Take your pick.

When I deemed the author mentally unstable at one point, I stopped commenting for a while. Eventually I returned to making occasional comments. I posted some of the same ridiculousness that had been deemed spam months earlier, in part because the author had started approving ridiculousness from others that should have been rejected under her/his fluid, goofy terms and conditions.  

And to my surprise, my silly comments started to get approved. Why? Who knows, other than the fact the author was a hypocrite whose terms and conditions were fluid. I even commented that it was good to see hypocrisy was back in play, and the author approved such a comment. It had no relation to the blog post I was commenting on, but s/he approved it. Maybe dementia was starting to set in and s/he forgot the edict s/he had made long ago. 

I included a reference to hypocrisy in my daily comments for a short period months or years prior, as the hypocrisy in the author's actions showed up occasionally on her/his blog, and I had seen it multiple times at that point. One day I got the stern warning that if I dared to reference hypocrisy in the future, my comments wouldn't be approved. There's an old saying about the truth hurting. 

I wasn't the only person who was subjected to the author's fluid terms and conditions, for the record. 

And I get it. If you have a blog that is generating daily traffic, you're going to have to hassle with a bunch of crap, just as anyone with email has to sift through and delete spam on a recurring basis. It's hard to police every blog comment and apply your general rules and regulations exactly the same. That's human nature. But the author was bad at it. It was as if kayfabe was in play.

It was as if the author was trying to be a puppet master, using hypocrisy to evoke a response when s/he needed entertainment, logic or past precedent be damned.

As for why I stopped commenting for a while: As I said, the author seemed mentally unstable. And at one point s/he was outright fraudulent in her/his representation of me in the blog comments. So I decided it was time to stop commenting for a while. When somebody exhibits signs of mental instability, you give them space. (I'm sure s/he would say the same thing about me.)

I don't remember what irritated me about her/his actions, but I had been responding to the blogs on a recurring basis for a while, with no ulterior motives. Nothing about my responses was intended to get the author going. Whatever set her/him off, s/he reverted to her/his ridiculous ways. I didn't ignore that in my comments. 

S/he must have been rather angry, depressed or bored, because in response s/he printed portions of my previous comments that hadn't been approved for the blog, stuff I wrote just to see what level the hypocrisy meter was at on a certain day. It was definitely nonsense, which s/he would classify as spam. It would be out-on-context stream of consciousness based upon something unrelated I had just looked at or read, perhaps with alcohol and intoxication references peppered in.

Printing unpublished comments and trying to use them to mock me was her/his way of trying to make me look bad, ridiculous or otherwise. This wasn't the first time the author tried to misrepresent me in a blog comment. And I'm convinced that's what s/he was trying to do again. Hypocrisy and kayfabe aside, s/he wasn't an idiot. S/he may have acted like one occasionally, but s/he knew what I was doing when I submitted nonsense that was certain to remain unpublished. 

Instead of an intelligent counter argument to my criticism, the author opted for fraudulence. At that point I decided I wasn't going to comment for a while. 

If you see a person on the sidewalk as you're walking down your street, and that person is acting mentally ill, do you engage with the person, or do you try to give that person space and avoid contact if at all possible? I'm not a social worker, so I chose the latter. 

I kept reading the blog, I just didn't bother to comment. After several weeks, I disagreed strongly with a position s/he took on something. So I finally commented, ending my sabbatical. And how did the author respond? S/he tried to portray my comment as my typical response. Noting I had been absent, s/he bemoaned my contrasting opinion as if that's what I always did, as if I always disagreed with her/him.

I didn't resume commenting regularly at that point, but for fun one afternoon not long after her/his misrepresentation of me, I looked back at about a month's worth of her/his blog posts before I took my sabbatical. I commented on almost every blog post leading up to the sabbatical. My comments shared my memories of a topic or my opinion on the news topic of the day, but comments suggesting the author's opinion was flawed, wrong or pure idiocy were nowhere to be found. But yeah, I was always taking up a contradictory opinion to her/his opinions. 

Lying to the readers or lying to herself/himself: Only the author knows for sure.

I guess it wasn't kayfabe, as I'd have to have been in on it for it to be kayfabe. The author was simply a fraud on a recurring basis. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. 

Funny stuff

Let's not forget that the author liked to act all high and mighty on a periodic basis. 

People would take cheap shots at her/him from generic Google accounts. Some readers had names attached to their account, but plenty did not. The author liked to ridicule those who didn't declare their full name on their Google account. If your name is Donald John Trump, you had better not set up your account to display your name as Dictator Donny, not if you wanted to contradict or criticize the author in any way. If you didn't spell out your name, you were chastised for criticizing the author. 

The irony in this is twofold. One, I had emailed the author a couple of years prior, passing along legitimate news fodder for the blog. My display name on the blog was generic, but I included my full name and made it relatively clear who I was in my email.

Despite the love/hate back-and-forth we had going, I never had contempt for the author. But I never got an acknowledgment of my email. The author would eventually claim s/he had never received it. 

But yeah, I was among the anonymous. 

The greater irony is that the author used a pen name, and admitted to it, if you can believe her/him. 

 "Casey Abell," we would be told, was a pen name for Ralph Abell. The author also provided links to a rather generic Linked In page under Ralph's name, and a link to a Twitter account that had no meaningful info, and had sat unused for some time. Ralph, as the author would frequently be called, may have still been lying about her/his identity, using somebody else's accounts and claiming that as her/his identity. That's far-fetched, of course, but not out of the realm of possibility. 

And Ralph had a couple of photos on the blog over the years, allegedly portraying Casey. A head shot and then a family photo. Again, doesn't prove anything legit, but it could have very well been the author. Once or twice I Googled Casey's name along with the Texas town s/he claimed to live in to see if there was evidence s/he was being honest about who s/he was, but little turned up when I did. 

At the end of the day I would have bet my $5 that the author was being honest in portraying herself/himself, but s/he was overly upset about anonymity on a blog, and for much of the time had portrayed Ralph as somebody named Casey. That's what you call a hypocrite, and that's why I refuse to rule out the idea that Ralph isn't a pen name, as well. 

There were a few other funny things when it came to the author. S/he was ripped by another blogger for her/his "laugh it off" response to women who are subjected to internet harassment. I never knew this at the time, but it was pointed out on her/his blog at some point by another reader. I don't need to weigh in with an opinion, but the fact that the author would get upset about stupid comments made toward her/him on her/his blog, yet once told women to laugh off such comments, is hilarious. And sad. 

Perhaps the funniest moment was when s/he referenced a celebrity from a long-ago appearance on The Dating Game. I think it was Farrah Fawcett. And somehow the author made it clear that s/he didn't realize Farrah had died years ago. That can happen, of course, but the way it read in her/his blog, and the flack s/he got for the comment months later was damn funny. 

Big fans

There were plenty of people who didn't think the author was particularly brilliant, or worth the time of day. 

Here's a comment I found from 2018 on a forum called Golden Road: 

"I've read some of his posts and his tone is mocking of pretty much the entire fandom. And not in a funny way- it's mean and rather stupid. He seems to actually despise game shows with terms like "moldy oldies" (any old game show), makes fun of buzzr on a regular basis for not being a "real network" and looking for the first sign of failure, takes constant shots at buzzerblog, the game show forum, golden road and game show garbage.

It could be he is jealous, because those forums he trashes actually have views and comments. Abell only has about two or three people actually reading his blog. Going back, the only entries with many comments are trolls and those insulting him.

Oh, and Casey, since you're apparently reading this, telling the whole world that you Googled me because I had a reaction to you that you didn't like is more than a little creepy."

The author did like to pick apart discussions on other forums and explain why those discussions were flawed and predictably biased. It was a strange obsession. 

I think the author had plenty of blog traffic. Was that 100 visitors per day or 500? Don't know. But it was far more than 2-3.

Whatever the readership was, I'd wager $10 that the majority of the readers wouldn't call themselves fans of the blog. 

The end

As ridiculous as so many of the author's posts and responses were over the years, I'm sorry to see her/him go. It was a daily commitment by presumably one author for many years. That's amazing. It's game shows, it's not important. But the author found something to write about and presented simple nuggets of info and opinion consistently. That's impressive. Sure, some of those nuggets were picking nits over opinions in another forum. But s/he did other, more creative stuff to fill the void, as well. If there was nothing current to write about, s/he would pull up a wiki entry about an old and/or forgotten game show and share a tidbit or two about what was written. 

Whoever the author was, whatever her/his motivation, I'll never know. S/he shared writing on a consistent basis, and I admire that. S/he was either a puppet master or mentally unstable. I certainly know which one I'd wager my $20 on. Despite that, I'll applaud the effort to put her/his writing out there, no matter how foolish or idiotic some game show experts will claim it was. 

I didn't expect the end to be so sudden, unless the author died. And maybe s/he has in the months since the blog ended. We'll never know. But it's a shame that years worth of effort were pulled from the blog a week after her/his retirement. Not every piece of prose needs to be preserved in perpetuity, but after all those years of writing and making it available, why pull it down now? (I can think of one possible, reasonable answer.) 

Whatever the reason, I had to spend a couple of hours memorializing the wacky, weird world of Game Show Follies. I started this weeks ago, put in a couple of hours of writing and still wasn't done. It took me months to finally sit down and finish it off. It is done. You might think that the author's blog wasn't worth five minutes of memorialization, and you might be right. But I'll never forget the weird, wacky world of Game Show Follies, and I will not be the only one. Now we can all look back and laugh, together, assuming anyone ever finds this blog post. 

Rest in peace, Casey Abell. 

The fallacy of continuity

I previously wrote about my disbelief that local Jeopardy! affiliates were begging for one host of the daily syndicated game for the sake of precious viewer continuity. 

Having two hosts of any show is going to be divisive, I suppose. Jeopardy's executive director, Michael Davies, confirmed that Ken Jennings was a better host than Mayim Bialik, but he couldn't just say that. Saying the man was better at the job than the woman, you can't do that. He had to soften the truth by suggesting the affiliates, and other unspecified interested parties, were dialing up the Sony hotline, begging for one host or the other, all in the name of  "consistency."

Consistency and continuity are not the same thing, but they're close enough for my purpose. 

There's some fallacy that we need consistency and continuity in our game shows. I don't buy it. I'm calling BS.

I've already outlined why I don't believe the crowning of Jennings as king of the syndicated, daily Jeopardy! program was about consistency. 

Irony, Sony's other syndicated workhorse, Wheel of Fortune, is spawning similar claims. 

I dispute several claims, some preposterous, regarding Wheel and its pending transition from Pat Sajak to Ryan Seacrest. I won't cover all those today, but one of them is the fallacy that Vanna White needs to stick around for continuity. 

Really, without her at the puzzle board next fall, the wheels are coming off the wagon? TV's Randy West claims having White on set is really important to the future of the show. West has forgotten more about TV than I'll ever know, so if he says it's important, you best believe it. 

But I don't. 

It's really that important to have White on set come this fall? For who, the viewers?

I don't think so. At one point, we thought Sajak and White were going to walk off into the sunset together, despite the fact White is a decade younger than Sajak. 

What if they did? Are viewers going to stop watching next fall because the familiar faces aren't hosting the show? I doubt it. Highly.

Funny, when The Tonight Show went from Carson to Leno,  did they hold onto the band, announcer or cue card guy for continuity? Not that I remember. When Leno departed and O'Brien took over, what did they retain for continuity? How about when Leno left for his second time, and Fallon took over? They didn't even keep the show in the same state. 

And now I'm supposed to believe that continuity in television is so important? 

A game show is a different animal, some might argue. Yeah, it is. And what do I tune into Wheel to watch? The game, not the host. Mess with the game play significantly, change everything about the game, from the theme song to the set layout, and maybe I'll have problems watching the show. Make modest changes in the show, as has happened historically, and it won't matter if White is turning the letters or not next fall. 

Did having Rich Fields announce Drew Carey's first season of The Price is Right help me sleep better at night as Carey bumbled through his first year on the job? Not a bit. If anything, I was annoyed, and still am, that he was cut lose after one year of the Carey regime.

Some people will stop watching Wheel because they think Seacrest is a horrible human being who should burn in hell for his career success to this point. Others might start watching Wheel because they had no tolerance for Sajak's lame quips. Do we really believe that having White at the puzzle board is going to move the needle for a significant number of viewers in the positive direction? 

I don't. Wheel hasn't survived 40+ syndicated seasons because the witty banter between Sajak and White at the end of the show is some sort of comfort food for game show viewers. 

It's time to quite pretending we're all such fragile creatures.

The Jeopardy! lie?

 About two months ago I was endorsing the end of Mayim Bialik's tenure as a part-time host of the daily Jeopardy! games. 

TV's Blossom broke the news that she was no longer hosting the daily game in any capacity, and Sony quickly confirmed the news, suggesting they hoped to continue to employ her in some capacity for a future prime time stunt. Unless Jeopardy ends up in prime time 12 months of the year, I'd bet against seeing Bialik on the Jeopardy set again, but stranger things have happened. 

What puzzles me is that Jeopardy's executive producer, Michael Davies, recently spoke about this old news. I'm not sure why he was compelled to speak. Perhaps Sony likes seeing its off-camera drama covered by the media, and having Davies finally open up about old news was the best the show could muster after going several weeks without generating click bait on Yahoo. 

Davies parroted what Sony said: We like TV's Blossom, we would like to work with her again, we have no plans that call for her services, but we'd really like to work with her again. Ken Jennings is the better host, but our ratings were comparable for the daily show with both hosts. 

I've read that more than once, that neither host moved the needle when it came to day-to-day viewership. Some people really, really, really despise one host or the other -- according to comments on social media -- and some are indifferent to the host at the end of the day. I prefer Jennings, but I didn't have to boycott the show when Bialik hosted it. 

So why was it so critical to exile either Jennings or Bialik from the daily game if both were bringing in comparable ratings? Davies addressed that, and I don't believe it. 

I have read some form of this claim several times. "Over the past two and a half seasons, what we’ve heard from a lot of from television stations and other interested parties is that they wanted more consistency. They wanted a single host," according to Davies. (Yes, that quote is grammatically flawed.)

A lot of television stations? I'm skeptical. 

I don't work in TV. I have no connections to the important people at my local television stations. 

Plenty of people are not smart. I've met plenty of those people. 

It would not shock me to learn from an executive at my local NBC affiliate, the station that carries Jeopardy in the Minneapolis market, that people have called the station, posted on the station's Facebook page or sent an email to the station, lobbying for one host or the other. My NBC affiliate has nothing to do with the production of the show, of course, but never overestimate the intelligence of the local viewer. I'm sure my NBC station has had several comments about the host of a game show it broadcasts twice each weekday.

But how many people are we talking. Let's say a whopping 25% of viewers think complaining about Jennings or Bialik to the NBC affiliate would have any influence whatsoever. I suspect far fewer than 25% of viewers thought once about registering a complaint with anyone about the dual hosts. And of those who did consider it, how many actually took the time to follow through? And of the small percentage that actually registers a complaint, where will that complaint end up? At the easiest place to leave a complaint,  the station's Facebook page. (That's my guess, I have no idea how anyone actually followed through with registering their complaint.)

I have a hard time imagining that Jeopardy affiliates across the country were calling up Sony executives and the top brass at Jeopardy, bemoaning the dozens of viewer complaints they were receiving about two hosts. Sounds made up. 

Davies never said that Sony or Jeopardy received hundreds of calls and complaints from the affiliates, or "other interested parties." He claims to have heard from a lot of stations. How many is a lot? Are we talking 100 stations, or five. And what exactly is an interested party? I'm an interested party. I didn't call Davies to cast a vote, but I'm interested. 

His explanation is just vague enough to suggest there was a groundswell of support for removing TV's Blossom from the daily show. But I'll never believe it. 

It doesn't matter whether I do, or not. Davies doesn't know me or care what I think. But his need to clarify that Jennings was the better host, etc., and justify the decision by claiming affiliates were clamoring for one of the hosts to be fired from the daily show, seems quite unnecessary at this point. And again, it sounds made up. 

And if there was no fabrication regarding the groundswell of momentum for axing Bialik, then I've lost another ounce of hope for humanity. 

There's no harm in having an opinion and bandying it about on a Facebook post regarding Jeopardy. But perhaps that's not good enough any more. Perhaps Karen really did speak to the manager. 

I remain skeptical.