News Flashes for February 24, 2011
We’re in the aftermath of the Watson debacle so not a lot is going on right now. Instead of a bunch of bigger stories, we’ve got a massive amount of small stories. We want to be sure to give each of them their due place, so here are some news flashes for you today.
*We’ll expand upon this later, but don’t forget that the winner of Wheel of Fortune‘s Vanna For A Day contest is today. Learn more about the contest by clicking here.
*Are you a fan of the Cartoon Network reality show Destroy, Build, Destroy? If you’re a kid reading this, or if you’re a parent and you think your kid would be interested, you’re in luck. The show was picked up for a third season and is now casting for players. Click here to visit the page and be sure to tell our friends at The Casting Firm that we sent you.
*We wrote about the independent game show Red Carpet Run a long time ago. They’ve been having a pretty good year so far. They gained a syndicated partner through KoldCast TV, and you can check them out by clicking here. They’re doing special “Watch and Win” questions every Thursday for some prizes from AMC Theatres (because they are classy). Be sure to help them out and enter.
*The Hub is casting for a new vocabulary-themed game show aimed at families. They’ve had success with their family based shows like Family Game Night in the past, so more along this line isn’t surprising. Click here to check that notice out. What is the show? Our sources tell us that the board game “Funglish” is next in line to make the leap to television, so this could be it based on the description. However, we’ve also heard “Scrabble” is being seriously considered also, and the fact that this says “Crossword puzzles” leads us to think of that possibility also. We’ll keep you posted, but don’t be shocked to see both on The Hub by the end of the year.
*GSN’s The Newlywed Game was recently picked up for a fifth season with a big confidence order of 130 episodes. Sherri Shepherd returns as host; her second season at the helm. The show has announced its first tape dates. Newlywed Game will begin taping March 21st and will continue to do so through May. Best news of all is that the show will tape in New York City. If you live on the East coast and you’ve always wanted to see a game show tape, this is a big chance for you. Click here to visit the audience page, courtesy of our friends at OnSet Productions, and get some tickets.
Debacle?
Well yes. Even though it was the highest-rated J! in 4 years, it was an absolute farce. The whole thing was ruined when IBM decided to give Watson a superhuman advantage on the buzzer. In doing so, they didn’t actually prove they could make a superior J! player. They only made a nice localized search engine.
It might be good press for IBM, and a good demonstration of advanced computer technology. But as a game show, it failed horribly.
Tell you what. Try two experiments for us.
(1) Go on Jeopardy, but set your thumb a quarter of an inch above the buzzer so that you’re handicapped behind the other two players by however long it takes your thumb to move a quarter of an inch.
(2) Go to the website that has the clues for every Jeopardy game (j-archive.com) and answer every question by typing the clue verbatim into Google, a nice *non*-local search engine, and hitting I’m Feeling Lucky, and using whatever the subject of the website that comes back is as your response.
Be sure to let us know how much money you lose.
The buzzer advantage means nothing if Watson doesn’t have info to back it up. And if you’re not impressed by Watson’s ability to make sense of natural language, that suggests to me that you’ve never really thought about that problem. If it really is as easy a job as you make it out to be, then why didn’t Watson nail *every* question? Certainly not because nobody at IBM thought to tell Watson that there’s an American city named Chicago….
This isn’t about computer technology. I admit, I AM impressed by Watson’s ability to recall info. But last I checked, Jeopardy! is a game show.
What WOULD have made this experiment legitimate would be if IBM had programmed in a predetermined delay on the buzzer, depending on how fast it takes an average human to hit it. IBM, you WILL want to consider this if you plan on doing an IBM Challenge 2. We’ll be watching. So don’t spoil it for us.
Yes, Jeopardy is a game show, which would be why this was billed as and event and and exhibition.
I would be so pumped if the Hub revives Scrabble. I enjoyed the original show that aired on NBC and USA back in the day. Here is to hoping that it becomes reality. :)
Andrew keep in mind, that when Bob Boden was at GSN he tried to revive Scrabble more like the board game than the NBC game show. With John O’Hurley as host.
Hey it would be awesome if Scrabble was revived. Whats even better is Chuck Woolery isn’t hosting the possible Lingo revival, so he be perfect to host the show again, provided they stick with the format that we grew up watching.
It was already announced that Bill Engvall will be the new host of Lingo!!!!
As long as the revival is closer to the 80s (and short-lived 90s) version than to Merv Griffin’s Crosswords, I’ll be happy.
Right on, Homer Jay!!
Let’s see. . . ratings were up by thirty per cent over last year at that time. . . Watson did as expected. . . Two of the top “Jeopardy!” players were humbled a bit, which is not always a bad thing. . . some worthy charities got some nice donations. . . the brainiacs at IBM were happy with Watson’s performance, and not just because “he” won. . .
If that’s a debacle, then let’s have more of them!
So on the very thing a show is supposed to do, perform well in the ratings, it clearly succeeds. And save for some sour grapes whining, people talked about it, were interested in it. Debacle? Sounds like a successful endeavor.
Saying the IBM Challenge was a “success” just because a lot of people watched is like saying Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is one of the greatest films ever created just because a lot of people bought tickets.
Success means to achieve a goal, clearly this is what happened with the Watson episodes. IBM met their goal of beating Ken & Brad, Jeopardy met it’s goal of providing intriguing entertainment while getting a ratings bump.
Greatest is often a subjective matter of opinion, unless there is clear-cut criteria such as highest box office gross adjusted for inflation (that would be Gone With the Wind).
If you’re gonna make whine, please don’t mix the red and white grapes.
In a purely economic standpoint, it’s a success.
As a game show, was it a success? Not entirely.
In any case, though, think about this: Watson was not VASTLY superior than humans—hell, look at some of the “WTF?” answers that Watson came up with—while using something like 4000x more energy than a human brain does.
The mere size of Watson shows that the human brain is still far superior to computers.
“Great”" is entirely subjective. To those who like it, it may be great (never saw it). But that’s neither here nor there. It was a commercial success, and that is the mission of a TV show as well, to get viewers.