Reruns Poll

[alietr]

More curiosity on my part ... what are your viewing habits with respect to Jeopardy reruns?

[econgator]

Never

[Bamaman]

I said rarely because I have watched on occasion. But seeing the tournaments again doesn’t interest me. If they dug deep into the vault for some old games during the extended offseason I might be interested but I won’t watch if it is a bunch of James’ games.

[MarkBarrett]

I said rarely because I have watched on occasion. But seeing the tournaments again doesn’t interest me. If they dug deep into the vault for some old games during the extended offseason I might be interested but I won’t watch if it is a bunch of James’ games.

Your comments work for me. I watch the new games live early online, go through them again for archiving, and have the local station airing on later at night to dub the episodes onto DVDs, being fair to the local affiliate, and wanting to be accounted for ratings-wise.

[RougeGod]

Depends on the timeslot for me. I always watched the Jeopardy reruns when they were on during my lunch break (while I still had lunch breaks), but I never watch the evening reruns, because I have better things to do in the evening, but not really things in the 40 minutes I had for lunch earlier in the year

[opusthepenguin]

Almost never, assuming "rerun" refers only to a game I've already seen. If I somehow missed the original broadcast (preempted, recording problem, etc.) then of course I'll watch it when it comes around again. Assuming I recognize it as one I haven't seen. That's a dicey proposition.

[gameshowfandanny]

I said "it depends or sometimes" because I usually watch them if it's the Tournament of Champions, any tournament that has notable players, or Saturday reruns with champions who went on a big streak (though none of James' episodes have rerun yet, though I'm sure they'll rerun the two games where he broke the single-game winnings record and the game where he was defeated by Emma Boettcher; I don't know if any of Ken's games reran on a Saturday, though I do remember most of Seth Wilson's run (I remember they didn't rerun his second game, but it's on Netflix) and that Austin Rogers' entire run (and Matt Jackson's entire run) appeared in the Saturday rotation). I also sometimes watch reruns of the College Championship and Teen Tournament, but most of the past episodes I watch are on Netflix.

[talkingaway]

I put "Frequently" - until about 3 weeks or so ago, it was always, since I'm fairly new to watching J! again. But my local affiliate for some reason dropped its Saturday rerun, and has decided to run a Time/Life Robin Williams infomercial for at least two weeks in a row at 7:30 PM on Saturday. There's no local affiliate I can find that plays J! reruns AFAIK. I'll have to check Puffer to see if SF has reruns from last season.

Back when I used to watched it when I was little, top row clues were $100, and there were no grace notes in the Think! music, so my gap of unwatched episodes is pretty big - as is my Anki deck of old questions.

[trainman]

I've been recording "Jeopardy!" via DVR for over 19 years now, and it's always been set to record "First Runs Only."

[Volante]

Never here. There's just too much new stuff and it's not one of those shows you can have going in the background

I've been recording "Jeopardy!" via DVR for over 19 years now, and it's always been set to record "First Runs Only."

I set mine to record all, mostly because there was one time they flagged an episode wrong and a first run was treated like a repeat... Luckily I was home that day and got a manual going in time. Never again. I can attach external HDs to my DVR, too, so I'm not hurting for space. New season, new drive.

[BrigadierSolo13]

As I am training for the show, I watch reruns on weekends, and on weekdays in which I don't learn anything new from that days episode.

[alietr]

I'm shocked at the results so far. I fully expected them to be the exact opposite. Very interesting.

[JayK33]

Reruns on TV, never. Older episodes on YouTube, maybe.

[opusthepenguin]

So is it like a sporting event for some? Once the outcome is known--even if you don't know or at least don't remember that outcome--the suspense is gone? For us that's not quite it since we'll definitely watch the games we missed during Lent. We won't skip the ones where today's returning champ is playing, even though we'll know the winner in advance. But when we know we've already seen the game, it's hard to get invested in a repeat, even though we don't really remember the game or what happened or what the clues were or anything.

[econgator]

So is it like a sporting event for some? Once the outcome is known--even if you don't know or at least don't remember that outcome--the suspense is gone? For us that's not quite it since we'll definitely watch the games we missed during Lent. We won't skip the ones where today's returning champ is playing, even though we'll know the winner in advance. But when we know we've already seen the game, it's hard to get invested in a repeat, even though we don't really remember the game or what happened or what the clues were or anything.

For me, it's as simple as, "There are new episodes. Why would I watch repeats?" Even during the summer break, 7 weeks just isn't long enough to make me miss it so much that I want to watch a repeat.

[Golf]

I am assuming people watch trivia shows for two reasons, to see who wins and to play along. Most here probably focus on the latter. So what fun is it to watch when you know who wins, what all 61 clues ask as well as all 61 answers? Most here would be better served using that time to study. Some would be better served using that time to learn how to wager.

[opusthepenguin]

I am assuming people watch trivia shows for two reasons, to see who wins and to play along. Most here probably focus on the latter. So what fun is it to watch when you know who wins, what all 61 clues ask as well as all 61 answers? Most here would be better served using that time to study. Some would be better served using that time to learn how to wager.

I imagine most replies would be variations on that theme, yeah. But the odd thing is, it's not like I'm going to get every clue correct on a game I saw, say, 6 months prior. Not even close. For the most part, I'll miss again the ones I missed in the first place. As a study tool, rewatching recentish games might be more effective than seeing new ones. But I still don't want to do it.

I'd definitely be more inclined to watch reruns from the more distant past--ideally the previous century--even if I know I've seen them. But at that remove, the pedagogical value of the repetition is virtually nil.

Another difference in my case is that I've grown tired of J! celebrities. At this point, I'm less inclined to watch a repeat if it involves a well-known contestant. I'd probably watch reruns of Ken Jennings' original games, sure. But if I had my druthers, I'd watch the 75 games from right before he showed up or right after he was defeated. And that's not because I dislike KJ. I rather enjoy the guy. I'm just in a mood right now where I'd prefer the game itself to be the star of the show.

[talkingaway]

I am assuming people watch trivia shows for two reasons, to see who wins and to play along. Most here probably focus on the latter. So what fun is it to watch when you know who wins, what all 61 clues ask as well as all 61 answers? Most here would be better served using that time to study. Some would be better served using that time to learn how to wager.

Learning how to wager theoretically shouldn't take much more than half an hour tops, and you can review that the weekend before The Taping...but it is a 100% critical skill. You might not need to know how to wager, but when you do need to know, you REALLY need to know.

As far as repeats not being fun because the clues are the same...I've got some bad news for y'all. You can say the same thing about new episodes.

I "audited" a single show out of curiosity a couple of months ago, searching the archive for "look-alike" clues. I was fairly picky - a clue that went "Samuel Clemens' pseudonym" would match with "Mark Twain's real name", but wouldn't match with "The author of Tom Sawyer". Out of the 60 clues, 59 had a very good match. One that I didn't think would get a hit was a clue where you had to complete the title of a Lifetime movie with the word "cheerleader", but since the clue referred to pom-poms as the TOM, I used the fact "cheerleaders use pom-poms" as the nugget of wisdom required, and it was there.

Granted, the show's been on for 36 years - if you were to Clockwork Orange your way through all the episodes at 20 minutes a piece, it would take about 110 days of consecutive viewing without breaks. There's a lot of material. But it does repeat itself quite frequently. They've asked for the capital of Peru before, and they'll ask it again, even if you don't know beans about it. There's only so many facts they can shoot out of the Jeopardy canon.

[Golf]

I am assuming people watch trivia shows for two reasons, to see who wins and to play along. Most here probably focus on the latter. So what fun is it to watch when you know who wins, what all 61 clues ask as well as all 61 answers? Most here would be better served using that time to study. Some would be better served using that time to learn how to wager.

Learning how to wager theoretically shouldn't take much more than half an hour tops, and you can review that the weekend before The Taping...but it is a 100% critical skill. You might not need to know how to wager, but when you do need to know, you REALLY need to know.

As far as repeats not being fun because the clues are the same...I've got some bad news for y'all. You can say the same thing about new episodes.

I "audited" a single show out of curiosity a couple of months ago, searching the archive for "look-alike" clues. I was fairly picky - a clue that went "Samuel Clemens' pseudonym" would match with "Mark Twain's real name", but wouldn't match with "The author of Tom Sawyer". Out of the 60 clues, 59 had a very good match. One that I didn't think would get a hit was a clue where you had to complete the title of a Lifetime movie with the word "cheerleader", but since the clue referred to pom-poms as the TOM, I used the fact "cheerleaders use pom-poms" as the nugget of wisdom required, and it was there.

Granted, the show's been on for 36 years - if you were to Clockwork Orange your way through all the episodes at 20 minutes a piece, it would take about 110 days of consecutive viewing without breaks. There's a lot of material. But it does repeat itself quite frequently. They've asked for the capital of Peru before, and they'll ask it again, even if you don't know beans about it. There's only so many facts they can shoot out of the Jeopardy canon.

We're all aware that material repeats, that's why we have Pavlovs. But most of us watch the show to prepare to be a contestant and contestants play new shows. So when we watch a new show, it's like we are on stage playing the game regardless of repeat material. If we watch a show we've seen before, it's just the same word for word.

It's not that difficult to learn to current Jeopardy canon if one is truly serious about succeeding on the show. Even though there are what, 370000 clues in the archive I believe? How many of those clues are repeating material? So to learn the archive you might just have to know less than 100000 bits of unique information.

But personally, I believe the last couple of seasons there have been a higher percentage of new, unique material being introduced on the show. Part of that is more current pop culture, part of that is the writers penning not so much meat and potatoes clues such as what's the capital of Australia.