badgerfellow wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2017 5:11 pm
Spaceman Spiff wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2017 4:53 pm
badgerfellow wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2017 5:15 am
OntarioQuizzer wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2017 3:31 am
jeff6286 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2017 12:55 am
What are you saying here?
I think he's missing a "no longer". But I'll let badgerfellow confirm.
Apologies for not being clearer. You are no longer allowed to say where you are originally from, just where you currently reside.
I always thought that was a ploy by the J! folks to obscure how many Californians were on the show, and make them sound a little more geographically diverse.
I think Robert K S also touched on this in his post. No reason was given as to why they changed the policy. The idea of being geographically diverse would make sense for the past, but I think leaving the "originally from" option would accomplish that, too.
Without that option, you can work around it by bringing up your hometown or state in your personal story. In fact, the contestant packet even includes a question asking for a fun fact regarding your hometown.
My recollection from #JeopardyLivePanel episodes of about a year ago is that the change was brought in at the start of last season.
Robert K S wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2017 8:03 pm
I have a theory. They work very hard to cast their contestants in geographically diverse groups. They don't want you pulling a switcheroo and messing up their demographic assemblage--or worse, gaming the system by saying that you're "originally from" some lesser-represented place in order to improve your odds of getting on the show. Like I said, just a theory.
Interesting that this comes up now. With the start of the new season, I've been keeping track of
where J! contestants are coming from, by their Nielsen television market.
Last weekend, I finished going back and compiling
the same data for last season. On one hand, out of 210 markets nationwide, 91 (43.3%) had a player on the show last season. On the other, the top ten markets (NYC, LA, Chicago, Philly, the Metroplex, the Bay Area, D.C., Houston, Boston, and Atlanta) gave us half the contestants - including one of every seven from the New York area alone. And its percentage of players on was only about twice the percentage of TV households it has; that ratio was twice as high for D.C. (2.16% of households, 9% of players).
That said, I don't think it's quite right to state that a particular place or group of places is over- or under-represented. This is a game show, not the House of Representatives - the producers need only embrace geographical diversity to the extent that, in their opinion, they believe it will drive ratings.
I had not intended to work further back than last season, believing it to be an apples-to-oranges comparison. But I might now work my way back through Seasons 32 and/or 31, to see if the announced geographic distribution has shifted before and after the rule change.