Thursday, June 01, 2006

Jeopardy vs Millionaire

Lest anybody think Conor and I argue only about matters lacking substance, I've just returned from a wing dinner in which we debated the relative merits of 'Jeopardy' and 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire".

My opening statement can be paraphrased as "The two shows are targetting completely different demographics - Jeopardy is going after viewers with brains, Millionaire isn't so focussed".

Conor, unbeknownst to me, is a big fan of Millionaire (and Regis!) and so seemed to take offense. Neither of was able to convince the other of the error of his ways (much like many TEG chats) through subsequent discussion.

By coincidence, Jeopardy was playing when I got back to the hotel room. Final Jeopardy was:
"In 2005, Broadway's Virginia Theater was renamed to honour this late author, the first African-American so honoured"
I think that pretty much sums it up - the average Millionaire viewer probably thinks "Broadway" is a particularly wide stock car track.

Conor, are you going to use one of your lifelines?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Paul, Paul, Paul,

The discussion did not start out about targeted demographics but only evolved there when you had obviously lost your point that one was more intellectual then the other.

I, of course, being the intellectual person I am, am a fan of both and find that each has its challenges and rewards.

For final Jeapardy, I know that I have like a 1 in 30 chance of getting it right, so I'm not likely to gamble much money there and if there was one, I would be using my lifeline.

Conor