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Who is Ken Jennings?... I'll Take "Ratings Booster" for a Thousand Alex.
September 20, 2004 at 10:14 am AST by Rodney MacLeod

The producers of Jeopardy knew what they were doing when they eliminated the 5 win rule on Jeopardy. According to their website, "The series is the #1-rated quiz show in syndication, and has held that title for over 1,000 weeks.", but I bet they went down a little bit when all the big money games shows (Millionaire and I dozen others I will never remember the names of) were popping up. People like to see big winners and I think the producers were afraid that a new game show craze might happen and they might not stay on top for it.

Enter Ken Jennings. I would assume that by his tenth win that Jeopardy ratings started to grow. I know I started watching it a little more after he won 20. Now he has won more than $1.5 million, and there are no signs of him slowing down. Every show I have watched he has been sluaghtering his opponents. He goes into Final Jeopardy with $30,000 more than his closest competitor. Quite a few time he has gone up against only oneplayer because the other was bankrupt. On more than one occasion he was close to going in to Final Jeopardy alone.

Now what if Jeopardy realised the ratings potential of a nice normal guy running a huge winning streak. Do you think they would be tempt to rig the show. I don't think it would take much to rig Jeopardy. They could possibly do it without then contestant knowing it. Simply riggin the buzzer so that the number one spot has an advantage on buzzing in. Buzzing in is more important than know the questions to the answers. I consider myself decent at trivia (not great, but decent), but when I play video game versions of Jeopardy I lose because someoneelse always beats me to the buzzer.

If it is not rigged, and I actually don't think it is. Will they let Ken go on winning. There is going to be a point where Ken winning all the time will get old and their rating will actually go down. At this point I think it is possible that the producers will step in and offer him a large sum of money to step down. He will probably be invited back for every tournament of champions, because people will still want to see him, just not all the time.

For now I will keep tuning in every now and then and see how Ken is doing. It will probably be the same as it always has been though. Me and my friends trying to answer more questions than the others, and not really caring who wins the actually Jeopardy game.