About a month ago, after *gestures omnidirectionally* had really begun to sink in, I noticed that some of the “Jeopardy!” episodes I recorded seemed familiar.
You’d think someone who routinely records “Jeopardy!” would be faster on the uptake, but it took me until this week to figure it out, mostly because the TitanTV schedule hadn’t figured it out either. Because the beginning of the 4 o’clock hour is routinely pre-empted for county health officials’ press conferences, KWWL has switched the new and repeat airtimes for episodes. Currently, new episodes are airing at 3.
The current episodes may have been the ones filmed without audiences, before production stopped altogether. Even though there’s still applause when one would expect, it sounded to me like the contestants’ voices were ringing out on an empty soundstage.
“Jeopardy!” without an audience is one thing. “The Price Is Right” literally can’t be done without one, and as such is in danger of becoming an artifact of the Before Times.