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This is what I’m thinking:
*After the Hassan trial, we knew the local TV news departments would need something to fill their 30 minutes of time besides telling us about the weather.
So Channel 2 trotted out an old standby Tuesday – whether the area is in jeopardy of losing the Buffalo Bills.
The so-called hook for the story was the fact the county is spending $3 million to fix up Ralph Wilson Stadium as is its contractual obligation.
That led to Channel 2 reporter Scott Brown trying to manufacture a story about the Bills future by asking County Executive Chris Collins and a Canisius College professor about whether the Bills would stay here or make one of the long-rumored moves to Los Angeles when their lease expires in two years.
Of course, this is getting ahead of the game.
Collins said the Bills aren’t looking to relocate and speculated that if the NFL schedule goes to 18 games the Bills would play seven of their nine home games here and maybe the other two in Toronto.
The college professor, Shawn O’Rourke, who Brown said was Canadian, said there was 99.9 percent chance the Bills are staying here because Toronto doesn’t want them.
There also was a 99.9 percent chance that the Canadian expert had no NFL insider knowledge.
But local TV news departments love to ask college profs questions outside their area of expertise and the answer probably made Bills fans feel good.
* The syndicated program “Jeopardy” has gotten a lot of attention for pitting the IBM computer Watson against two of its all-time great contestants, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.
The Tuesday evening newscasts on ABC and CBS ran stories about it (I didn’t see NBC’s newscast).
It was no-contest Tuesday with Watson cleaning up in between what amounts to IBM commercials about how the gimmick began and how Watson operates.
Watson is so fast that these versions of “Jeopardy” have become boring, except when he bets money on daily doubles and the final Jeopardy question.
Host Alex Trebek (see above) laughed at the odd amounts that Watson bets.
And the computer did provide some unintentional humor at the end when it bet $947 on the category U.S. Cities.
The question was about what city had airports named for a World War II hero and battle. Jennings and Rutter knew it was Chicago.
The computer went with Toronto, which the last I checked wasn’t an American city even if it gets a Bills game every now and then.
After all, it is too clean to be an American city.
You might have thought that Trebek – who is Canadian (he was born in Ontario) – would have had a little fun with that answer. But he acted like he was computer programmed and immediately signed off without addressing the stupidity of the computer’s answer.
Maybe we’ll find out tonight – when the so-called Man versus Machine battle ends — how Watson missed that elementary question so badly.
Alan Pergament was the television critic for The Buffalo News for 28 years. He currently is an adjunct professor at Buffalo State College and Medaille College, teaching courses in communications. He also writes a monthly column on the media for Buffalo Spree magazine.
I thought the same thing, Alan. As soon as I saw “Toronto????” as its answer, I was sure Trebek would crack a joke, as much as I was sure that a room full of 200 computer geeks at IBM groaned with what a miserable and utter “FAIL!” that answer that was. If “Watson” could get “Toronto” wrong, I don’t have a lot of confidence about it diagnosing any disease of mine, as the IBM infomercial was suggesting.
It was sooo boring. Jennings knew most of the answers, the computer just rang in faster, so what? Remember, you can’t ring in until he reads the question, so it’s not even like Watson knew the answer first, he’s just quicker pressing a buzzer- I’m unimpressed