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You don’t have to be as smart as a computer to know that the three “Jeopardy” programs that pitted IBM’s Watson against two of the show’s best all-time contestants would get higher ratings than usual locally on WKBW-TV.
The three programs this week averaged a 12.3 rating, hitting a high of 13.9 for Tuesday’s boring program in which Watson dominated.
“Jeopardy” usually gets ratings of between 9.0 and 10.0 on Channel 7.
Watson won the three-day competition so easily that it was more than a little boring.
As expected, “Jeopardy” host Alex Trebek cracked a joke Wednesday about Watson’s most notable error – guessing Tuesday that Toronto was the answer to a Final Jeopardy question about American cities.
A native Canadian, Trebek noted that one of the three things he learned from the computer competition is that “Toronto is an American city.”
* The 12.3 rating for the three “Jeopardy” episodes also is higher than most prime time network shows get around here.
The highest-rated prime time show Wednesday here was Fox’s “American Idol,” which had a 13.7 rating. And that’s low by “Idol” standards.
The lackluster premiere of the “Criminal Minds” spin-off, “Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior,” had a 11.3 rating, which was higher than its lead-in from a “Criminal Minds” (9.9) episode that deal with a case that had a link to Syracuse.
The creepy premiere of “Suspect” focused on the kidnapping of two young girls who were rescued by the new team led by Forest Whitaker (see above) with the help of a Watson-like computer.
The final scene in which the team celebrated the promotion of one of its members was as sappy as the rest of the episode was creepy.
* The premiere of “Suspect Behavior” sent the new ABC 10 p.m. medical series “Off the Map” to a low rating of .9. Yes, that’s .9. If Shonda Rhimes (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Private Practice”) wasn’t one of the show’s producers, “Map” would be off the schedule.
Needless to say, the “Map” lead-in sent Channel 7’s 11 p.m. news plummeting to a 1.0 rating.
A couple of Channel 7 staffers have since emailed to note that the station was off of DirecTV and FiOS because of technical problems, which could have contributed to the low rating. But cable still has 62 percent of area subscribers so the rating was going to be low even if the station was on those two alternatives.
According to one local researcher, the 1.0 rating is the lowest rating for Channel 7’s 11 p.m. in a year and perhaps in history.
“Off the Map” can’t be entirely blamed. The news product also gets some of the blame. But the low lead-in certainly helped put Eyewitness News “off the map” at 11 p.m. Wednesday.
pergament@msn.com
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.
Poor Ch 7 never recovered when King Irv abdicated the throne. It’s hard to replace such a fixture.
It wasn’t just Irv and Tom leaving, though. There were a number of bad decisions– many of which weren’t necessarily budget related– that followed in the wake of those departures that led to its plummet to the bottom. Maria Genero as evening news anchor… “7 News” and the dumping of the classic theme… the revolving door at the morning show ever since Sheila Mahoney’s departure… PM Buffalo as the lead-in to the 5:00 news… among others. It also didn’t help when Nielsen switched Buffalo to a metered market instead of the diaries– so stations with inflated reps like channel 7 lost ground.
Alan, whats the deal with the truck across from Channel 7. I t says turn off 7 news and it looks like something out of the Beverly Hillbillies. Is it some nut with an ax to grind or what?
Could be the union since I think some people at 7 have been without a contract for several years now.