Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy reports that interest in Jeopardy’s Man-vs-Machine match dipped a bit for the final of the three-evening event. The Nielsen ratings climbed following Monday’s match, in which Brad Rutter ended in a deadlock with the IBM computer. Ratings climbed from Monday’s 8.5% of U.S. homes to 9.5% on Tuesday. But Watson thrashed the humans on Tuesday, only letting them answer a combined five clues. The audience then dipped to 9.1% for the final show.
Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy reports that interest in Jeopardy’s Man-vs-Machine match dipped a bit for the final of the three-evening event. The Nielsen ratings climbed following Monday’s match, in which Brad Rutter ended in a deadlock with the IBM computer. Ratings climbed from Monday’s 8.5% of U.S. homes to 9.5% on Tuesday. But Watson thrashed the humans on Tuesday, only letting them answer a combined five clues. The audience then dipped to 9.1% for the final show.
Apparently, people thought the computer had it in the bag–I point I debate in the last chapter of my book. Fact is, if one of the two humans had won a quick $10,000 or so in the final game, and then doubled and quadrupled it with Daily Doubles, they could have been neck-and-neck with Watson. The trouble? It’s hard to land on Daily Doubles when your bionic foe is controlling the board, hitting the buzzer about 1/100 of a second after the light goes on.
Interesting to note that the attendance figures represent only a 30% boost from the same week last year. I would have expected multiples of the normal Jeopardy viewership. But then, I happen to think this was the most fascinating thing on TV since… well maybe game five of the 2008 World Series.
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By the way, Speakeasy is the same blog that published an article about our ebook strategy yesterday.