Jeopardy!

Imagine you competed on Jeopardy! and the only episode you were on will be airing tonight (let's also assume that you lost in Final Jeopardy! because the question had something to do with Shakespeare and you don't know anything about that dude and his boring plays and that's why you lost).  So, you set up a viewing party with a couple of friends, you send out a message on Facebook so that all of those jerks from high school will see how smart you are, and you are pretty excited about watching yourself in action.  It's 7:29, you flip over to your local station that broadcasts the show and BAM!, you find out that they will not be airing your episode tonight because the national news will be interrupting Jeopardy! with their 4th straight hour of the same updates about the Boston Bombing.

That's what happened last Friday.  Except that I wasn't on Jeopardy!, but we have to assume that this exact scenario happened to somebody.  That episode of the show will never be seen unless you happen to catch a rerun of it on the Game Show Network in five years or there is some way to watch it online.  How pissed would you be?  Now don't get me wrong, what happened in Boston was terrible and I'm glad they caught the two guys they think did the crime, but when they interrupt Jeopardy! to show the exact same coverage they have been showing for the past few hours seems kind of pointless to me.  How many times can they say that they have shutdown a part of Boston and are still looking for the suspect?  It's not like this was breaking news by the time Jeopardy! would have come on.  The shutdown of Boston had been effect since late the night before.  And on top of that, the network channels weren't the only ones to interrupt regularly scheduled programs to show non-breaking news.  ESPN was showing the same three clips of the bombing for three straight hours instead of broadcasting a baseball game like they should have.

Like I said, I feel terrible for all of the victims of the bombing, but if you want to see the same exact coverage of the bombing you can always just go to CNN, you know, a channel that was created for this exact reason. And to get one last thing off my chest, I really wish the news would stop showing depressing stories every night.  Why can't they show more stuff that wouldn't make a great concept for another terrible reality show?  Damn you, reality TV!

"Suck it, Trebek!"