Afternoon News Updates For Tuesday, November 18

Good afternoon, game show fans! Today's brief batch of updates include the current state of the 2014 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, Ten Network's Family Feud building upon the success of its show by unveiling a new home game, Million Dollar Minute making a "game-changing" adjustment to its format and GSN airing a retrospect honoring classic game shows.

2014 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions: Week 2
The final week of the 10-game event began with Juila Collins, Jared Hall and Terry O'Shea competing in the first semifinal game. Collins, a Wild Card contestant who earned a second chance to remain in the contest after her $9,100 loss on Wednesday's show, won yesterday's game with a modest $16,500 total and became the tourney first finalist. Today, after obliterating his opponents in his $21,000-quarterfinal game, Arthur Chu returns to face Wild Card entrants Mark Japinga and Rebecca Rider. Finally, the third semifinal sees Sandi Baker, Joshua Brakhage and Ben Ingram fighting for the last spot in the finals. These next four games are going to be intense, exciting and suspenseful as we wait with bated breath to see who will walk away with the quarter-million dollar grand prize in this year's Tournament of Champions. Don't forget to follow the action of Jeopardy's TOC mini-site.

Imagination Entertainment Releases Family Feud Board Game
The Australian-based global games company has created a board game based on Ten Network's successful revival of Family Feud. The game comes complete with over 400 Survey questions and a Fast Money Bonus Round. In Australia, Family Feud is now available in Toys 'R' Us, Games World, Mind Games, On the Run and other leading independent games stores. The game is also available online on gamesworld.com.

A Slight Change on Million Dollar Minute
On the subject of Australian game shows, Million Dollar Minute has added a new safety net to its nine-rung money ladder at $300,000 beginning this week. Although I believe this change takes away from the "high risk=high reward" dynamic of show's format a little bit, the addition of a second safe zone is far from a deal breaker and will undoubtedly entice more champions to shoot the works and play to the million. I'm just thankful the producers didn't follow in NBC's Minute To Win It's footsteps by annoyingly adding safe zones to the two top dollar amounts prior to the million-dollar level.

GSN To Air Game Show Flashback Special With Host Ben Gleib
As a part of GSN's and Tylenol's six-month tribute campaign to classic game shows, the network will be airing a Game Show Flashback special hosted by Idiotest host, Ben Glieb. The program will highlight key moments in game show history. No word yet on the air date or time of the special, but I will make sure to keep you updated. GSN has also aired minute-long interstitials every "Throwback Thursday" morning featuring Wink Martindale hosting a hidden camera, ambush-styled game show with special guest stars including Erik Estrada, and rarely-rerun retro game shows during primetime as a part of the campaign's "Time Capsule" block including All-Star Secrets. The next "Time Capsule" block will air November 30 at 11:00pm-12:00am EST featuring two episodes of Tattletales. The episodes will include a young Michael J. Fox and Howie Mandel.

Sources: Facebook via Family Feud Australia, Million Dollar Minute, Game Show Follies, TV Media Insights