Blazer goes west in search of TV glory

Blair senior Sebastian Johnson will go one step further in gaining local fame on Monday, Feb. 6, when he is featured on Jeopardy Teen Tour. Johnson, who is currently serving as Student Member on the Board of Education (SMOB) and previously served as Blair's SGA president, was selected as one of 15 people to become quarterfinalists on the teen tour out of about a thousand 13- to 17-year-old applicants, according to Johnson.

Jeopardy is a well-known game show where contestants are matched against each other in their knowledge of trivia. The show begins with announcer Alex Trebek reading off several categories for that show. Each category contains five increasing dollar amounts and each amount corresponds to one answer for which the contestant must come up with the question (Example: Alex Trebek- Silver Chips Online. Contestant- What is Montgomery Blair High School's online newspaper?).

Johnson originally signed up online to go to take a written test in Boston to qualify for the show. He later found out that he had been selected as one of about 100 students to advance to the second round of the selection process. After having an interview and playing a mock game, "where we got to use the buzzer and everything," according to Johnson, he went home. He was selected as one of 15 teens to be featured on Jeopardy. All contestants automatically win $5,000 for making it to the quarterfinal round.

Johnson went to Los Angeles, California from Nov. 12 to 16 to shoot the ten episodes of the teen tournament. The tournament starts with the quarterfinal round, for which all 15 of the teens at the tournament automatically qualify. Shooting the quarterfinals shows took the entire first day of shooting. The second day, the semifinals were shot in the morning and the finals were shot in the afternoon. According to Johnson, winning the first round or being one of the top four other highest scorers qualified contestants for the semifinal round, and an automatic $10,000 prize. Of the three finalists, third place wins $15,000, second place wins $25,000 and first place wins $75,000. Until the tournament has finished airing, Johnson is contractually bound to keep secret how far he got in the tournament.

The company paid airfare and hotel bills and gave him $600 for food and sightseeing while he was in LA. The 12th and 13th were "cushion days" and Johnson spent them sightseeing with his mother. In the next two days, Johnson spent between nine and ten hours in the studio shooting the shows he was on and watching the other teens compete.

"I hung out with the other kids while we were in the studio, everyone was really cool. I mean, they were kind of dorky, but I'm pretty dorky anyway, so we had a common bond in knowing really useless trivia," Johnson said. "The time in the studio was actually really fun," he adds. All the contestants returned home on the 16th.

Trebek was very congenial, according to Johnson. "During commercials, when they put more make up on you, Alex would be making jokes and talking to the audience, it was pretty fun," Johnson says. "I wore a lot of makeup," he adds with a smile.

Johnson says that at this point, he is done with Jeopardy. "I haven't watched Jeopardy since I've been back. I'm tired of it."

The first round of Jeopardy Teen Tournament will air at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 6 on ABC, channel 7. If Johnson advances, he will be featured on future episodes.