"Jeopardy!" invades CES 2009

You have to walk all the way back to the Central hall of CES to find the largest exhibition at the show: A full set for the game show Jeopardy!, which is filming 11 episodes during the run of CES (the final five shoot tonight).

Like everything else at CES, this roadshow edition of the classic game show is super-sized. While the show back in L.A. seats about 150 people in the audience, there are room for 500 audience members in this custom-built auditorium right on the CES show floor.

I toured the set while speaking to Harry Friedman, the veteran executive producer who's overseen more than 3,000 of Jeopardy!'s 5,000-plus episodes. Per Friedman, getting everything in place for these 11 episodes (which include this year's Tournament of Champions and a Celebrity Jeopardy! installment) took a full year. Planning began at last year's CES, with the schedule moving forward piece by piece until this week.

Friedman's innovations with the show, now in its 25th season, are myriad. He updated the TV monitors you see from CRTs to low-power LCDs (the 36 monitors are currently 42-inch 1080p models), and he made Jeopardy! one of the first TV shows to begin broadcasting in high-definition. Friedman also pioneered the Clue Crew and, in a genius stroke, lifted the five-day limit for returning champions, which gave Jeopardy! a huge resurgence during Ken Jennings' historic 74-day winning streak.

The secret to putting together such an enormous technological project like this? Planning, planning, planning. It doesn't hurt, it seems, to have a platoon of geniuses on staff, too.

Watch for the CES-shot Jeopardy! installments to air March 10 through March 24.