Ken Jennings Becomes Encarta Spokesman

Record-Smashing Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings has been picked up by Microsoft to be the spokesman for Encarta. Jennings, who won $2.5 million in 75 consecutive victories on the quiz show, will embark on a nationwide media tour called "Quiz the Whiz", challenging news desks to stump him with questions from the new Microsoft Encarta Reference Library Premium 2005. In an "interview" with Microsoft PR, Jennings said:

Jenkins: The Internet can be an incredible resource, but the scary thing is you never know what's out there or whether the answer you will find will be accurate. In fact, out of curiosity I searched for myself once and turned up all sorts of erroneous information. One seemingly reputable and authoritative page even had my name wrong! That's why I really enjoy using Encarta: all its content has been reviewed by a team of editorial experts and all the Web sites include approved content.

No one told Microsoft the irony of misspelling Jennings name Jenkins in that paragraph and 14 other times on that page. Oops.

PR goofs aside, this is just a great idea. Jennings is the reigning king of the quiz, and fits Encarta so well. We're going to be seeing him on news shows for a while anyway, at least with this quiz it'll be fun. And you can be sure that if some hapless local broadcaster stumps him, it'll be all over the blogosphere within twenty minutes.
(via Microsoft Watch > BetaNews)