How did James Holzhauer's Jeopardy! loss not leak sooner?

The Atlantic

Holzhauer taped Monday's Jeopardy!'s loss on March 12, just six days after Alex Trebek's stage 4 pancreatic cancer announcement. Over the weekend, Holzhauer's loss began to leak, likely because episodes are sent to local stations on the weekday before airing, which would've been last Friday. "Even though the episode’s result came to light before being aired, it’s impressive that producers, contestants, audience members, and (presumably) their loved ones all kept quiet for months," says Joe Pinsker. Still, the Jeopardy! news was too big to be contained and it sparked uproar Twitter because numerous outlets reported the loss hours before Holzhauer's loss was shown in the much of the country. News outlets were embargoed from reporting his loss until the episode's first airing in Birmingham, Alabama at 10:30 a.m. ET. Soon after, The Washington Post and The New York Times posted stories that strongly hinted something newsworthy had happened, without divulging details. Former ESPN reporter Darren Rovell received backlash by outright tweeting at 12:26 a.m. ET that Holzhauer had lost, accompanied by a link to his interview with the Jeopardy! champ. Keeping Holzhauer's loss under wraps proved difficult because each Jeopardy! episode airs throughout the country over the course of 12-and-1/2-hours, from 10:30 a.m. ET (Alabama) through 11 p.m. ET (Seattle). Even Holzhauer proved to be spoiler, tweeting at 11:47 a.m. ET a link to a story saying he had lost. Less than two hours later, he cracked a joke about the Drake Curse. "Why is the entire internet spoiling Jeopardy, the one fun thing we've all had to look forward to every night for weeks?" tweeted Twitter user Leah Wiser. "Nobody told Jeopardy fans to stay off the Internet today smh," added Corey Hersch. Brady Kremer said the Jeopardy! should air at a single time: "I think Jeopardy just needs a universal national airtime in primetime. I'm sure didn't matter before social media, but I think it needs to be changed now," he tweeted.