Jeopardy! producers say they’ll have a hosting announcement “very, very soon”
Jeopardy! has technically been running under the care of temporary hosts Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings ever since host Mike Richards was ousted back in August
Aux News Jeopardy!
Although it’s been easy to forget—as the show has just sort of rolled along for the last season with Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings handing off hosting duties, and a number of high-profile winners seemingly unaffected by the transition—but Jeopardy! has been running without a permanent host for nearly a year at this point. That is, since August 2021, when producer Mike Richards was announced as the new permanent host for the show’s regular daily broadcast…and then swiftly un-announced after filming just 5 episodes.
But that state of trivia-adjacent uncertainty might soon be coming to an end, as revealed by series executive producer Michael Davies at the Daytime Emmys yesterday, where the game show picked up its latest Outstanding Game Show trophy. (The show has won for the last three years running, and seven times out of the last ten; it also has the most wins overall in the award’s history.) Davies didn’t shy away from talking about the Richards situation, saying that it was referred to as “the awkward months” around the Jeopardy! offices. “But,” he said, “It showed the power of our audience and how passionately our fans care about the program, which is just so important.”
Name-checking a number of big winners in the intervening period—including Matt Amodio, Amy Schneider, Mattea Roach, and Ryan Long, all of whom had long streaks on the show, with Schneider and Amodio both breaking the million-dollar winnings barrier—Davies asserted that the show is making moves to shore up its hosting situation. “We hope to have a hosting announcement very, very soon,” he said. “But with all of our plans for Jeopardy!—which is more Jeopardy!, not less, more versions—we’re going to need multiple hosts to represent the entire audience, to represent the entire country, in order to take this franchise forward.” It remains to be seen whether these expansionist plans mean Bialik and Jennings should keep their schedules open for the foreseeable future…but you have to imagine, right?
63 Comments
i prefer him.
I’m suddenly nostalgic for the time when we’d get 1-3 articles on Jeopardy! every day.
If we start getting a bunch of Angry Barsanti Articles aimed at Jeopardy I’m blaming you.
Is an Angry Barsanti one of those “revenge sex” positions?
“This sex position is known for ‘revenge sex’.”“What is an Angry Barsanti?”
It’s like a “Rusty Venture,” but inverted.
“Angry Barsanti Articles” seems redundant. Can probably just say Barsanti Articles.
“Angry Barsanti Articles” seems redundant. Can probably just say Barsanti Articles. Fair point.
Even the newswires that pretended there was a conspiracy against Levar Burton?
For all the hosts we have gotten during that audition season? Hell yeah, that was extremely fun.For Mike Richards? Fuck no, fuck that guy for almost ruining the game to appease his narcissistic desires.I am glad that at least Ken Jennings and Miyam Bialik took up the mantle as well as they did and made the game enjoyable. I would be okay with either one of them getting permanent hosting gig, though if not them… hopefully not someone boring or bad.
Those were the good old days, when you could read a dozen articles about Jeopardy while waiting for your abortion.
I’m tired of this drama. Hire a damn robot and be done with it.
Dr. Theopolis would be a good host.
Twiki:
“Bidi bidi bidi.”
Dr. Theopolis:
“That’s correct, Twiki. It’s a Daily Double. Contestant, what is your wager?”
Contestant:
“I’ll make it a true daily double, Doc!”
Twiki:
“Good luck, bub.”
Amen. What made Trebek great is that he WAS a robot. Why do people think Jeopardy should have any personality at all? It’s supposed to be bookish and cold. I mean shit, the SET IS BLUE. Stop trying to jazz it up. I don’t tune in for that.
I nominate C3PO he already works for ABC because Disney owns it.
They could just have the two of them play against each other. I’ve heard that she has a Ph.D.!
Really? I have *NEVER* heard that before. Next they’re going to tell me that unfunny comedian Ken Jeong is some kind of medical doctor or something!
“Erm akshually, that famously funny person isn’t funny, sorry to burst your bubble sweetie”
Yes! Bialik took a 12-year break from acting to attend college at UCLA, completing her bachelor’s degree in neuroscience in 2000 and doctorate in neuroscience in 2007
No more far farfetched than unfunny medical doctor Ken Jeong being some kind of comedian or something.
Booooo!!! Well played. well played. Yet, Booooo!!! Lol
Its kinda clear they are going to go with Mayim and ehhhhhh, she’s alright but she hasn’t grown on me, and that’s after I gave her a shot despite the whole brain pills and vaccine skepticism.
Why do you think they’re going with Mayim?
She just comes across as so fake
As of this week, the speed (or lack there of) with which she announces correct or incorrect responses is still slow enough to disrupt gameplay.
Interrupting contestants to tell them they’re in the lead is disruptive. The pauses are awkward but don’t disrupt anything.
I feel like there’s a mandate from the producers to announce every lead change, so I don’t think that’s entirely Mayim’s fault.
I get the feeling the pauses are caused by producers in her ear confirming correct or incorrect answers.
A huge pet peeve of my buddy and I. The delays are atrocious. And too many “that’s correct”s.
She is too eager, and had affected outcomes of the questions. Team Ken
Having Mayim Bialik as a host has immediately destroyed the reputation of Jeopardy!
Get Lee Pace and Lance Reddick to be the permanent hosts, with them alternating every two weeks. I will tune in just hear them read out loud. Who wants to hear answers read by Ken Jennings when you can hear those same answers read by Pace and Reddick? No one, that’s who. Someone get on that, would ya.
I would like to subscribe to this sexy Jeopardy you speak of.
Add Matt Berry into that rotation please.
Finally Lance Reddick will get one up on Lavar Burton!
A credulous idiot hosting Jeopardy works perfectly for the direction in which the US is going. In ten years, Final Jeopardy will be contestants distinguishing between a ball and an elephant.
very VERY soon?doo be doo dooby doo be doo. dooby dooby deet a deedle deedle. doo be doo dooby doo be doo. rumpty pumpty plump….bump…dump…boom boom!Pens down.
Joke suggestion: Just get Will Ferrel doing his Trebek
Sincere suggestion: Andy Richter! He’s a former Jeop Winner, smart, funny, lovable, and knows how the hosting scene works.
I don’t really understand the hemming and hawing. I doubt Ken would have stepped down from both The Chase AND Master Minds if he wasn’t going to be given the job.
Mayim Bialik is a charisma vacuum.
Jeopardy isn’t supposed to be charismatic. It’s supposed to be hard trivia. Serious shit. The host needs to be ice cold.
You can be cool and low-energy and still be interesting to watch. Bialik is dead air.
I don’t get why she tries so hard to be cheerful. It’s not necessary. I wonder if it’s easy to tip over into being bored while doing that job. Basically she could just do her Big Bang character.
I wish Bialik were ice cold. Instead, she’s a walking forced smile.
But she was famous thirty years ago!
As you can tell, I’m not a Bialik fan, but she was a main character on TVs most popular sitcom that ran from 2007-2019.
Which was a terrible show. And I’d be the target audience for it because I’m a scientist who was diagnosed as autistic as a child, like the main character. But I just couldn’t take it. The “humor” was just so bad.
So I’ve heard. I watched a few episodes with an old girlfriend who was a fan, and it was not for me.
Whats worse is that one of the creators said Sheldon wasn’t on the spectrum while the other said he couldn’t show more traits of it. Plus the character is consistently rewarded for treating other people poorly. The guy actually accomplishes most of his goals while his ‘friends’ simply become resigned to having to deal with him. Even when one or two of them have had enough, he then either gets really spiteful or does a single apologetic action and is immediately forgiven.
The prequel series, Young Sheldon, repeatedly makes it seem like he is on the spectrum but also makes it seem like a good portion of his issues came from a mix of his mother giving him preferential treatment (he gets a computer while his twin sister has to get used books) and him skipping five grades to enter high school. The show is again, people bending over backwards to cater to him while his siblings struggle, his mother clings to religion, and his father spirals towards infidelity and heart problems.
You were not, in fact, the target audience for that show. People who like to laugh at “nerds” (of the 80s teen comedy variety, not of the real world, then or now) were. It was made to appeal square at people whose inner monologues operate on a third grade level and require a laugh track, and at that it worked great. The fact that these people incessantly suggested the show to people like us because it played to their surface-level notions of who and what we are (math things! science stuff! social awkwardness!) did not, in fact, make it for us.
Shows that are ACTUALLY for nerds, like Futurama (the kind of show that would include a written by an applied math PhD just to make a 3-second throwaway joke) barely get viewership and are constantly on the verge of being canceled. Or they are prestige cable dramas like Breaking Bad or Mad Men, for the kinds of nerds who like to show up and argue about plot points and characterization on sites like this one (there is a not-insignificant overlap between these two groups of nerds).
Or they are, of course, Jeopardy!.
GiveGive me Jennings!
“We think younger viewers will really be drawn by the star power of Ezra Miller.”
And the new host is Michael Richards…from Seinfeld. That won’t ruffle any feathers, right?
Is Victoria Coren Mitchell available?
Genius! I mean, i guarantee the answer would be no, but still genius.
You don’t need to “represent the entire country”. You need one committed workhorse. Not a robot and an actress, but someone who is genuinely tied to the show without other commitments.
I wonder how much of the time spent sorting out the hosting situation is finding someone who won’t answer the network’s calls with “Fool me once…” and then just hanging up.
Always wild to me Michael Davies, the guy I first knew as one of the Men In Blazers (a podcast big enough and long-running enough to probably be a very very comfortable full-time income for most hosts in today’s market) is ALSO a fairly unimpeachable television producer. Who, along with a lengthy history in game shows (including the original Who Wants To Be A Millionaire run) essentially landed Jimmy Kimmel the ABC job.Ironically though he’d certainly never pull a Richards, I think he’d probably make for a fine Jeopardy host himself.
I still wish they had gone with Buzzy Cohen.
I realize I’m commenting on a three-day-old article, but I will never stop chuckling at how the executive producer of Jeopardy organized this hyped-up host tryout with a bunch of super-famous people, then gave himself the job and thought people would be okay with it.
He took a page out of Cheney’s book, who led a commission to find a VP candidate and then picked himself because he didn’t want to “deprive America of his experience.”
Surprise!!! It’s going to be Mike Richards!