Mike Richards has been fired from Jeopardy! and Wheel Of Fortune
Though he lost out on the Jeopardy! hosting job, Richards was still serving as executive producer for both game shows
TV News Jeopardy!
What a fall from grace we’ve witnessed from the now-former executive producer of Jeopardy!, Mike Richards. After weeks of controversies concerning previous discrimination lawsuits, scandals, and one scathing exposé, the man who was once slated to continue Alex Trebek’s legacy on the trivia game show no longer has any position at Sony Picture Television, per an announcement from EVP Suzanne Prete. Michael Davies, the current Who Wants to Be a Millionaire executive producer, will take over Richards’ production duties in the meantime.
Prete’s full statement reads:
I’m writing to let you know that Mike will no longer be serving as EP of Wheel and Jeopardy! effective immediately. We had hoped that when Mike stepped down from the host position at Jeopardy! it would have minimized the disruption and internal difficulties we have all experienced these last few weeks. That clearly has not happened.
Michael Davies from Embassy Row has agreed to help with production on an interim basis until further notice. Michael and I will work together with all of you in the weeks ahead to ensure that production remains on schedule and we do not miss a beat as we head into the new season.
I know this has been a challenging time for the entire team, and I want to thank you all for your cooperation and professionalism over these last few weeks. As Ravi mentioned last week, I will be more involved in the day-to-day on our shows moving forward and I am looking forward to working closely with all of you. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you need anything.
Sincerely,
Suzanne
Richards’ promotion caused controversy not only due to his previous work conflicts and resurfaced statements on his short-lived podcast, but also because he apparently had a pretty big role in choosing who would become Trebek’s successor. On August 20, Richards stepped down from the hosting position—a mere 9 days after the announcement was made—due to the level of public outcry.
It’s been a difficult few weeks for the Jeopardy! team since what started earlier this year as an interesting and lighthearted debate around who would be the best fit for the open permanent host position turned into a revolving door of disappointing revelations and announcements. It’s unclear where this leaves Jeopardy! in terms of anything really, but the dark cloud that has been cast over the show may not simply part with Richards exit.
330 Comments
Mike Richards out-fucking-up Michael Richards is truly remarkable. All he had to do was not steal the hosting job. This is like if Michael B. Jordan was better at basketball than Michael Jordan.
Or if Howard K. Stern was a talented broadcaster?
And Jeffery T. Dahmer might be a brilliant architect, but deep down he knows he’ll never be more more than a third-rate serial killer.
“All he had to do was not steal the hosting job.
Yes. He should not have “stolen” the job he was specifically hired for.
What about Mark L. Wahlberg? He’s not hosting Antiques Roadshow anymore, so maybe there’s time in his schedule.
Or if Morgan J. Freeman – creator and Executive Producer of the Teen Mom series – became an Oscar-winning actor on a caliber higher than Morgan Freeman.
Man, now I really wanna see Marky-Mark guest host Antiques Roadshow.“That little fuckin’ glass bowl? That’s worth $1500?! Holy shit! Looks like somethin’ my fuckin’ aunt’d keep candy in or some shit. Jesus christ.”
or if Adolph Hitler Campbell was better than Adolph Hitler at painting
Ironically, the “B” stands for Basketball.
This reply is a stolen joke.
it doesn’t matter
Guess that puts Dog in a Bowl’s gameshow hosting aspirations in…Jeopardy
Truly remarkable. Dog in a Bowl out-fucking-up a literal dog in a toilet bowl is like if Ian Karmel was worth more marginally than a Werther’s Original hard candy.
Hey maybe they’re the same person! I refuse to sign up for Twitter and ask that person though.
Shh….. It’s Carlos Mencia.
They’re not the same person.
“All he had to do was not steal the hosting job.”
I just don’t understand how thick-headed and straight-up stupid people are.
He. Was hired. In the first place. To be the new host.
Period.
Seriously, how absolutely fucking stupid are you dopes?
I’d never even heard of this guy before this Jeopardy fiasco, but now it all sounds like if he hadn’t stuck his head out it wouldn’t have gotten chopped off.
“Mike is leaving Sony to spend more time with his eight-figure severance package and his family.”
At some point Newsmax will create a game show network with all the problematic lost souls of broadcasting
I’m picturing Match Game filled with dead-eyed Trump scions, or Cancelled By Hollywood Squares.
The Cancelled Hollywood Squares sounds like an SNL opening sketch that must have happened by now
They had a sketch with that premise in the last season finale. It was done as an edited rerun of an old episode where almost all the celebrities (Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer, Kevin Spacey…) had since been canceled—all except Baby Spice.
Yes, this is what I was referring to. Thanks.
They actually did one this year that was an early-2000s one with Bill Cosby and a few other celebs from the time who have become…problematic.
Well, there actually was a Hollywood Squares sketch just this last year that showed a re-airing of a ‘classic episode’ with Bill Cosby in the center square (I think?), and well, things had to be drastically edited for modern audiences. It was pretty funny!
Close.
Chuck Wollery is already on board
They were outflanked by Fuckboy Island
“Mike is leaving Sony to spend more time with your family, oh snap!”
How’s your wife and my kids?
Thank God. Can we all stop pretending to care about Mike Richards now?
Someone once suggested Paul F. Tompkins for host. We need to amplify this worldview as much as humanly possible.
He does have relevant experience from his time hosting Hollywoo Stars And Celebrities! What Do They Know? Do They Know Stuff? Let’s Find Out!
but only if he does it with the english accent as h.g. wells!
only if does Double Jeopardy as Werner Herzog.
Either that or Maurice Lamarche’s Orson Welles/Brain/Morbo
Oh fuck yes. He could at least be the announcer.
AND NOW OUR PUNY HUMAN HOST!
“A DEVICE THAT MOVES AIR FOR THE PURPOSES OF COOLING OR VENTILATION.”“What are windmills?”“WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!!! GOODNIGHT!!!”
I am here for getting Mo LaMarche the credit he so richly deserves.
I met him at a comic con, he was super nice. He signed a Calculon photo exactly how I wanted, then said (and corrected my minor error on) the line about his unholy….ACTING TALENT!
With occasional appearances by Matt Gourley’s Ian Fleming. I think we’ve figured this out.
Or Gourley HR Giger.
only if does Double Jeopardy as Werner Herzog.I like this line of thinking and I will gladly sign up for your newsletter.
I’ve been saying that for a while. He’s already got a better wardrobe than the CBSViacom costume department could come up with.
But what about the Sony costume department?
Writer and blogger Mark Evanier suggested Alton Brown, and I can absolutely see that.
He has the personality. He’d probably do a great job. I daresay he’d jump at the chance to finally talk about something other than food.
…but also for purely selfish reasons, I need to never, ever, ever learn any more about AB than I already know, so I want him to stay as far away from Jeopardy as possible
Writer and blogger Mark Evanier suggested Alton Brown, and I can absolutely see that.
That was me! Or at least I did so in a comment in one of the hundreds of other Jeopardy-related articles here— others here or elsewhere in other, lesser portions of the internet may have as well.I still stand by it, though I have seen other excellent suggestions since (e.g. Stephen Fry, Andy Richter).
Credit where credit is due. I have no doubt we’re being listened to by the powers that be.
Only if they change the name from Jeopardy! to Regular People, What Do They Know? Do They Know Things? Let’s Find Out
Also, John Hodgeman.
I think that was me!
You’ll have to fight it out with Bass Player Convention. There. Can. Be. Only. One.
You’ll have to fight it out with Bass Player Convention. There. Can. Be. Only. One.This might have to be a round robin, as I tossed out PFT as well.Andy Daly would be excellent, too – he could do it as different characters monthly, weekly, seasonally, etc. Or permanently as Review’s Forrest MacNeil.
YES.
Only if he does it as Mr. Peanutbutter hosting Hollywoo Stars And Celebrities What Do They Know Do They Know Things Let’s Find Out
Do we really want Paul to face the intense scrutiny that comes with being the host of Jeopardy? The man has hours and hours and hours of recordings that could be taken severely out of context.
I think the host should be someone with hosting experience instead of an actor. There’s no reason to start a second situation where social media keeps pushing an actor who sucks at hosting Jeopardy.
He would be a wonderful host, but I dunno, I could see him getting bored of hosting a fairly staid show day in day out for years, where he doesn’t get to really do much in terms of creativity. And having to pretend to be entertained by people’s uninteresting anecdotes. Then again it’s a stable well paying job. Maybe I’m just being selfish and want him to have the freedom to mess around and say whatever he wants on podcasts without fear of the corporate hammer coming down.
Next up on Ow, My Hubris!
Hilarious. He wanted fame and he got it. If he hadn’t been such a weasel by rigging the host search to make himself the winner nobody would even know he was a creep.
I bet this guy wishes he hadn’t put himself out there in the public eye. He Icurus-ed himself.
semi-jinx! you owe me a coke….zero
I think you mean Coke…zero…SUGAR
one lump or two?
“He Icurus-ed himself.’
He “you just made up a word”-ed himself?
Cool.
I would bet any amount of money he still thinks it was fine and that he’s a victim of cancel culture. (His probable words, not mine.)
All he had to do was creep behind the scenes like the cockroach he is. But nope, he flew too close to the sun for that hosting gig and invited the scrutiny
It really blows my mind, I would like to somehow see the thought process. How do you have serious skeletons in your closet, see other people go viral and their skeletons from like 20 years ago come up and cost them everything…. Then decide to throw yourself in the spotlight to replace a universally beloved host. Really stunning lack of self-awareness there.
It’s not that he put himself forward as a candidate despite all that. It’s that he tried to hide all of that—the cover-up is almost always going to be more harmful than the crime. Then he went about getting the job in what seemed outwardly like the shadiest possible way, meaning a lot of people were going to be upset and not interesting in forgiveness when the bad stuff DID finally come out. As it always would.He did some quite stupid things, and those decisions ended up costing him.
It’s that he tried to hide all of that—the cover-up is almost always going to be more harmful than the crime. DID he try to hide all of that, though? He left his stupid podcast up to be found. I think he just thought he was above meeting any real consequences. If someone can continue to get away with something, they’ll keep pushing that boundary. In a more extreme case of this, the former POTUS escaped an impeachment trial TWICE, admitted to all manner of corruption on NATIONAL TV, stirred shit on Twitter, not to mention ALL the horrifying stuff he said and did on his first campaign trail – with no consequences. In fact he was rewarded for it again and again by his followers and the political apparatus that used him for their own means (with mixed results). Why SHOULD he censor himself? Why should Richards have tried to censor himself?
Pretty sure we just saw why.And the moment someone asked about his podcast he went and deleted them almost before the interview was over. He had every opportunity to address everything head-on, and even if he had been forced to remove himself from the hosting role in the short-term, probably could have kept his job as EP and, in the long-run after a better host search, who knows?
Narcissists can’t help themselves. He probably still doesn’t think he did anything wrong.
Rich white men have a very special ability to think of themselves as amazing and never consider their own faults as faults.
Just look at me! I’m awesome. Oh wait, I’m not rich.
Privilege of course. When you’re at the top of the food chain for so long, you tend to believe you can do no wrong, and that you deserve the world. And if you acknowledge you do wrong, it’s “normal”, because others do it just as well.
The scary aspect to this is this is the logic of a sociopath.
It’s 100% hubris. He’s never had anything bad happen to him for his actions… so why would he now?
He probably thought he would get away with it because he’s witnessed a multitude of slimy white guys get away with similar or worse actions and then win humanitarian awards.
Cause privilege always privilege! I would say white people but then all the privilege folk gonna lash out at the black man for speaking the truth. /side eye
People high up don’t seem to realize the the past can now be more haunting than they think (of course, it depends on how well they’ve been hiding their digital footprint but it seems like most entertainment figures do a horrible job erasing all that).
100% hubris from getting away with his behavior while moving up in his career at the same time.
What’s so weird to me – and I do have to give him credit for pulling this part of the move off – is how easily and successfully he rebranded himself as “the producer of Jeopardy!”, and how well that’s stuck. My generation will always know him as the host of “Beauty and the Geek” (i.e., kind of the epitome of what’s stupid and awful about reality TV) – a few months as EP of Jeopardy! doesn’t change that, any more than if Joe Millionaire somehow ended up on the Supreme Court thirty years from now. Is it possible to reinvent yourself and mature? Sure. Should anybody be surprised that the guy from “Beauty and the Geek” has said some stupid things? They should not.
To be fair, Brett Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court and had all his debt paid off.
Perhaps Brett wants the Jeopardy job?
I’d make that trade if he wants to retire from the court
“I’m sorry [sniffle], we were looking for [sniffle], What is… [sniffle]… my dad’s calendars? WAAAAAAHHHHH!”
Joe Millionaire was really Joe Thousandaire. Poor Darva Conger.
You’re conflating “Joe Millionaire” with “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?”, but it’s totally understandable: Rick Rockwell’s net worth was estimated at $2 million, making “multi-millionaire” technically correct but still wildly misleading.(It is time, once again, to quote my favorite description that ever appeared in Time magazine, referring to the competitors on “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire”: “Fifty women, running the gamut from merely attractive to damn!,…”)
Oh whatever. Gold digger
Wrong fake millionaire. Conger was on Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire.
Joe Millionaire was a different reality show, Darva Conger was on Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire. I think she annulled the marriage before she even found out that the guy probably wasn’t on the level, like maybe his house was technically worth a million or something, I don’t know, they had some reason why he could technically be called a millionaire.
Only FOX could have 2!!!! shows featuring guys pretending to be millionaires to get with ladies.
Don’t forget I Wanna Marry Harry.
FUCK!!!! That’s 3 shows! But, there’s still… Just One FOX!
The same channel whose news division wants to protect the sanctity of marriage from the gays.
The show was Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire, with the guy having the bare minimum to qualify for the title with 2 million in liquid assests.
A quick search suggests that it was $2 million net worth, period…which in his case apparently included a perfectly fine but hardly opulent home.
Yeah, Joe Millionaire was fake but then they gave them a million, or at least like 100k or something. But I’m pretty sure that one featured a finalist who had some some light bondage modeling that everyone lost their shit over too.
Darva Conger was actually on “Who Wants To Marry A Multi-Millionaire?” and married Rick Rockwell of Killer Tomatoes and domestic violence fameThe woman “Joe Millionaire” picked as his prize didn’t marry him.
You have conflated Joe Millionaire with Who Wants To Marry A Multi-Millionaire but you made me Google it so props to you.
“ if Joe Millionaire somehow ended up on the Supreme Court”Or that Apprentice guy, whatsisname, becoming Secretary of Transportation or something.
This implies that anyone remembers Beauty and the Geek.
Can’t remember if it was in one of Claire McNear’s articles or if it was in the Vulture piece on this fiasco, but I remember an anonymous source talked about Richards’ two-minute tribute to Trebek that aired on the first episode after Trebek passed away. His general comment was: Wait, why is the Executive Producer doing this? There’s no particular reason for the audience to know or care who the EP is. They could have easily had a Clue Crew member perform that tribute, or Ken Jennings, or announcer Johnny Gilbert, all of whom are more familiar to the Jeopardy audience and knew Trebek longer than Richards. But Richards inserted himself in there, and that was the beginning of his “producer of Jeopardy” branding to the public. Richards probably doesn’t do the guest hosting stint if he doesn’t do that tribute first, and he probably doesn’t get offered the job if he doesn’t do the guest hosting stint.
“My generation will always know him as the host of “Beauty and the Geek””
Sure.
“the man who was once slated to continue Alex Trebek’s legacy on the trivia game show”Yeah, BY HIMSELF. How could such a scheme not work out??
So long fucker!
At this point LeVar Burton is looking like the best option. He’s a beloved personality and veteran of three iconic TV shows. He’s never tweeted anything discriminatory or hateful. He’s not an anti-vaxxer. And he wants the job.
needs to demonstrate he’s better at hosting Jeopardy cause he was very lackluster in his run
Except the person in charge of making sure LeVar’s tryout went smoothly was…Mike Richards. So the producers never really considered him, because they didn’t think he was “the right fit.” https://www.tmz.com/2021/08/25/jeopardy-levar-burton-not-considered-full-time-hosting-job/
alot of people claim he was setup to fail. 🤷♂️ I can’t opinionate bc I missed all his episodes somehow.
But everyone knows it wasn’t his fault. He hosted a kids TV show decades ago so they should give him as long as it takes to get good at it.
Surely “is good at it” should be one of the requirements? Not that I watched him (or any of the other guest hosts), but it doesn’t seem like people who did were generally that favorable. I think they should aim slightly higher than “well-known, popular person who hasn’t done anything shitty on record”.
but the entire ‘try out’ method was tainted from the get-go because of richards’ involvement. i also think it’s just the knee-jerk contrarianism the internet is known for ‘oh people want this guy? well an interesting opinion would be to not want him’. you’re even essentially repeating it and you didn’t even watch any of it.
“but the entire ‘try out’ method was tainted from the get-go because of richards’ involvement. it was never a try out in the first place”
Added some common sense for you.
I hear you but I think you’re wrong on this. I am an avid Jeopardy viewer. I was rooting for the guy. He stunk up the joint. He just wasn’t good.
“but the entire ‘try out’ method was tainted from the get-go because of richards’ involvement.”
Oh, I like this. It was RICHARDS’ fault that LeVar Burton was a complete, abject failure at the job.
He’s a seasoned TV veteran working on a format he’s never done before. Give him more than five episodes to work with and I bet he’d settle into the role nicely.
Agreed. Burton has been a producer, showrunner, director, actor, and host at different points in his life. Give him an a few actual test shows and some support and I bet he’d get into the groove quickly.
Also, remember Richards was coaching his competition, and I’ll wager he did everything he could to harm Levar’s chances, as well as other candidates who were actually interested in the job.
Oh my god, could you be more pathetic? Jesus…
“Give him an a few actual test shows and some support and I bet he’d get into the groove quickly.”
Yeah, give him more of a chance than anyone else because he sucked but I liked reading rainbow thirty years ago!!!
Or maybe he wouldn’t. I liked TNG too but there’s no reason to think he’s the best option. It’s all just weird wishful thinking
he only got one taping, while the others got two, and they probably didn’t give him the same setup and prep as the others because they were never seriously considering him and only trying to cynically cash in on fan supportHe wasn’t great, but he had a high ceiling
“ and they probably didn’t give him the same setup and prep as the others because they were never seriously considering him”
I think they probably had Alex Trebek’s voice from the grave in his ear because they only ever wanted him to be the host and they wanted to give him every chance possible.
See? We can both make things up whole cloth!
The last five guest hosts were George Stephanopoulos, Robin Roberts, LeVar Burton, David Faber, and Joe Buck. Each hosted five episodes.
George was fine-i-guess, Robin was really good, Faber and Buck both surprised me by being very-nearly-excellent. (Faber was a surprise ‘cause i still don’t know who he is, and Buck was a surprise because… he’s Joe Buck.)
But, as much as we all wanted/expected LeVar to be great – myself included – he was instead not-even-good. Maybe because he actually wanted the job, while the others were just on a lark.
It’s still unclear whether any of those guest stints were actually intended as try-outs. But if you think you’re at an audition, then you’d better bring it.
I agree with this assessment. Funny how nobody is talking about Robin Roberts. Joe Buck was definitely a surprise because he ruins every sportscast for me but he did well.I was definitely not impressed with Levar Burton and was hoping for better, but I’m now seeing that he had to cram all the episodes in one day so perhaps having the extra day would have helped.
They tape 5 episodes a day. So everyone else had the same amount of time as Burton. He wasn’t rushed. He just wasn’t good at it and that’s ok.
Everyone got two days. He had one.
Everyone didn’t get two days, some got two, some got one.
The ones that got two days taped 10 shows, the ones that got one day taped five shows.
Every single host was given the exact amount of time per episode as every single other one.
“I’m now seeing that he had to cram all the episodes in one day so perhaps having the extra day would have helped.
Jeopardy does, and always has, taped five episodes per day.
But yes, they should hire Burton so that they can double the amount of taping days and thus instantly double to crew-budget of the show, and oh hey by the way also doubling HIS salary.
HoW cOMe tHEy HavEN’t HirEd hIm yEt?!?
Are you saying this might be an opportunity to get Joe Buck out of the broadcast booth? Holy shit, the mother of all win/wins, sign him up.
Not all of them got two.
He wasn’t the best of the hosts by any means, but the majority of his issues just seemed due to nerves. I don’t think there’s anything that wouldn’t be solvable within a few months on the job, if not less.That said, there are certainly other hosts that did well, and I have no problem with them getting the nod over Burton. I just don’t think that Jeopardy should spend a lot of time worrying over the kind of performance problems that can be easily fixed.
He got ONE DAY on the job. He was not exactly top of the pack but I’m sure he’d do just fine.
Why are you so sure? What’s going to spontaneously make him better than he was when there are others who performed better? Wouldn’t those other candidates get better with practice as well?
Point to where I said nobody else would get better with practice.
“good at it” = how many eyeballs did he attract. That’s ultimately what matters most to the producers of the show — can he consistently attract a large audience, and the right demographic, so that advertisers find value in putting their $$$ behind the show.
I don’t know who your focus group is, but plenty of people watched his episodes and liked how he did.
Sure they did. That’s why the people who WANT him to host aren’t even defending his performance. Every single person who wants Burton to host either thinks there was some conspiracy against him or that Jeopardy should change the entire way they shoot the show so that he can have more time to get not-shitty at the job.
I don’t know, he did kind of have an icky relationship with an AI of a universally renowned warp field theorist without her knowledge.
I never forgave a friend of mine for saying I was most like Geordi of all the TNG characters, because of this episode.
Geordi’s relationships with women were problematic as fuck. In addition to the woman he fell in love and learned all about through her unauthorized hologram simulation, there was also another woman he fell in love with after watching all of her personal logs, and then became romantic with in the middle of a murder investigation in which she was a suspect.I have no trouble identifying with Geordi, he was starved for romance and socially inept, but those are exactly the kinds of skeletons you don’t want to have in your closet if you’re going to become Jeopardy host in the 24th century.
Yeah I guess in the starved for romance at the time I was. I’m sure that’s somewhat what he meant but I definitely haven’t ever creeped on that level.
This is only because we never got to really see what Riker did in the holodek during his off hours. Surely he wasn’t just shining his trombone, solo…
Well he legit fell in love with a holodeck character, to the point where the romulans scanned his brain and found that she was the love of his life… So you know he had to have given that another try
I was listening to a podcast the other day that started talking about this, and how the Holodeck must have a self-cleaning mechanism to phase anything off the floor. Which of course could’ve collided with a space entity and made a sentient Spunkmonster.
There was an episode of Lower Decks that actually dealt with this. The most awful job on the ship was to purge the “bodily fluid” receptacles in the holodecks.
Yeah, he really soured the milk there.
Good one, Captain Scott.
Hoisted on his own Picard?
I’ll allow it.
Literally NOBODY thought he was good, which seems to be the MAIN criteria.
I wish he’d been better. He was my top choice, but I was seriously underwhelmed by his audition. I love the dude, but it’s still an audition, and he didn’t bring the fire.
He ticks all of the boxes except, ya know, actually being good at the job.
Counter-Point: LeVar is not Buzzy, so he is not the best choice.
I’ve never watched any of his episodes, but if the guy best suited to succeed Trebek is named “Buzzy” and people are okay with that, than he must be pretty good.
One problem … he sucked when he got the opportunity. Choke city.
Okay so I watched *all* the guest hosts (I live in a household of trivia mavens and Jeopardy is ritual television. I’m a 30+ year veteran). I was disappointed in LeVar. However, he wasn’t set up for success, so I’d be happy for him to have another chance.Buzzy Cohen was my favorite. Ken Jennings, tweets aside, was fine. He seemed to be settling in, he had a good feel for the game, and he did pretty well with the contestants. Buzzy had more personality, though.Mayim Bialik is out for me because of her Neuriva commercials and her attempts to rewrite her anti-vaccination past.Of the people who otherwise have TV jobs, Robin Roberts did surprisingly well and I liked her. She still had a touch of the morning TV chipper, but not as much as Katie Couric or Savannah Guthrie. Dr. Sanjay Gupta did a nice job also. The other TV hosts ranged from mediocre to awful (Dr. Oz).
“However, he wasn’t set up for success, so I’d be happy for him to have another chance.”
So, he needs to be set up for success, unlike everyone else?
Yeah, let’s hire someone who’s going to need extra time, extra setup, extra attention all the time. Sounds great.
Is Ben Stein still around? I know he would be hella old, but he looked old in Ferris Bueller, might be good for a couple of years.
He’s unfortunately turned into a huge right wing Creationist, complete with outright saying that arguing with his side is like being a Nazi.
In fairness, Ben Stein started out working in the Nixon administration – appearing in movies as a deadpan authority figure was a side hustle to his lifelong career as a conservative whackjob.
Eh he was an economic advisor for a California republican. Most of his right-leanings have come later in life.
I’m not sure if it’s a grift or genuine generational trauma, but he somewhat blames the Holocaust on an extreme belief in evolution and the Nazi’s belief in genetic superiority/cleanliness. Which…kind of? Eugenics definitely led it down that road and Hitler was inspired by quite a few American eugenicists and phrenologists. He also believed in a ton of quack science that nobody espouses now (phrenology for example) and a ton of occultism. But that doesn’t make creationism even close to a science, nor does it equate acknowledging scientific reality with fascism.
Minds that will blame science for eugenics are exactly the same that will blame leftist ideas for pogroms and bread lines. Coincidence is not equal to causation, which they would of course learn from they very intellectual framework they denounce.
Yes, but he’s also a Trump-loving creationist. A Jewish former writer for Nixon (who was a notorious anti-semite) that broke into acting and hosted a really good game show with Jimmy Kimmel, but then started shilling for intelligent design. What a wacky life.
…erm, look up some of the stuff Ben Stein has said in the last 15 years or so. That would be just as much of a firestorm as Richards, exactly what the Jeopardy producers wouldn’t want.
Hopefully that asshole is already dead.
Yeah if people aren’t going to get it because of skeletons in their closet they’re not going to hire the guy who did a documentary about creationism being great.
Nothing says “skeletons in the closet” like “Worked For The Nixon Administration”, much less his comments about Barack Obama and his whole bizarre obsession with linking the scientific method and evolution with the Holocaust (no joke). I’m honestly confused about how he got Win Ben Stein’s Money. His 90s fame is truly bizarre to me now, even though I admittedly watched the hell out of the show.
“Welcome to the Nixon Adminstration! Here’s your name badge and clearance and we’ve put a welcome skeleton in your office closet. The first two will expire when your contract ends, but your free to keep the skeleton as a kind of souvenir!”
Ok, nevermind, I knew he was conservative, but I just kind of assumed he was the Bush 41 kind of republican, not great, but not awful on a personal level. I looked up what people are talking about, boy was I wrong.
It all started with his teacher character on Ferris Bueller’s Day off and the Wonder Years.
he was one of the worst at hosting
“At this point LeVar Burton is looking like the best option.”
Not if you’ve seen him host.
Hecklers are the worst, but you cannot utter the N word like he did, it’s about time it caught up to him
Personally, I think getting caught with oxycontin while crossing the Canadian border was the problem.
a simple background check would have caught that, shame!
He hadn’t reached Tarantino level, nor will he ever.
Just pick Buzzy and let Mayim do the Tournanments!
Yeah, it looks like we’re stuck with Mayim-on-occasion. But it’s time to just revert to either Ken or Buzzy for the main show.
Goddamn, this is one wacky game show.
Jeopardy hasn’t been this good in years!
I always just assumed that, given the many decades they had to think about this, the brain trust behind Jeopardy had a codified line of succession similar to the British monarchy or the U.S. presidency. I thought they had a contingency for who would host Jeopardy if Alex, the announcer, the executive producer, and the cameraman all died in separate plane crashes on the same day (i.e. obviously the president pro tempore of the judges would step in). I feel disillusioned to realize that all along they planned to wing it and give it to the snake willing to play dirtiest.
It sounds like it was supposed to be Ken Jennings, but then enough people got upset over a few of his tweets that they thought it was too risky.
Mike Richards convinced everyone that Jennings was too risky.
They chose Richards (a guy with a history of lawsuits, even before they found out about the podcast) and Bialik (with an anti-vaxx history and some unfortunate comments about how women dress/how women are abused in Hollywood). I find it hard to believe that Jennings’ Twitter history is unacceptable to them, but those other two are okay. I think they’re looking for somebody who might pull in non-Jeopardy fans – which Jennings certainly won’t do – and they’re using the tweets as their public reason for choosing someone else.
Ken’s tweets are pretty transparently cover. If those are disqualifying but Richards’ and Bialik’s past remarks, podcasts, lawsuits and such aren’t, then they’re not really disqualifying. What they are is an excuse to not consider the heir apparent and slot yourself in.
But the person who probably decided that Jennings was too problematic was Mike Richards, so there’s that.
that’s not a long enough line of succession. there should’ve been more redundancy built in.
Honestly, I think the tweets were a convenient out for them to not to have to turn over permanent hosting duties to a guy who, although super-capable and popular with fans, is just not that charismatic.
“ thought they had a contingency for who would host Jeopardy if Alex”
They did. They hired Mike Richards to be his replacement. Then Trebek died earlier than they’d planned for so they had a bunch of people who never had any chance to be the permanent host spend a week or two as a guest host.
Similar to my bafflement over the lack of a succession plan. They had 20 months between Alex’s diagnosis and death. They should have had a plan ages ago because of his illness, which has an average life expectancy of only one year. I get that Alex wanted to keep working until he felt he no longer could and perhaps it would have felt morbid to have his successor lined up but I think Alex was also a realist who knew his time was limited and that “the show must go on”. Perhaps, behind the scenes, he was in more denial but it would have helped the show transition if his successor was picked and the audience knew the successor had Alex’s seal of approval.
I hope there’s a tell-all at some point, because it really seems like the lack of a succession plan was part of Richards’ cover to seize the podium.
would be interested in seeing a version of The Late Shift that covers this.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Late_Shift_(book)
Man, they ought to fire the guy who was in charge of this whole thing. But maybe not fire him right away, only after he’s had multiple chances to embarrass the show.
You guys must not be Star Wars fans if you’re surprised by this.
Johnny Gilbert is 93, so they hopefully use this fiasco as a learning moment
I’ve said for years that he’s going to be harder to replace. That voice and cadence was more important than we think.
Yeah, before him Don Pardo of SNL fame did it, but he was less energetic and more goofy, which worked for SNL. He was another one who’s hard to replace. Darrell Hammond is fine, but just not the same.
This is truly the King Ralph/Designated Survivor of Jeopardy! scenarios.
Ok then, John Goodman will be the new host of Jeopardy!
I think the plan was Trebek would live forever.
Apparently Trebek himself named Laura Coates and Alex Faust as possibilities–and it’s super weird/derelict of them to not have tried either of them out.
Haha the Los Angeles Kings announcer being one of the successors lets the Canadian aspect of Trebek shine through!
Oh, they had a plan. But then Goober the Janitor tripped over a cable and accidentally unplugged the Trebek clone’s life support.
That would require a qualified host to remain unemployed and on stand-by for years on the off chance Trebek croaked, which is kind of an extreme thing to do for a job that involved reading questions on a teleprompter. And once Trebek had the cancer diagnosis it would have been kind of tacky to start the hunt for a replacement.
Not really, most of the serious candidates that resulted from the guest host carousel publicity stunt fall into the category of fully employed or employed-ish (Bialik has a sitcom, Rodgers is the starting quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, Burton does… something while collecting royalty checks for TNG, Jennings won a lot of money during his initial run on Jeopardy). The full-time hosting job doesn’t really require that many shooting days throughout the year, and lots of busy television personalities could have worked the gig into their schedule. I don’t think Anderson Cooper ever really wanted the full-time gig, but if they had privately offered him the job ten years ago, he could have just quit CNN whenever he was needed.
Well I think that might have been Richard’s job, but he decided to sabotage the whole thing for his own benefit instead.
I’m honestly surprised. It’s not like the suits were secret when they hired him as EP. The letter makes it sound like he was causing additional problems after he stepped down as host.
In the words of the prophet, Weird Al, he lost on Jeopardy.
I think this means therefore that Weird Al has to become the host? Which, honestly, would be great.
At least give him a week if he’s interested.-d
This would be the best timeline. The Weird timeline.
And change to theme music to…the obvious.
Apparently it was an actual possibility back when his parody came out. They were in the process of rebooting the show and contacted him about participating as a possible host.
He doesn’t even get a lousy copy of the home game. He’s a complete loser.
He lost his gig on Jeopardy, baby (Again.)
So much for the hypothesis that he planned all this to make Mayim Bialik less controversial.
“Everyone knows you leave the co-workers and production staff alone, the contestants are where the action is!”- Richard Dawson
Dawson would not last one show, and have 20 lawsuits stemming from that one show, if he were a host today.
I think most of those kisses were consensual… Maybe not
“Consent” in this situation is amorphous You’re a woman under the glaring eyes of a TV audience and multiple cameras on a gameshow where you want to do well, with a host that seems to be the boss of the whole production (even if that’s not 100% true, it’s still the perception of the host). You don’t want to “rock the boat” or seem “difficult.” Come on! He’s just having fun! Why do you have to be such a prude?! It’s the 70s! Loosen up, it’s TV, baybeee!And so forth.
Yes, Mr. Cosby, you’re fired.(seriously, I think this was the attitude of many, many, many 70s era entertainers. If you’re here, you want me to slip you a lude and have my way)
“I think most of those kisses were consensual…”
Do you know what world you’re living in?
The exploding billboard is almost Simpson-esque. Bare metal frame, wood and paper sign…fuck it, why not.
Even as a kid I remember thinking it was weird that he went around randomly kissing all the women.
“I’ll be back!”
“Only in a rerun.”
hahhaah dammit I have to watch The Running Man now if I can find it anywhere.
I remain just baffled by the vetting process that led us here.“Okay, we’re looking for an intellectual to represent the face of knowledge. How about the host of ‘Beauty and the Geek’?”
“Sure. What’s he been up to since then?”
“He hosts a podcast called ‘The Randumb Show’.”
“Do you think we should listen to it and see if he says anything on there that’s beneath the dignity of Jeopardy?”
“No, I’m sure ‘The Randumb Show’ is the height of sophistication.”
“but also because he apparently had a pretty big role in choosing who would become Trebek’s successor.”
Or, you know, he was hired to be Trebek’s replacement and people on the internet decided that having a string of guest hosts was somehow a host search.
I find the shock of America that Jeopardy! is run by Hollywood sleazebags instead of erudite Belle & Sebastian listeners to be kind of charming
That’s Hollywood, Baybeeeee!
Sony: “Problem solved!”
That letter from the EVP is so stupid. “Y’all were pissed we put the creep in front of the camera so we were hoping that y’all would calm down if he went back behind the camera but we were surprised to find out that you guys were upset that we had a creep on staff at all. “
Yeah! Exactly! “Well, his past actions clearly showed he was inappropriate to host the show, but we find those past actions still quite appropriate for him to run the show entirely.” What did they think was going to happen?! So dumb. And then to put that in a letter for the entire world to read.
I presume this is all to be read as “It takes longer to negotiate a guy out of an existing contract altogether than to take away a side job he just got.”
I loved it for all its stupidity, and I basically read it the same way you did. “Oh, y’all don’t even want to work for the scumbag like, at all? Yikes, OK, we didn’t think he was that bad. Well OK then.” My friend read the headline and the statement to me when we were at lunch. My immediate reaction was that this probably had little to do with public outcry over what he said anymore and was way more about the behind-the-scenes environment at the show. I can’t imagine being on the staff and crew and having to come back in and work for this guy. How do you come back to the EP job after it was revealed that you basically had your thumb on the scale throughout the selection process? That you basically engineered the process to benefit yourself?
“no longer has any position at Sony Picture Television”Maybe I missed something, but it doesn’t seem to state that? It just says he’s not the EP on Wheel! or Jeopardy anymore. It’s vague as to whether they are keeping him on in some other capacity. Which I could see happening, especially if they are worried about a lawsuit from him stemming from an outright termination.
And the cycle is complete. Justice is done. So sayeth us all. Amen.
I was in a coma the past 4 years, and just woke up. Why don’t they have someone more wholesome do it like Garrison Keillor, Matt Lauer or Charlie Rose?
Absolutely cannot wait for the “Late Shift”-style HBO original movie about this fiasco five years from now
maybe it’ll be called Double Jeopardy or something, i dunno, i’m not a marketing wizard
My candidate for Jeopardy host – H Jon Benjamin.
We’ve really stopped creating gameshow hosts in the last 20 years, huh? The 60’s-80’s had so many good hosts who were pretty much only hosts and nothing else. Every gameshow host now is either a comedian or former news/sports broadcaster.
Yeah, that’s why I’m a bit wary of having celebrities do it. It’s like how celebrities took jobs from voice actors, something just feels not right about it all.
That’s kind of why I wanted Buzzy Cohen to host. He has the Pedigree of Jennings being a former Jeopardy champ, and his name is Buzzy. It’s the perfect host name!
Radio dried up, fewer comedy clubs to practice MCing at.Also, most hosts were minor comedians or comedic talents. It was rare for a host like Trebek to never do any comedy. But most hosts came from radio or local theater.
The closest living equivalent is Ryan Seacrest.
living
Close enough, at least.
Now that you mention, has anyone checked Seacrest’s pulse lately?
He *did* have that mysterious definitely-not-a-stroke a few months back…
Seacrest modeled his career on Dick Clark and it somehow worked out perfectly.
I had a friend in school who modeled their career on Ryan Seacrest, and… it almost worked out? He got an intern gig for Seacrest. Then he went on to do some personal branding consultant work. Now I’m not sure what he’s up to. I don’t think there is a great depth of career options for someone with host/emcee talent. The nearest alternative is probably tv/radio hosting (which is incidentally the program my friend was in). Looking it up, Bob Barker was actually hosting a radio show for 6 years before he got into game show hosting. There was a pipeline even 50 years ago, you’re not just birthed into being a gameshow host.They did tryout a bunch of TV show hosts and news hosts as part of the guest run. Times haven’t changed that much.
It’s time for the Return of the Dunkleman Joe Rogan kind of counts too but….nah.
If only Bill Cullen were still available.
or works for E! News
Uh, most of those game show hosts you’re thinking of who “were pretty much only hosts and nothing else” were also former news/sports broadcasters. Trebek was a former CBC newscaster. Bob Barker was originally a broadcaster. Pat Sajak used to be a weatherman.
“Son, your loin cloth is going to come off!”
Michael Davies! Oh no, now he will never have time for the Men In Blazers podcast!
“Take that, Gloria!”
“Take that, Birth of Man!”
Going from Mike Richards to Michael Davies has to be like going from a total piece of shit to Michael Davies.
This is an entirely hilarious story. Give this shit to Soderbergh and let him run wild.
Feels more like a Coen Brothers movie. Just this tale of hubris completely backfiring.
That movie Quiz Show starring Ralph Fiennes was actually very good IMO.
Proof that bad PR is more important that actual lawsuits and payouts.
SMH
Why does he always look like an animatronic version of himself?
I think most game show hosts tan, botox and makeup themselves so much it just happens
Man I was sure he’d be able to just recede to his executive job. This is rising to all-time screwup levels.
All this Guy Smiley looking motherfucker had to do was not try to install himself as the new Jeopardy host, and he could’ve kept humming along, being a creep and earning a fat paycheck indefinitely. Dude Icarus-sed himself.
Am I in the right AV Club? Should that headline not read “finally been fired”?
Ask Ellie Kemper
I wouldn’t ask Tom Petty that.
Deep cut bro
Dont ask av club about Ellie Kemper though, they’ll ban your account even if you’ve been commenting for 12 years
Circle jerk? CIRCLE JERK!
Its pretty simple. They started asking around and found that no one wants their EP to be the guy who wanted their job. Even Mayim Bialik was like “No thanks I’ll keep the part time gig”
Hopefully Sony stops being a cheap ass and hires two separate people for Executive Producer now. Wheel has degraded heavily due to the guy before Richards not giving a damn about it, and Mike was actually doing good on that show. Who knows, maybe whoever gets hired will finally junk the fucking stupid ass Prize Puzzle.
I noticed a very distinct downgrade with Wheels quality when he took over. That Margaritaville week was horrible.
Ha! I just wanted to commend you for even mentioning Margaritaville Week because I know it was just as terrible as you know it to be.
Congrats for being able to use the internet so well Grandpa! I didn’t think people over 70 years old even knew what the AV Club was, let alone be able to get to the site.
Once again:
Get a map of North America.
Throw a dart at it
Find the nearest decent-sized TV market
Hold auditions among the news, weather and sports TV and radio personalities. Go out of your way to make sure women and persons of color are represented in the interviews.
This isn’t hard. No game show host should be famous BEFORE the show.
The fact that more people seem to care about the host of Jeopardy than anything else going on in our world continues to baffle. Even more astonishing is how many people want this easy money job to go to all these people that have raked in opportunities their whole career.
You must be new to this planet full of brain dead morons who can’t step away from social media for more than 5 minutes.
People can care about more than one thing at a time, and this was an honestly interesting story.
One down, one more to go so they can find a new host to blossom into the role.
80% of the dopes on here have no idea what that reference is about.
It’s genuinely hilarious how much drama these people have unnecessarily created as part of their effort to find someone to host a game show.
This really was the only possible outcome. He’d become the main story, and it was 100% negative at that.
Hold up! Did this dude win an Emmy? I never seen any photos of him holding an Emmy.
He won a Daytime Emmy as producer of the show this year (Outstanding Game Show category).
People are making this way more complicated than what it is. If you don’t watch the show regularly, why do you care? People are so involved with this ,but when a new host starts, they will have biggers ratings for a few weeks and it will go right back to where ever the previous ratings were.
It’s not that I’m not thrilled to read yet another story about this white guy falling from grace or whatever, but Lee Scratch Perry died, and he did more to make our world better than this cocksucker will do in his life. Maybe try focusing on something other than white men doing bad shit every 3rd piece.
His future career prospects look like they’re in…
Jeopardy!
Well, that’s a shame.
— No one ever.
If he hadn’t tried to give himself the hosting gig, he’d still be employed. Cautionary tale.
If he’d managed the bare minimum most of us manage by not causing legal settlements because of things he’d said and not saying other things that were not good and having them recorded as podcasts, he’d be the host of Jeopardy and still Executive Producer as well.
“Michael Davies from Embassy Row has agreed to help with production on an interim basis until further notice.”They’re putting on the same old show from the same old set with the same old hosts, so how much “production” does it need?
One of the (several) reasons that The Simpsons needs to die is that it would free up Hank Azaria to host Jeopardy.
As Brockmire!
You know how little time it takes to record dialogue for The Simpsons? Harry Shearer has literally been phoning it in for years. None of the actors are held up from taking other work.
Shh! Killing The Simpsons is at least half of the point of my proposal.
I think I’m increasingly starting to believe that Fox News wouldn’t have been able to take off without its revenue from The Simpsons. If true, that was definitely an argument to have killed it at birth.
Re-posting your own comment has to be the most pathetic thing I have ever seen. You probably are the kid who put his B- tests on the fridge himself so Mommy and Daddy would feel a little proud of their kid.
Sounds like he had a nice couple decades-long career of mediocre-ing up while leaving a trail of women in his wake. I’ve heard a couple people say “eh what he did wasn’t that bad, but whatever.” I disagree. He obviously tried to make his podcast a thing by bouncing it off of his access as “Price Is Right” EP. And then proceeded to call people “midg*ts” and “r*t*rds” and joke about how a homeless woman probably wanted to use a dollar a guest gave her on “some meth or some crack.” He didn’t have the excuse of youth, he was in his late 30s. But most of all, he didn’t feel like he had to cover his tracks in any way. He left the podcast up to be found. His lawsuits were pretty well-known in the industry, as far as I’m aware.I’m not perfect, either. I’ve said and done rotten things earlier in my life. And I’m ready to apologize sincerely if/when things come up. I don’t thin anyone’s hands are clean. But I’m fine with mediocre white guys who do bad things actually having to face consequences for those things, at long last, when women are fired or kept in low positions for “being a little to aggressive in meetings.” I’m sure this guy will get a nice plum job elsewhere, I’m sure he has enough connections, and in this industry, straight white guys are still given an unearned importance.That’s it, thanks for indulging the rant. I guess I’m just anticipating a lot of people going “ok, this is too much now,” but really I think this should just become more of the norm.
OK, still waiting on them to get rid of the anti vaxxer.
Go kick rocks dweeb.
The inevitable Netflix/Hulu miniseries on this (or a knockoff called like Endangered! or something) is going to be great.
I know the answer is capitalism and misogyny, but can someone explain to me why every Tom, Dick and Harry who possesses mediocre skills, but is fortunate enough to have a fancy title in Hollywood, gets these EXTREMELY cushy contracts that ensure that they get handsomely paid no matter what they do?? Does this dynamic exist anywhere else in our society where an employee can have that much power over their employer? How is there not a good behavior clause in his contract that states that in the event employee causes scandal, or hurts the reputation of the company, employee forfeits massive severance pay?
It’s partially because they ALSO usually have fairly harsh non-compete agreements, so losing the job doesn’t mean they can just walk down the street and get a new job a day later. That’s gotta be compensated or it’s just manifestly unfair and the contract would get thrown out.And partially because they have a union.
It’s not that the employee has power over the the employer, it’s that the investors want to incentivize individual risk taking while making it easy to cut out the failures. The investors are diversified, so they don’t care if four out of five are failures if the fifth brings in a 10x return.
Now we’ll just wait a few weeks for him to go full red pill and complain about the ordeal on a number of outlets. Then Been Shapiro will help produce a show for him that caters to a particular audience.
For a second I got him confused with Hunter S. Thompson.
“I’ll take Self-Owns for $1,200, Ken.”“Mike Richards could have taken advice on the dangers of instant fame from this character, named for a popular frozen treat and a member of the family Anatidae.”
I’d like to see Illeana Douglas try out, at least.
Great News! I now formally demand that they give the hosting job to Lavar Burton, becuase I watched Reading Rainbow as a kid and I’m nostalgic about that.
Cant we just get Will Ferrell and be can do Alex Trebeck??
Taking offense is a choice powered by the ego.
Do it. Make Levar Burton the EP of Jeopardy and Wheel, and put him in charge of the search for a replacement host.