‘Jeopardy!’ to Name ‘Multiple’ Hosts, According to EP
Jeopardy! will soon be announcing its intentions for the show as it enters its next season in September. The program, which has seen its share of upheaval in the nearly two years since the death of longtime host Alex Trebek, appears to have found its footing.
The answer-and-question quiz show’s executive producer Michael Davies recently teased some plans and pointed to the reality that, in essence, this isn’t going to be your father’s Jeopardy!
The game show went through a great deal to get to this point
Following Trebek’s death in 2020, the show’s GOAT player Ken Jennings hosted for a while and then the show turned to a variety of celebrity guest hosts including journalist Katie Couric, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker, another of the show’s champs Buzzy Cohen, Jeopardy!‘s current co-host Mayim Bialik, Today anchor Savannah Guthrie, and actor and television personality LeVar Burton.
After great speculation as to who would get the job, then-executive producer Mike Richards was placed in the role, with Bialik named as a Jeopardy! prime-time host.
Richards didn’t last long as either host or showrunner when he stepped down in 2021 because of unearthed offensive statements he’d made in the past, preserved on a podcast.
According to Variety at that time, those allegations caught up with Richards and he agreed to resign.
In a 2021 statement, Sony Pictures TV said: “We support Mike’s decision to step down as host. We were surprised this week to learn of Mike’s 2013/2014 podcast and the offensive language he used in the past. We have spoken with him about our concerns and our expectations moving forward.”
‘Jeopardy!’ executive producer says the show is going with more than one host
Variety reported recently that the show’s exec producer Michael Davies talked to them backstage at the 2022 Daytime Emmys about the show’s intentions to go in a different direction from its single-host history.
“The scandal was, as we call it at ‘Jeopardy!,’ ‘the awkward months,’” Davies said. “But it showed the power of our audience and how passionately our fans care about the program, which is just so important. What’s happened over the course of the season — Matt Amodio, and Amy Schneider and Mattea [Roach] and Ryan [Long] — really made us just remember how incredible the game is. The stars of our show and Mayim [Bialik] and Ken [Jennings] have done incredible job hosting.”
Davies moved on to the show’s future and its long-anticipated announcement naming a new host.
As it turns out, Sony TV seems to be thinking of more than one host, and perhaps even more than two, according to the producer, who revealed “we hope to have a hosting announcement very, very soon. 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.”
Trebek’s prediction about the future of ‘Jeopardy!’
Alex Trebek wrote in his memoir The Answer Is . . .: Reflections on My Life, published just months before his death, that he felt Jeopardy! would gain even more strength after his hosting days came to an end.
“You could replace me as the host of the show with anybody and it would likely be just as popular,
he wrote. “Hell, after 36 years with me, it might even be more popular. The show might be even more appreciated than it is with me as host.”
