‘Jeopardy!’ Producer Apologizes for ‘Horrible Error’
For nearly 60 years, Jeopardy! has been entertaining audiences across the country as contestants answer questions (or rather, state questions) in pursuit of a cash prize. While the show is pre-taped, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t filming snafus, and in a recent episode, one mistake led to an apology from the production team.
‘Jeopardy!’ in the post-Alex Trebek era
Canadian TV host Alex Trebek took the reins of hosting Jeopardy! in 1984 and remained a fixture on the show until his death in 2020. Following his death, a number of guest hosts took on the gig before the network settled on a permanent host.
In 2022, legendary Jeopardy! player Ken Jennings was named as the permanent co-host of the show, rotating duties withThe Big Bang Theory actor Mayim Bialik.
A ‘Jeopardy!’ producer admitted to a ‘horrible error’
In March 2023, Jeopardy! hosted its High School Reunion Tournament. In it, 27 former teen contestants come together for a chance to win $100,000 and a spot in Jeopardy!‘s famous Tournament of Champions. During one episode, however, the players’ final dollar amounts appeared on screen at the beginning of the show, rather than the end.
Jeopardy! executive producer Michael Davies addressed the snafu on the Inside Jeopardy! podcast.
“Right off the bat, apologies to our entire audience,” Davies said. “We totally blew it at the top of the show. We made a horrible error where we revealed the final scores at the end in the opening cutaway shot during Mayim’s monologue.”
He went on to explain that part of Bialik’s monologue was reshot later on in the taping, which isn’t an uncommon occurrence in case of incorrect facts or other issues.
“It is standard procedure to take the scores in the podium back to the original level, but it didn’t happen,” he shared. “This was then not caught in post [production]; it was not caught in the final QC [quality control].”
“There are so many elements that should check this,” he added.
The team is taking steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again
It was an error that essentially spoiled the outcome of the episode for viewers. Davies reassured fans that the team was taking steps to ensure that the same thing won’t present a problem in the future. “We have now put in place a new series of protocols that will prevent this from happening again,” he said.
“My whole thing is to always focus not on what happened and why did this happen in order to punish people; it’s what happened and why did it happen so we can build a protocol to make sure it never happens again,” he continued.
“We apologize for anybody whose experience of this program was ruined,” he concluded. “We take these mistakes to heart so hard, the self-flagellation that happens across the senior management team and the post team and everybody involved, that’s a good thing about Jeopardy!, we take mistakes really, really seriously.”
