Jeopardy! And What Is Actually Not So Important?

Filming of Jeopardy! Photo by Steve Jurvetson from Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

A: The Next Host of Popular TV Gameshow Jeopardy!
Q: What is Actually Not So Important As People On The Internet Say?

It’s a whole lot less important who takes over as the permanent host of Jeopardy! than that the show continue. Jeopardy! is not done entertaining, educating, and inspiring Americans.

Merv Griffin (and his associates) came up with the idea for the quiz show in 1963. It wasn’t an original idea; giving the “answer” as a clue in a TV quiz show and requiring the correct “question” was first done in 1941 on the CBS Television Quiz. Griffin, however, had the Hollywood juice to bring the idea back and the right touch to create game mechanics that created fast-paced fun gameplay.

A popular gameshow is immensely profitable for its producer,¹ and Jeopardy! was popular ab initio. Jeopardy! first aired on NBC, has been on CBS, and for most of its existence has been in syndication (meaning Merv Griffin Productions, or its successors, have sold the show directly to local TV stations instead of going through a network). Since 1964, Jeopardy! has been off the air for only eight of those years.

From 1964 through a revival run that ended in 1979, Griffin cast Art Fleming as the host, for what he described as Fleming’s “authoritative, yet warm and interesting” stage presence. Jeopardy! originally ran eleven years from 1964-1975, and was revived for one season in 1978-79 (with some rules that would look odd to us now). Here’s what an episode of Jeopardy! was like in 1974, with Fleming hosting:

The show rebooted in 1984, casting former CBC national reader newsreader Alex Trebek as the host, who had come to the United States after almost being selected to host Hockey Night in Canada, his home nation’s equivalent of Monday Night Football.

Trebek proved a perfect pick to host the show from the start. Amiable and personable, projecting intelligence, confidence, and grace, Trebek gently interviewed contestants and walked through the answer-and-question quiz that was the show’s daily meat and drink. He was like the teacher we all wished we had in school (and some of us did) — he had a natural flair for telling a contestant when they were wrong while preserving the contestant’s dignity and quickly moving on, and provided just a whiff of excitement and pleasure when a contestant got a question right.

Trebek led the show into American, and soon enough global, culture by being himself: a nice, smart guy, someone comfortable and authoritative. A simple search reveals a thoroughly typical episode of Jeopardy! hosted with his style, by then well-refined.

And the 1980s-and-on show itself was written really well. Many trivia nerds considered Jeopardy! the most challenging of all trivia and quiz shows on television. As the show’s popularity grew, teen tournaments, celebrity charity tournaments, and other special events only added to the popularity, and the writers found ways to aim their questions at just the right level of challenge. Mainly, though, from the beginning when Merv Griffin wrote some of the questions himself, the produces gambled that a mostly-American audience wouldn’t be scared off by hard questions about subjects that comedians like to joke Americans know nothing about, like opera, particle physics, and history:

This clip also demonstrates that the prizes on Jeopardy! were always a bit richer than on other gameshows and this too kept the audience’s attention. If you’re very good, you can win some serious cash on Jeopardy!. I find it bizarre that a series of admittedly insensitive jokes for which he later apologized seems to have permanently stained the online reputation of another pop-culture-on-Jeopardy! sensation Ken Jennings, but that issue² bypasses his original story in 2004, when Jennings thrilled the nation by winning 74 straight games resulting in total (pre-tax) winnings of $2,522,700. Another contestant, James Holzhauer, holds the single-game winnings record of $131,127, and the all-time winnings record, including return tournaments, is held by Brad Rutter at $4,938,426 (Jennings has all-time Jeopardy! winnings of $4,370,700 including his return for champions tournaments; Holzhauer’s are $2,962.216).

One of the most-consulted trivia resources online is the J! Archive, which is entirely fan-driven. The difficulty and seeming obscurity of the questions became a part of pop culture as well. It became a mark of prestige to be the person in a family or a group of friends who could get Jeopardy! questions right when playing along at home. Quietly, half an hour daily on most weekdays, from 1984 to his death in 2020, Alex Trebek and Jeopardy! helped make being smart cool, to make trivia quizzes a national craze, and most of all to celebrate knowing things.

When you get parodied by Cheers, Saturday Night Live and “Weird Al” Yankovic, you’re at the dead center of popular culture. Even the parodies and jokes all celebrate people who are intelligent and quick-witted.

Trebek died in 2020 of pancreatic cancer. He might have been surprised, but shouldn’t have been, that nations mourned his death. After people got over it, the question of who should take over hosting the show arose. After all, Jeopardy! has become a touchstone of our popular culture. So the producers decided to test out a series of “guest hosts” over the course of the year, and evaluate both their on-air performance and their ratings, producing the following results:

* Burton and Faber’s stints of hosting coincided with the Tokyo Olympics, which may have had an impact on the ratings. Although it’s also worth noting that the Olympics this year also got historically bad ratings.

So, sorry, Ken Jennings haters on the Internet, but he got the highest ratings, which should demonstrate as powerfully as anything that Twitter is not the real world.

However, the initial choice of the show was Richards, the show’s own executive producer, for regular-season games, and Bialik for tournament games. This proved unpopular, and Richards has stepped aside amid accusations of having engineered the job for himself. The leading contenders for regular season hosting now are Bialik, Burton, and Jennings, although it’s likely another round of guest hosts may be used before the producers make permanent picks.

Well, I’m here to tell you that it really doesn’t matter, at least not to me. All three of the leading contenders have good things going for them as possible hosts and thus as possible pop culture icons, and it’s just fine with me that the producers are taking their time picking that person.

What’s important is that utterly wrongheaded opinions like the one held by my good friend Andrew Donaldson’s do not take sway:

Just cancel Jeopardy. Seriously, just let it go.

— Andrew Donaldson (@four4thefire) August 24, 2021

I consider Andrew one of my top-tier internet friends and I dearly look forward to meeting him in person one day. But on this point, he is exactly and completely wrong. Jeopardy! is an enduring part of our culture enjoyed by a broad category of people, people of all ages, from every conceivable demographic group, and educational background. Its appeal is universal. You can watch it come on TV and enjoy it. You can play along with it in a bar and make friends with total strangers with it.

The breadth of things you need to know to have a fighting chance on Jeopardy! is staggering. Yes, you need “a head for trivia.” What does that mean? To be good at trivia requires that you have an interest in a broad spectrum of subjects, from history and geography to sports and entertainment to science and technology to mathematics and wordplay. You need to be a polymath, and probably have to get some of that information in your head autodidactically. Not coincidentally, I learned words like “polymath” and “autodidact” watching Jeopardy! and you can too. Jeopardy! encourages people to learn about these things.

If you pay attention watching Jeopardy!, you almost can’t help but learn some stuff.

True, some folks throw up their hands and say things like “Well, I’m just no good at math, but that guy sure is!” All by itself, that’s a good thing. The smart person is the admired person.  Having knowledge is a good thing.

Maybe, Good Reader, you’re too young to remember a time when nerds weren’t admired; they were mocked as being socially awkward, clumsy, and fair game for derision.

I’m telling you that Jeopardy! was a part of changing that in our culture and continues to remind us all that being smart is good.

And you have never seen a contestant on Jeopardy! pout or protest about missing a chance to answer a question, interrupt another player by saying “I was about to say that!” or otherwise complain about things somehow being unfair. The buzzers work the same for everyone. The questions are the same for everyone. In fact, you’ll generally see people who do not win congratulating the winners and applauding for them as they score Daily Doubles.

Its role in our culture is now the celebration of the accumulation of knowledge, quick wits, and good sportsmanship. It takes ordinary-looking people and offers tangible proof and reward for having these things. We ought to encourage this and a popular, smart, entertaining show like Jeopardy! is one of the best ways imaginable to do it.

I’m biased about Aaron Rodgers and think he proved to be a fantastic host. But it seems he has found something else to do this year within his core competency for which I’m also glad.

Here’s Burton hosting:

Here’s Jennings:

And here’s Bialik:

They’re all good at it. Maybe it’s not so hard — but anyone who does broadcasting can tell you it’s harder than it looks, it involves skill and poise and improvisational skills and general situational awareness that may not seem obvious at first glance. Each of them has their own personalities which show through but they keep the core of the show intact — the focus is on the players, their intelligence and quick wits, and the genial good humor that softens the now-elaborate set.

What’s important is that it’s easy (for me) to see each of them see the spirit of the show carry through. Any of the three potential front-runners have different personalities than Alex Trebek, but any of Bialik, Burton, and Jennings will in their own ways highlight the things that make Jeopardy! the place where America, and the world, celebrate being smart. Let’s not take it away. Let’s instead root for the producers to find the best available personality and move this cultural icon forward into the 2020s. Let’s keep alive the things that have made it fun since the time of the Johnson Administration.

1. It costs the producer next to nothing to make — prizes (like the massive tubs of Turtle Wax contestants were given to then dispose of two years later) and the host’s wardrobe are exchanged for in-show advertising; only one set ever need be built, dressed, and operated; a relatively small crew is needed to operate and tape it; larger cash prizes are paid by an insurance company and not directly by the producer; an entire broadcast season can be taped in about six weeks and only requires editing and distribution to the broadcasters thereafter. Meanwhile, distribution typically includes a cut of advertising income. I did some armchair math about Jeopardy! with an entertainment lawyer in the ’90s, and we estimated that everything after the first 30-second commercial on the show was pure profit.
2. Well, the internet is nothing if not judgmental and unforgiving. May no one reading these words ever earn its displeasure.