Wouldn't surprise me if they did as a way of celebrating the show's legacy and as a way to divert attention away from the controversy.
Oh man, the Wheel of Fortune shopping was terrible, it was only good for the schadenfreude of the contestants forced to buy tacky gifts and as mentioned having to spend that last bit of leftover money on some crappy ceramic tchotchke. (well, maybe it wasn't all bad...) I guess I never thought about the back end of how that all worked with shipping and taxes and all, seems like a nightmare. It'd be nice if they did that stuff for the show but actually offered the contestants the option of the money instead afterwards if they wanted. I do get nostalgic for Vanna actually turning the letters though I can understand how the current setup expedites things for them. https://www.metv.com/stories/who-remembers-when-wheel-of-fortune-had-shopping
Shopping for prizes undoubtedly saved Merv Griffin Enterprises a ton of money: they probably got a good number of the prizes for nothing more than the product placement (and the on-air description, most likely written by the supplier's advertising people, if somebody actually bought the thing). For quite a while, my favorite running joke about the relationship between Griffin's two game shows is that you get on Wheel by failing the Jeopardy test.
I'm not old enough to have known the shopping part of it, though now I remember an old PC version of the game that included shopping as one of its segments and I wondered why as none of the episodes I'd seen had any shopping in it. Kind of strikes me as something that feels more naturally at home with the Price is Right than Wheel.
I remember a game show in which a rule change was instituted to slow the game down! In the original format of Three on a Match, if a contestant was successful in the back game (i.e., matching three of the same prize on the board), he or she moved to the champion's seat, and two new contestants would enter. That tended to go through contestants very quickly, so they changed it to slow it down: In the revised format, unless a contestant got three of a kind with his or her first three picks, one had to win a 3-out-of-7 match, succeeding three times in the back game, to get the top prize of $5000 (this was early 1970s) and face two new opponents.
Oh heck, even one of Alex Trebek's short-lived shows was built entirely around slowing the game down. It was called Pitfall, and contestants would answer questions while standing on elevators. Really quite an elaborate set. The goal was to cross the bridge to the other side by answering correctly. If they were wrong, the elevator would lower and they'd get a chance at another question to raise it, and if they got that wrong they were done. It was also a game show that infamously stiffed Trebek out of his paycheck when the company behind it went bankrupt. Monty Hall's version of Let's Make a Deal was run by the same campany and Hall had sued them leading to bankrupcy. As a result, none of the contestants received what they had won, and Trebek never received his paycheck. Two years later, Trebek would become Jeopardy's new host.
Re: the Sept 28 show. Kudos to the clue crew for "one of the first interracial kisses" instead of "the first."
Spoiler: Ding dong The witch is dead https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/matt-amodio-jeopardy-loses-winning-streak-1235086347/ Incredible game; I was on edge the entire time.
Bialik is losing her appeal for me now. She's inordinately fake quite a lot IMHO. I wasn't initially interested in him for a few reasons, but I'd be interested to see how Jennings fares on a long haul in comparison. He at least seemed a bit less phony Thank god for Thurman Merman
ok now I have an idea for a show called Ninja Scholar, where you have to answer questions WHILE going through a bizarre parkour obstacle course "oh!and she's down in the water. The correct answer was Hammurabi but she missed the spider jump and therefore she's out for the season."
Heh, I'm surprised nobody's tried that yet. Closest would probably be the popular French TV show Fort Boyard, which was a forerunner in reality shows, which combined fear-factor style grossouts and obstacle courses. Contestants were divided into teams, and teams were tasked with solving riddles, and to find clues, they'd have to go through difficult obstacle courses.
I know I'm in the minority and understand he's not interested but I thought Anderson Cooper did the best guest hosting job. At the end of the day, what "Jeopardy" needs is a professional broadcaster as host.
Actually, of the newscasters (all of whom did extremely well, which is to be expected, given that Hugh Downs was the original host of Concentration), I thought Cooper had one of the weaker showings. And of the other newscasters, I found Ms. Guthrie cute, but not so easy to take seriously, law degree notwithstanding.
The trouble with Anderson Cooper is that he already is too busy. Would likely have to be a retired broadcaster or someone who decides to switch gears.