Esquire has posted an interview with Claire McNear, the journalist who broke the story about Mike Richards' podcast for The Ringer, and also wrote Answers In the Form of Questions, a book about the show, published last fall. She offers her perspective on what's been happening with the show, and where it goes from there. (From one of her answers, it sounds like the interview was conducted before the announcement that Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings would trade off hosting duties through 12/31.) Where Does Jeopardy! Go From Here? We Asked Journalist Claire McNear
On the whole, a fair and well-rounded assessment, albeit perhaps less optimistic than my own. In 1984, most fans coudn't conceive of Jeopardy without Art Fleming. And yet, it survived, thrived, and flourished under Alex Trebek, who up to then was known mainly for High Rollers. I'm reminded of something Fleming said at the end of the final episode of the original NBC run. I've completely forgotten his exact words, but he said that Jeopardy would be back, in some form. And there are (as I believe I've mentioned before) very few game shows that have lasted as long, under a single host, as the Trebek version of Jeopardy. And of course, Dr. Bialik and Mr. Jennings are being announced as "hosts" rather than "guest-hosts." They're not a parade of contenders and non-contenders, filling in for a week or two each; they're two people under contract to "tag-team host" for a whole season. McNear was spot-on about the staff knowing better than to tinker with the format. They know enough about the history of the show. A true "back-game" in which the winner, alone, went for additional winnings (which is to say that Final Jeopardy is not a "back-game" in the conventional sense) was tried in a syndicated weekly nighttime edition, and with a daily revival, and those versions didn't last; rather, the Trebek version went back to the game's roots, and stayed true to them. (Personally, I wish Wheel of Fortune would go back to the original format, in which [1] you had to buy prizes or gift certificates in order to secure your winnings against bankruptcy, [2] you could not buy vowels at will, and [3] there was no back-game.) ****** I just learned something new: Art Fleming also died of pancreatic cancer! You don't suppose hosting Jeopardy is carcinogenic? ******* Oh, and it looks like they changed the Jeopardy open again: a different clip of the Art Fleming version, less prominently displayed. I wonder if they're going to have multiple versions of the open this year.
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.