It doesn’t take a brainiac to realize that Jeopardy!—perhaps, until recently, America’s last unblemished institution—is in jeopardy. Replacing beloved host Alex Trebek, who succumbed to pancreatic cancer in November of 2020, was never going to be an easy task. But the show’s attempt has been nothing short of a nightmare, mired in controversy and scandal. After 37 seasons of Trebek’s steady stewardship, the show’s ship seems to be in danger of sinking—and though bystanders on social media seem to think they know the best way for the show to move forward, climbing out of this hole will be more difficult than they think. For $2,000, what is to become of Jeopardy!?
First, a quick recap. As Jeopardy! embarked upon its quest to find Trebek’s successor, a Machiavellian villain emerged in Mike Richards—the Jeopardy! executive producer turned guest host who both helped run the search process and, backed by Jeopardy! parent studio Sony Pictures TV, quickly emerged as the front-runner to replace Trebek as permanent host. Richards wound up getting the job even after it was revealed that he was implicated in multiple bias lawsuits during his time as executive producer of The Price Is Right. (One wrongful termination lawsuit was thrown out in 2012, while Richards was removed as a defendant in another. A third such suit was settled in 2016.) Richards sidestepped the allegations prior to his appointment, and Sony Pictures TV put a Mayim Bialik–size Band-Aid on the situation with its official announcement, saying she would permanently host prime-time specials and spin-offs.
Clearly Richards’s involvement in the selection process and past behavior were both shady at best. But it took a painstakingly reported story by The Ringer’s Claire McNear to topple Richards entirely. After listening to all 41 episodes of Richards’s old podcast, The Randumb Show, McNear found that Richards had repeatedly used offensive and degrading language on the show, sparking the Anti-Defamation League to call for an investigation. The next day, after only his first taping on the job, Richards formally stepped down from hosting Jeopardy!, saying that he had become “too much of a distraction and not the right move for the show.” For the time being, Bialik will step in as interim host as Jeopardy! resumes the search for its next permanent emcee.
We’re left with the wreckage of Richards’s presence, and one very tough question: What does Jeopardy! do now?
There’s been an obvious and extremely easy answer to this question since the very beginning: Make LeVar Burton the next host of Jeopardy! And the Reading Rainbow host hasn’t been shy about saying that he desperately wants the job. He seems to have the entire internet in his corner as well, drawing headlines for tweeting, “Happy Friday, y’all!” when Richards announced he was stepping down. For those tired of seeing the “average white guy” Richards was so fond of easily glide to the top of their profession, seeing Burton—a Black man who inspired a generation of children to love reading—behind the podium would be powerful. And Burton knows that. “Jeopardy! is a cultural touchstone,” he told The New York Times Magazine, “and for a Black man to occupy that podium is significant.”
Yet just because Burton is the obvious choice doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the right choice. Those who watched Burton’s one-week guest-hosting stint in July would have to admit that it wasn’t smooth sailing: Burton seemed understandably nervous, fumbling multiple answers and having some difficulty maintaining the quick pace that’s integral to making a trivia show fly. More so than any specific flubs on his part, Burton’s overall demeanor—his gentler tone and overly sunny delivery—felt more suited to, well, a children’s show than an adult quiz show, which tracks given Burton’s PBS past. And while Burton’s online support is tremendous, that didn’t translate in the ratings; Burton’s episodes earned the lowest average viewership numbers out of all of the guest hosts, with an average of 4.4, according to Nielsen. Sony Pictures TV seems to have taken all this into account—Burton was never seriously considered for the permanent hosting gig according to TMZ.
As The Ringer pointed out, it seems that Burton might have been treated unfairly—the show gave him only one week of episodes rather than the two weeks most guest hosts received. Burton’s Jeopardy! stint also aired opposite the Olympics. One week of episodes amounted to a single day of shooting, which means Burton only had one day to audition for his dream job. This might have accounted for some of Burton’s awkwardness, especially in his first few episodes. Who knows how he would have performed if he’d had the chance to loosen up and get comfortable?
Speaking of unfair: Where was Laura Coates on the guest-host list? Coates holds the distinction of being someone Trebek named as a good potential replacement for him in an interview with TMZ’s Harvey Levin. A Princeton-educated senior legal analyst for CNN who has her own show on SiriusXM, Coates certainly has the résumé to warrant serious consideration; as a Black woman, she’d also provide some much-sought-after representation for women and people of color on the program. When news that Trebek name-checked her went viral in 2018, Coates tweeted that she was “incredibly honored & humbled” by Trebek’s comments, calling Jeopardy! her “fave game show ever.” It definitely seems like more than an oversight that she was left off the roster.
And then there’s Ken Jennings, Jeopardy!’s forever golden boy. Jennings told The Ringer that he was “disappointed with how this process played out” in regard to Richards’s selection, which makes sense—if there were to be one heir apparent to the Jeopardy! throne, conventional wisdom says Jennings would be it. The winningest contestant of all time and the victor of 2020’s Greatest of All Time tournament, Jennings has become a Jeopardy! household name—second only to Trebek—and has put in the work on camera and off, serving as a consulting producer for the show this past year. On a more sentimental note, The Ringer reported that Trebek called Jennings to discuss his guest-hosting stint mere days before he died and left Jennings a pair of his cuff links. While demographically he may feel like just another “average white guy” host, you’d be hard-pressed to name a person with more knowledge of and reverence for the institution of Jeopardy! than Jennings.
Until a new crop of guest hosts is announced, we’ve got Bialik—who may not be as innocuous a choice as Sony Pictures TV was hoping for. On paper Bialik seems like a potentially perfect fit—a recognizable television star and neuroscientist who also happens to be a woman. But a quick look at some of her previous comments on hot-button issues like vaccinations and Zionism suggests that she may be more divisive than she appears. (Bialik maintains that she is not anti-vax, saying that she and her family have received the COVID-19 vaccine.) While her personal beliefs may not sit well with certain viewers, her stint as guest host, however, was pretty undeniable. Not only were her episodes highly rated, but Bialik acquitted herself well, with her skills as a seasoned performer with a literal Ph.D. serving her nicely behind the podium.
While a quick fix would be to install Bialik, Jennings, or Burton as permanent host immediately and call it a day, I think the only fair thing to do now would be to give all the folks seriously interested in the gig another chance to guest host—completely devoid of Richards’s influence. Bring back Burton, Bialik, and Jennings, but also bring back other guest hosts who fared well, like Aaron Rodgers, Robin Roberts, and Sanjay Gupta—as well as people who were inexplicably left out of the process like Coates. (Dr. Oz, you can sit this one out.)
It’ll be difficult, if not impossible, for the show to do this, though, because while Richards will not host Jeopardy!, the show hasn’t booted him entirely—he’s still executive producing the series. For anyone to believe that the hosting decision is fair and just, Richards must step down from his position as executive producer. That’s the one certainty we’ve gained from all the mess. (To top it all off, according to The Ringer, he’s not even good at trivia!)
The bottom line: If Jeopardy! truly wants to move forward, it must throw all of the data from this summer out the window and wipe the slate completely clean. This job is too important—and Jeopardy!’s cultural impact too large—to simply slot in a successor without giving this process the time and consideration it demands. It’s what Trebek and his legacy deserve.
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