Michael Davis, Executive Producer of Jeopardy! For over a year, we’ve suggested various ways to expand our game show brand during the delicate moments of transition, but “Celebrity Jeopardy!” was not one of them.
Orders for its spin-off, which will premiere Sunday with Mayim Bialik as host, came from high on.
This spring, ABC executives noticed fans on Twitter pondering how well a revival of the show’s celebrity version would go, Davis said in a recent interview. He was shocked when he told Davis that Sony, who produced the show, had signed on.
“It was nowhere in my plans,” Davis said.
It wasn’t a new idea. “Jeopardy!” first brought in celebrities as contestants one week at a time in 1992. (Early competitors included Carol Burnett, Rosie O’Donnell, and Cheech Marin.) “Saturday Night Live” features a bemused Alex Trebek (played by Will Ferrell) There were repeated sketches that made fun of it, trying to elicit a response from the clueless star. (Category include “First Grade Mathematics” and “The Letter After ‘B.'”)
Until 2016, the physical game show intermittently invited celebrities to perform and donated prize money to a charity of the winner’s choosing.However new version It’s going to be something more ambitious: an hour-long show that airs in prime-time Sunday slots.
Despite the turmoil of the past few years, including the death of the show’s longtime host Trebek and the tumultuous streak of the official replacement host leaving under a cloud of scandal, the show’s ratings have remained largely stable. In 2020, an episode of “Jeopardy!”, the final year of Trebek’s tenure as host. According to data provided by Nielsen, it averages 9.4 million viewers in the United States. The following year, that number dropped slightly to 9.3 million viewers for him, but this year’s viewership has remained flat so far.
Throughout the transition of leadership, the show has mostly retained its fans, with a series of contestant streaks including Amy Schneider and Matt Amodio garnering excitement from viewers.
The numbers encouraged veteran game show producer Davies and his team to push forward with plans to expand what they called Jeopardy!
“I feel like there’s someone with Michael Davis trying to figure out how far the brand can go,” said fan and moderator Chris Stratton. reddit page He said in an interview that he is devoted to discussing the show.
“Jeopardy!” has already made other changes. We have started filming Second Chance Tournaments, a series that brings back promising contestants. remodeled Tournament of Champions. The show also began publishing detailed stats and launched a podcast parsing “Jeopardy!” News, created a Hall of Fame honoring celebrities associated with the show and featured edited highlights from each episode (additions intended to serve the cord-cutting population).
Read more about Jeopardy!
There are ideas still being discussed, such as a sports and pop culture trivia spin-off, a librarian’s tournament, and a Masters League featuring the show’s most successful players.Davis soccer commentator I often compare it to “Jeopardy!” I dream of live broadcasting episodes of new leagues in sports. (“It makes a lot of my staff nervous,” Davis admitted.)
The producer and his team have been watching the online reaction from enthusiastic Jeopardy! Known to be frustrated by changes in the structure of game shows, fans regularly and sometimes critically discuss the details of every announcement.
“The heart and soul of Jeopardy! It means a smart person with a normal life can take a few days off work, fly to Culver City and come back $2,000 rich.” Tyler Lord said. Fans and competitors competing in this season’s Tournament of Champions.
But so far Davies seems to have a lot of fandom support thanks to his commitment to listening to their feedback on Twitter, Reddit, and other online channels.
For example, fans have long supported the idea of second chance tournaments. And in July, when Davis announced that Bialik and Ken Jennings would split hosting, he assured viewers that the show wouldn’t constantly rotate hosts, saying, “You value consistency. I know what you are doing,” he wrote.
“‘Jeopardy! Show contestant and game show journalist Cory Annotard said:
Davis, who developed the original American version of I Want to Be a Millionaire, which premiered in 1999, was brought in last year during a crisis. The show’s executive his producer, Mike Richards, had been named as Trebek’s successor, but that plan fell through. after revelation That Richards made offensive comments on the podcast. Davis’ leadership, and hosting his duo Bialik and Jennings, was a temporary measure that eventually became permanent.
Just as fan outcry contributed to Richards’ departure from the show, fan enthusiasm fueled the network’s new generation of interest in Celebrity Jeopardy!.
In this iteration, the producers choose contestants known to be fans of the show or known to have trivia prowess. This season’s contestants include Michael Cera, BJ Novak, Patton Oswalt, Ray Romano, Eliza Schlesinger, Aisha Tyler and Constance Wu. (The first episode features actors Shim Liu, Andy Richter, and who happens to be SNL comedian Ego Nuwodim.)
The appeal should be in the comedians bringing chaotic informality to the structure of the formal game show and putting celebrities in the anxiety-inducing position of testing their knowledge in public, Davis said. rice field.
I’m completely brown. It was so stressful that I couldn’t remember anything,” recalls actress Bellamy Young, who won the show’s celebrity episode in 2015.
To extend the game to hour-long episodes, the production added triple jeopardy — a first for the American version of the show — with cues starting at $300 and going up to $1,500. The material starts off easier than a typical game where contestants take a test to qualify. read the clues: “This is what makes toast.”)
Anything on Davis’ wishlist? A new spin-off that revives the champion of yesteryear.
During the most recent season, four new champions were added to the show’s all-time leaderboard, including Schneider, who won 40 consecutive games, making her the contestant with the second highest winning streak. 38 wins behind.
For Davis, players like Schneider and Amodio are like professional athletes playing among amateurs. So it made sense for him to feature his talent in another tournament or league.
“What we really need to develop is a pro-level version of the game,” says Davies. “It just seemed silly to me that we have this sport that pulls out LeBron and Dwayne every year and replaces all the best players.”