The American television game show Jeopardy! has experienced a long life in several incarnations over a period exceeding four decades. The show has spent more than 11 years as a daytime network program and more than 26 years as a daily syndicated program. It has also had several spin-offs.
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Art Fleming hosted both NBC versions and the 1974–1975 syndicated version and was joined by Don Pardo as his announcer. When NBC launched a revival in 1978, John Harlan took over announcing duties from Pardo as this version was taped in Burbank, California as opposed to New York City, where Pardo resided.
Since 1984, Alex Trebek and Johnny Gilbert have served as host and announcer, respectively, for the current syndicated version of the program.
Jeopardy! premiered at 11:30 am Eastern (10:30 Central) on March 30, 1964, originating from the NBC headquarters in New York City's Rockefeller Center. NBC moved the program to 12:00 noon (11:00 am Central) after 18 months, making it accessible to businessmen coming home for their lunch break or else watching it on restaurant or bar sets, and college students departing their classes for the day. These two constituencies, who did not ordinarily have the time or interest to view other daytime programs, made the game a runaway hit, propelling its ratings to second place of all daytime games by the end of the decade behind its lead-in, The Hollywood Squares.[1]
However in 1973, Lin Bolen, then Vice President of Daytime Programming at NBC, began ridding the network's game shows in an aggressive attempt to bolster ratings among women aged 19–34. Although Jeopardy! continued to produce high ratings in the 12:00 noon time slot, Bolen moved the program to 10:30 am (9:30 Central) on January 7, 1974 (replacing the Dick Enberg-hosted game Baffle),[1][2] and placed a stylish, youth-oriented riddle contest named Jackpot! hosted by Geoff Edwards in Jeopardy!'s former time slot. CBS relocated Gambit to 10:30 am on April 1, and the two shows divided the audience equally during the remainder of the Spring.
On June 28 of the same year, NBC moved Jeopardy!'s time slot again, this time to 1:30 pm (12:30 Central) (replacing Three on a Match) and placed it against ABC's Let's Make a Deal, which had easily beaten the ratings of several programs placed in that same time slot by NBC. Jeopardy! fared no better, and a cancellation notice was issued by November 1974. Jeopardy! broadcast the 2,753rd and final episode of its original network run on January 3, 1975.[3] Some affiliates, including KNBC in Los Angeles, aired reruns in various other time slots through the first quarter of that year. To compensate Merv Griffin for canceling the program, which still had a year left on the contract, NBC purchased Wheel of Fortune, another creation of his, which premiered on January 6, 1975 at 10:30 am (9:30 Central).
Griffin secured the rights from NBC to produce new episodes for first-run syndication, which were distributed by Metromedia. These episodes began airing weekly in September 1974 and featured many contestants who were previous champions on the NBC version. Thirty-nine episodes were produced, with reruns of this version also airing in syndication through summer 1975.
Unique to this version was a bonus round played after Final Jeopardy!. The episode's champion selected a prize hidden behind the thirty squares on the Jeopardy! board. Among the prizes was a $25,000 cash award which was hidden behind two squares; in order to win the top prize, the champion had to find both $25,000 cards in succession. In later episodes, the bonus board was dropped and the night's champion received a prize based upon his or her final score, with a Chevrolet Vega or Chevrolet Caprice (or even additional cash prizes of $10,000 or $25,000) as a possibility.
After two pilot episodes were shot for a revival (the first one for CBS in 1977), NBC again picked up the program in 1978, placing it on their schedule at 10:30 am (9:30 Central), where it replaced For Richer, For Poorer. From October 2 through January 2, 1979, the program was placed against the first half-hour of CBS' powerhouse The Price Is Right, which had been a solid hit for years by that point. NBC moved the program to noon on January 5, causing it to face off against The $20,000 Pyramid on ABC, The Young and the Restless on CBS, and local news on many NBC stations; Jeopardy!'s audience dwindled and the program ended on March 2 of that year in favor and the thirty minutes the series occupied was given to the soap opera Another World so it could expand from 60 to 90 minutes.
This version was produced at NBC's studios in Burbank, California[4] and featured additional game elements unique to this version in which the lowest-scoring contestants were eliminated at the end of the Jeopardy! and Double Jeopardy! rounds.[5] Instead of playing Final Jeopardy! alone, the champion played a new bonus game titled Super Jeopardy! (not to be confused with the 1990 summer tournament that aired on ABC) and faced a game board consisting of five categories with five clues each.[5] The champion selected questions and attempted to provide correct responses creating a row either vertically, horizontally, or diagonally on the board.[5] Failing to respond, giving an incorrect response, or passing earned a strike, and three strikes ended the round.[5] If the contestant was successful on their first day, they received $5,000.[5] Each subsequent visit to the Super Jeopardy! round was worth an additional $2,500 to the previous day's jackpot.[6] Contestants received $100 for each correct answer if they struck out.[7]
In 1983, Griffin sold a syndicated version of Wheel of Fortune to King World Productions. Following its success[8], he sold a new syndicated version of Jeopardy!, hosted by Alex Trebek, to the same company. The Trebek version premiered on September 10, 1984.[9] The new version featured updated technology at the time, replacing the former manually-operated game board featuring clues printed on pull cards with television monitors to display clues.
Initially relegated to unpopular morning, afternoon, or late night slots by managers of some television stations, the new program built upon early ratings success in the Cleveland and Detroit markets, where it had been slotted in the same 7:00–8:00 pm period in which Wheel of Fortune also appeared, and soon developed a strong following among viewers.[10] Coinciding with the peak of popularity for Trivial Pursuit and the installation of electronic trivia games in pubs and bars,[11] Jeopardy! was slowly beginning to become a major success despite some markets still airing the program in unfavorable time slots. One of those markets was the New York media market, where WNBC-TV picked up Jeopardy! and aired it in the late night time slot following Late Night with David Letterman. Although the series was gaining popularity, WNBC's Prime Access slots were filled with NBC Nightly News and the syndicated Family Feud, which was airing on all the network's owned-and-operated stations; WNBC therefore wasn't able to find a better time slot for the series, and King World moved Jeopardy! to its current New York affiliate, WABC-TV. WABC originally aired the show in mid-afternoons, and it became a success. However, Jeopardy! was displaced to a mid-morning time slot in 1986 as part of a time slot switch with The Oprah Winfrey Show, and beginning in the fall of 1987 would have to be displaced again for Sally Jessy Raphael's talk show. The decision made by the station would have a far reaching effect on scheduling in the New York metro area (and for some other markets).
At the time, all three of New York's network-owned stations (WNBC, WABC, and WCBS) aired two hours of local news between 5:00 pm and 7:00 pm, followed by network news from 7:00 to 7:30. WABC cut its 6:00 pm newscast to 30 minutes, moved World News Tonight to 6:30 pm, and placed Jeopardy! in the 7:00 pm slot, followed by Hollywood Squares. The move produced a ratings win for both World News Tonight and Jeopardy!, and the CBS and NBC affiliates eventually capitulated, rescheduling their evening news broadcasts to the 6:30 slot as well.[12] WABC has aired Jeopardy! at 7:00 pm ever since. It has been paired with Wheel of Fortune since 1990, when Wheel moved from WCBS in a switch with Entertainment Tonight. WABC's success led many other Eastern Time Zone markets to air their network newscasts at 6:30 pm instead of 7:00 pm.
Trebek produced the show himself from 1984–1987, before handing over to George Vosburgh (who had previously produced the 1978 revival) while Trebek simultaneously hosted Classic Concentration on NBC during the next four years. Vosburgh was later succeeded by several others; since 1999, Harry Friedman has served as the show's executive producer, after first serving as producer from 1997–1999. Merv Griffin, the show's creator, was also executive producer from 1984–2000. Dick Schneider, who had directed episodes of the earlier version, also initially directed episodes of the current syndicated version; those duties are handled now by Kevin McCarthy, who was associate director from 1984–1992.[13]
The show was the subject of great interest and increased ratings (often beating Wheel) in the second half of 2004 as contestant Ken Jennings, taking advantage of newly-relaxed appearance rules, remained a champion for 74 appearances, winning over $2.5 million and breaking almost every record in game show history.
The syndicated version of Jeopardy has won 12 Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Game/Audience Participation Show, achieving this honor most recently in 2011, and holds the record as the most honored program in this Emmy award category.
On September 11, 2006, with the start of Season 23, Jeopardy! began broadcasting in HDTV. King World and Sony indicated that as of August 10, 2006 some 49 of the 210 stations that carry the show in syndication were prepared for the transition. Sony uses the 1080i HD format to record the show, but because Jeopardy! is syndicated, stations using the 720p format had to manually transcode the show from an HD satellite feed before broadcasting it. This issue was remedied with the introduction of the Pathfire satellite system for high definition syndicated content distribution.[14][15]
On January 2, 2007 one third of subscribing stations originally renewed Jeopardy! through Season 28 (2011–2012),[16] but by April 8, 2010 Jeopardy! was given an additional two year renewal through Season 30 (2013–2014).[17]
Super Jeopardy! was a special 13-week invitational tournament that aired weekly on Saturday nights in the summer of 1990 on ABC. The special tournament featured 36 notable champions from the Trebek years, plus one from the Art Fleming era, who then competed for a top prize of $250,000. $50,000 went to the first runner-up, and $25,000 went to the second runner-up. Eliminated semifinalists took home $10,000 while those eliminated in the quarterfinals collected $5,000.
This version used points instead of money, with clues worth from 200–1000 points in the Jeopardy! round and 500–2500 in Double Jeopardy!, making this the only version in which second round clue values were not double that of the first. In addition, the quarterfinal matches featured four contestants instead of three.
Jep! was a children's version hosted by cartoon voice actor Bob Bergen which featured several tweaks to the basic format. The show aired first on Game Show Network (now GSN), and through late 2004 on Discovery Kids.
Rock & Roll Jeopardy! was a music-intensive version aired on VH1 from 1998–2001. Hosted by Jeff Probst, this version highlighted post-1950s popular music trivia and featured largely identical play to its parent show. The game was played for points during the first two seasons, with each day's winner receiving $5,000 regardless of their score, while the final two seasons used cash with winners receiving a $5,000 house minimum. Three new contestants competed on each program.
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