Jeopardy! Has Made A Final Decision On Mayim Bialik And Ken Jennings
It looks like the folks from Jeopardy have made a final decision on Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings when it comes to hosting duties
Ever since the tragic passing of Alex Trebek, Jeopardy! has been working to permanently fill the icon’s enormous shoes when it comes to hosting the show. They had some starts and stops along the way with some controversy early, but over the last couple of years, they’ve basically landed on split duties between Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings. Yet, that has still left fans to wonder if one of those two would step into the lead role and just take the gig for good. Well, it appears that the folks at Jeopardy! have made a final decision about what to do here and how they plan to map out the future of the show.
According to Deadline, Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings are going to continue in a co-hosting capacity for the foreseeable future and will share the Jeopardy! responsibilities going forward. Apparently, the two are close to finalizing deals going into this next season which will keep them on a similar schedule to what we saw last season. It looks like things will continue much in the way that we saw last season with the two splitting duties when it comes to episodes. And it appears there is a plan to expand the offerings as well. After some issues early on in this process, it looks like the show has found solid footing with these two.
And in reporting from both Deadline and Variety, it looks like Mayim Bialik will be hosting not only the regular version of the show but also the upcoming primetime edition episodes as well as Celebrity Jeopardy! installments too. This expansion of the show’s footprint is one of the reported reasons why having two hosts was important moving forward. It was going to make scheduling considerably easier on everyone and give them the chance to have even more versions of the popular game show hit different time slots.
Additionally, Jeopardy won’t be the only gig for Mayim Bialik seeing as how she’s got a new series, Call Me Kat, in the works as well. This was another piece of the scheduling struggle because taping the show was going to need to fit in around the production schedule for that series. This plus the expanded offerings necessitated having another person to share the load when it came to hosting. And considering both Bialik and Jennings have been well-received by fans, this solution looks like it makes the most sense.
All of this follows not only the passing of Alex Trebek, but also the controversy around Mike Richards who had briefly landed the full-time hosting gig for Jeopardy! a couple of years ago. But controversy about his previous comments and behaviors put an end to that quickly and the show scrambled to fill in the position with a couple of folks who’d taken part in the tryout process following Trebek’s death. That’s when they landed on Bialik and Jennings as the way to go. And it looks like that will be the plan for the future as well.
