While the future of Jeopardy! has never been in doubt, there have been questions about how the daytime gameshow would navigate the ongoing WGA strike.
We finally have some answers.
Showrunner Michael Davies took to the official podcast, Inside Jeopardy, to shed light on what fans can expect when Jeopardy Season 40 gets underway.
Davies revealed on the August 7 episode that the show would proceed with recycled questions and contestants.
“I believe, principally, that it would not be fair to have new contestants,” he dished.
“Making their first appearance on the Alex Trebek stage, doing it with non-original material or, as we’ll talk about, a combination of non-original material and material that was written pre-strike.”
“And so we decided that really we needed to invite back and give a second chance in general to players who probably thought that their chance to come back and play on the Alex Trebek stage had gone forever.”
“We’re going to open the season with a second chance tournament for players from Season 37 who lost their initial game,” he confirmed.
“Winners from that will advance to a Season 37 and Season 38 Champions Wildcard.”
The questions used in these second chance episodes will be “a combination of material that our WGA writers wrote before the strike, which is still in the database, and material that has been redeployed from multiple, multiple seasons of the show.”
Also changing are the prizes for second and third place in an attempt to sweeten the deal for returning players.
Davies acknowledges that the significant change is “that we are increasing the second and third place prize amounts by $1,000 each.”
The decision comes amid backlash towards the show because the rules stipulated that runners-up had to fund their own travel to be a part of the show.
“This is something that we’ve been working on ever since I really took the reins of the show, something that obviously is discussed widely within our social communities and within the community of our contestants,” Davies dished.
“We understand that post-COVID, travel costs have increased. We understand how complicated funding a trip to ‘Jeopardy!’ is for many contestants within our community, and we think this is way about time that we did this.”
It’s unclear when Jeopardy! Season 40 will hit the air, but Celebrity Jeopardy is on track to return to primetime as planned because the questions were written before the WGA strike.
Another thing we’re unclear about: Who will host the show? Mayim Bialik exited the final weeks of Season 39 in solidarity with the writers.
Ken Jennings closed out the season, but it’s not certain he’ll be with the show when it returns.
What are your thoughts on the changes?
Hit the comments.
Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.
