JEOPARDY! AIRS WEEKNIGHTS, 7:30PM ON CBC; WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? AIRS WEEKNIGHTS, 5PM ON A.
The rise of Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber has recently reignited the Duh-bya era’s rabid anti-intellectualism, somehow turning “educated” into a (nearly) socially acceptable slur. So it was with his usual impeccable timing that Jeopardy! super-genius Ken Jennings buzzed back onto the scene.
A couple of weeks ago, the brainiac bagged a cool $500,000 on Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader — a show which, despite its melodramatic editing and redneck host Jeff Foxworthy, celebrates clever kids and mocks adult ignorance. Though Jennings wussed on the million-dollar question (which, it turned out, he knew) his take-home still made him the top contestant ever.
This week, Jennings began a run on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire as an “Ask the Expert” lifeline. The Game Show Network also hired him for the “Stump the Master” segment on its interactive GSN Live, running between regular programming.
Yet TV’s smartest series remains Jennings’ old stomping ground, Jeopardy!, where he racked up a 74-episode winning streak in 2004, and which is still watched by nearly 39 million viewers weekly. Currently celebrating its 25th-anniversary season, Jeopardy! has relocated for its Canadian broadcasts to CBC, where its Sudbury-born host Alex Trebek got his start in the mid-’60s on the classic high-school quiz show Reach for the Top. In 1984, the then-mustachioed host signed on to this smart but weird quiz show where contestants get the answers and have to come up with the question. Coincidentally, this was also the year Ronald Reagan — who once asked in a campaign speech, “why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?” — won a landslide second term.
Yet even as American anti-intellectualism has waxed and waned (and less brain-taxing competitors such as Deal or No Deal have become hits), Jeopardy! has never dumbed down.
“Our contestants make money the old-fashioned way: they earn it,” says Trebek, doing his best John Houseman impression while in Toronto to promote the show’s move to CBC. “There is not a great deal of luck involved. It rewards people who are bright and whose reflexes are fast. You have to be well-read because a lot of our material has to do with current events.”
Trebek has gentlemanly praise for fellow Canadian game show host Howie Mandel for his work on Deal, saying he’s a fan while also admitting, “On that show you don’t have to know anything.”
He suggests that viewers not watch Jeopardy! solo. “If you have a really good day coming up with correct responses before our contestants and you’re alone, then there’s no one to witness your glory.”
He’s pleased that his show — which has won 28 Daytime Emmys, including five for its host — has proven so widely accessible.
“Jeopardy! appeals to everyone, even those people who aren’t particularly bright, because they watch to look at bright people,” Trebek says with a grin. “I can’t skate particularly well, but I love to watch hockey.”