This is a helpful piece, not so much because of a lot of new reporting, but
because it brings together just about everything that has been reported
into one place.
I was glad to have confirmed what I thought was true, which is that ratings
were not significantly different for the two hosts
And now Claire McNear, whose reporting helped bring down Mike Richards,
tells the story of Mayim's departure:
https://www.theringer.com/tv/2023/12/27/24015707/mayim-bialik-jeopardy-main-host-history-ken-jennings-writers-strike
On Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 4:43:28 PM UTC-5 Bob Jersey wrote:
THR's Alex Weprin discusses things with Ken... the celebrities, he said,
appear to be far more terrified than a regular-show contestant...
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/jeopardy-host-ken-jennings-mayim-bialik-exit-celebrity-jeopardy-semifinals-1235766161/
(link)
B
Tom Wolper, to
In any internet pile-on most participants are expressing their own outrage
or pushing their agendas with no regard for the well being of the object
they’re outraged about. Sony was right to be sensitive about choosing their
host as they didn’t want to be at the center of an outrage storm that
While there was a case to be made for having a more diverse host (Laura
Coates, Alex's personal choice, comes to mind; I never bought into the
notion of having LeVar Burton succeed Alex - it just wasn't a good fit), I
think there's a large segment of the Jeopardy audience who wanted Ken to
In the Trebek succession the producers brought in a diverse group of guest
hosts hinting that Jeopardy might have a new host that wasn’t a straight
white man. The backlash to the Mike Richards debacle showed that Jeopardy
was vulnerable to another misstep. So they hired Mayim to host. Whether
they
Puck News’ Matt Belloni reports this evening that Bialik’s ouster is very
much about her refusal to cross the picket lines (though Is till think if
she were better at the job they would have kept her). He also says it’s
possible she could return next year for Network Jeopardy!, but don’t bet on
I have been re-reading media reports from back in August about Celebrity
Jeopardy! My memory had been that that Ken was filling in for her while she
honored the Strikes, but it seems that was only true for the final week of
the previous season. In August they announced that Bialik would not be
Unless they come up with another primetime show -- always a possibility
with Michael Davies -- it seems like she's out. Nobody but Ken could handle
Masters, and if this season of Celebrity does well enough to get renewed it
seems unlikely ABC would want to change horses again.
On Saturday,
Michael Davies is always talking about expanding the Jeopardy franchise and
they might want her available for a new prime time spinoff. The celebrity
tournament wasn’t the only prime time show, there was also the masters
tournament.
There are too many unknowns to be able to speculate about what
I agree that use of “syndicated” creates an ambiguity, and this was created
not be media sloppiness, but by Bialik and Sony themselves, who both
specifically used that modifier in their statements.
Are they intentionally leaving the door open for her to return to
C-Jeopardy? Maybe. Alternatively,
I notice that all the reporting and the statements specify "syndicated version"
of Jeopardy!
I'm not clear why there's a need to be that specific here. It seems to leave a
door open for Bialik to host non-syndicated versions of the show, but the tone
of the statements and the coverage sound to
It took several years but they finally came up with the right answer
(question?) to the hosting problem. I would be celebrating more
aggressively but for fear that somewhere assholes are doing the same in an
antisemitic vein.
“Sony has informed me that I will no longer be hosting the syndicated
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