“Risk!” The producers are listening to their fans and making some changes.
During a recent episode of “Inside Jeopardy!” Podcast producers Michael Davies and Sarah Foss discussed their New Year’s resolutions about the show, as well as the mistakes they made last season and how they think they can improve the show. One thing Davies noted was that the post-season episodes “really worked” but could be done better.
“My first resolution is that we extend the season beyond next year,” Davies said. “We had a little bit of a weird thing where we started the regular season for five weeks, then we went to the postseason, and we came back and we went back to the regular season again, and I think what we’re going to do next season is we’re going to start the season with the postseason and then we’ll go into the regular season.”
Postseason shows include “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions’ and the ‘Second Chance Tournament’. By adding these early in the season, producers will avoid disrupting regular play and not derailing a potential winning streak in which the audience is invested.
While excited about their postseason success and expansion, Davies was keen to acknowledge that he and Foss “understand the value of young players getting a chance to come into the Alex Trebek scene and get opportunities to play,” and says adding more postseason episodes won’t take away from new players coming onto the scene.
“We can extend the postseason, we can extend it to nine weeks, 10 weeks, 11 weeks, whatever we decide, eight weeks, there would be plenty of weeks for regular play,” he said. “I think we’re going to extend the postseason. I think it will be a very important thing.”
Foss added, “I think it might mean we have less of the more traditional tournaments we’ve had in the past because we’re hearing from our fans and our players saying they want more opportunities for people to have that first time. opportunity and some of our tournaments in the past didn’t necessarily allow for a TOC spot, so this might be a way to have that balance.”
The show currently has two hosts who take on different responsibilities, with Ken Jennings who hosts regular syndicated episodes, and Mayim Bialik who hosts High School Reunion Tournament and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which airs on Thursdays.
Davies is so impressed by the success of “Celebrity Jeopardy!” saying that “based on the performance of this show,” it has been converted from a syndicated show to “a primetime program.”
One of Davies’ other resolutions for 2023 is to finally get ‘Jeopardy! Masters’ off the ground, calling the project his ‘baby’ and his ‘best dream’. He explained that the show is something he’s wanted to do since his first day on the job, but the timing just wasn’t right until now.
“We have these professional level, elite players and our fans. . . tell us on social media the whole time you’re watching the show through these people,” he said. “I just look at the ratings, and when we have a super champion in there in the mix, and all of a sudden when we have them playing each other, the quality of the programs, the ratings of those programs, the interactions on social media, the engagement with those programs , was off the charts.”
He ended by saying, “We’re going to do ‘Jeopardy! Masters’ happen,” with Foss exclaiming that fans will see it in 2023. The next challenge they face is deciding which past champions to choose to join the new spin-off.
A start date for Season 40 has yet to be announced, however, it was announced Wednesday that the series has been renewed for the 2027-2028 season.
