When Pat Sajak retired after 41 seasons on Wheel of Fortune, replacement host Ryan Seacrest knew he had big shoes to fill. Change is hard for viewers, who were used to the dynamic duo of Sajak and co-host Vanna White, but the 50-year-old TV personality slid seamlessly into the former star’s role.
Fans of the longtime game show have responded positively to the move with ratings up 3% over Sajak’s final season, per Nielsen data shared by the Los Angeles Times in January. “It was a pivotal moment for us,” Suzanne Prete, president of game shows for Sony, told the media outlet. “It’s personal to the viewers. Pat is like a family member to them. If I had the choice of anybody in the world, it would have been Ryan.”
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Seacrest was a great move for the game show, but there is some controversy around another game show and the replacement of a beloved host.
Why change is hard
Jeopardy! has been one of the strongest properties for Sony, but the loss of Alex Trebek to pancreatic cancer in November 2020 was a tremendous blow to the show. The series is considered an intellectual’s game show and Trebek was the fearless leader of knowledge — it’s been hard for anyone to fill his shoes. Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings and actress Mayim Bialik initially split hosting duties, for the game show and Celebrity Jeopardy!, but he won out in the end after she sat out during the actor and writers’ strike.
The primetime, A-list version of the show has always a big ratings generator for CBS, but Jennings has been struggling to retain longtime fans. The Price Is Right At Night beat out Celebrity Jeopardy!, and a source is telling Closer Weekly that there is a lot of “pressure” on Jennings to “turn things around.”
“He’s telling people that it’s just a phase, that there are always highs and lows, and they’ll get through it,” the insider revealed. “But the reality is there’s only so long it can go like this before the bosses get too nervous to wait it out, so it really does remain to be seen whether he’ll get a chance to do this long term or whether they’ll turn to someone with more fame to boost their ratings.”
There are also the Seacrest comparisons since he’s looking like the “game-show golden boy” for taking Wheel of Fortune to new levels. The media outlet’s source claimed that Jeopardy! producers are “brainstorming names to replace Ken.” With Colin Jost succeeding in the spin-off series, Pop Culture Jeopardy!, the Saturday Night Live star might be a good fit as a replacement.
Even with the stresses of the job, Jennings still holds Trebek as the gold standard for the show. “He had this amazing minimalist kind of light touch where he never wanted the focus to be on himself, which is such an unusual, beautiful thing in show business,” Jennings told CBS in June 2024. “Nobody’s ever going to do that job as well as he did it.” It’s a role he would love to continue with because he believes it unites people in a very divisive world.
“Old people like Jeopardy!, young people like Jeopardy!, red states, blue states, it’s bizarrely universal,” Jennings summed up. “America still agrees that there’s like a half-hour every day where facts do matter, and we’re allowed to adjudicate things as right or wrong based on science and history. And I do think that’s an important bulwark.”
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