What’s… Jeopardy! had a distinct identify at first? Creator Merv Griffin toyed with many concepts earlier than deciding on the one-word title and the present format.
Griffin’s first selection for the sport present was What’s the Query? How Jeopardy! bought to be Jeopardy! is a winding story. In 1963, Griffin brainstormed concepts together with his spouse, Julann. As they deliberate, they thought concerning the scandals that got here with different recreation reveals, together with producers giving their favourite contestants the proper solutions. The producers of Twenty-One and The $64,000 Query had been referred to as out for it and it left a nasty style in followers’ mouths, which lowered the viewership of recreation reveals.
The creator harped on the controversies, however Julann urged that they modify the thought for the present the place “the contestants are given the solutions to start out with,” in keeping with The Jeopardy! E book. “She was kidding, however the thought struck me between the eyes,” Griffin wrote within the ahead.
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The early model of Jeopardy! was similar to what’s seen at the moment besides it included one spherical of 100 questions. The often Jeopardy! recreation has 61 questions. They’re cut up up between two rounds after which a ultimate query. The questions would have been cut up into 10 classes with 10 questions in every in Griffin’s unique idea. They nonetheless would have been displayed on an enormous board like the sport present has at the moment.
NBC had a constructive response to the trial run, however they had been anxious that the 100 questions wouldn’t match on a display screen that might be seen on TV. So, Griffin fine-tuned his concepts and made the classes shorter.
Nonetheless, the identify “Jeopardy!” didn’t come to Griffin till he sat down with NBC producer Ed Vane.
“He instructed me that he preferred the premise however that it lacked sufficient ‘jeopardies,’” Griffin wrote in his 2007 memoir, Merv: Making The Good Life Final. Griffin, who died of prostate most cancers in August of that 12 months, wrote “Ed had inadvertently given me the proper identify for the present.”
Throughout this assembly, the creator additionally got here up with the concept if a contestant buzzed in and answered incorrectly, they’d lose cash. So, then Jeopardy! was created and it premiered on March 30, 1964, with host Artwork Fleming.
After Artwork Fleming left in 1979, Alex Trebek took over and was the host till 2020 when he died of pancreatic most cancers. Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik cohosted till Bialik was fired in 2023. Now, Jennings hosts the sport present solo.
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