‘Jeopardy!’ Boss Reveals Big Change He Wants to Bring in ‘Immediately’
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Jeopardy! might soon look a little different thanks to the show’s executive producer, Michael Davies, who wants to change how clues are displayed on screen for viewers at home.
Speaking on the latest edition of the Inside Jeopardy! podcast, the game show boss brought up how “some parts of our audience get very lost in our gameplay.”
“Now, with all of the Daily Double hunting, people jump all over. They go to the deeper dollar value first and jump all over the board,” he continued. “I don’t think it would ever be natural to dictate players to play in a certain order.”
Because of this, he wants to enact a change that was previously tried on Celebrity Jeopardy! As viewers saw last season, rather than the clue taking up the whole screen, clues were displayed in a split-screen, with the clue board on the left and the three contestants shown in a vertical column on the right.
Davies said he expected more of a backlash to this change, but because the reaction was minimal, he’s now considering implementing it in regular Jeopardy!
“One change we made in Celebrity [Jeopardy!] that I still find remarkable is that we didn’t get more people commenting on was that we left the three contestants on the right side of the screen,” Davies explained.
“So you could see the full game board when people choose the categories, and we also highlighted where people chose them so you had a real geographical sense of where the clue was coming from,” he added.
Davies said they tested it on Celebrity Jeopardy! first because he was “terrified there would be an outcry from the audience about that being the change.”
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“[But] we barely heard a peep about it,” he continued. “So maybe that is something we should put into the Monday to Friday show – immediately. It definitely helps with the geography of the program and understanding where the category is. I think we will continue to look at ways to bring the category into the full screen with the clue.”
Davies did recognize how Jeopardy! fans like tradition, so noted, “We have to be quite careful with changes.”
Responding to the potential change, one fan on the Jeopardy! Reddit forum wrote, “Just put the category on the screen. It solves everything with 0 effect on gameplay. I don’t know why such a simple solution has been ignored or rejected.”
“I think it ultimately comes down to both their text software, post-production costs, and the 4:3 border that Jeopardy still sticks to for appeasing the older crowd,” replied another commenter, explaining why the show doesn’t just show the category on screen.
Another added, “I love the highlighting of the category (the white box outline), that really helps. If really putting the category and dollar value as a heading on the screen is not possible, that’s the next best thing.”
“However, I’m not very keen on having the three contestants on the right of the screen, as there’s simply too much happening on the screen with that,” they continued. “You’re focusing on the board, but then there’s the three contestants to look at too.”
Jeopardy! is currently nearing the end of its Tournament of Champions, which will see Troy Meyer, Yogesh Raut, and Ben Chan battling it out for ultimate trivia glory. The first-ever Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament will follow before episodes with new contestants return in late April.
During the podcast, Davies touched on tournament scheduling, noting the next Jeopardy! post-season (for Season 41) will move to the first quarter of 2025. The producer stated this could be the post-season’s permanent spot moving forward, citing February TV sweeps as the reason.
Fellow producer Sarah Whitcomb Foss also stated that the field of contestants for the next Tournament of Champions would be smaller than 27.
Davies also discussed whether Teen Tournament and College Championship contestants could return to the show. He said he’s interested in creating a concrete set of “eligibility requirements” for these former contestants, similar to another online test.
What do you think of these potential changes? Let us know in the comments below.
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