Jeopardy! Poll Results Reveal Who Fans Want to See as Next Host
Almost 30,000 viewers voted in a poll to determine who they want to see as the full-time host of Jeopardy!, and the results...well, they're probably just about what you would expect. Former Jeopardy! champ Ken Jennings, who currently serves as one of two temporary hosts alongside The Big Bang Theory's Mayim Bialik, more than doubled Bialik's vote tally, according to TV Insider, who hosted the poll. Earning more than 20,000 votes, Jennings earned 70% of the vote to Bialiks' 30%. That's no slight to Bialik; fans have pretty routinely expressed a preference for Jennings to virtually all other candidates.
Fans and TV writers had treated Jennings as the obvious choice to succeed longtime host Alex Trebek, who announced in 2019 that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. In 2020, Trebek passed away with no permanent replacement named, and a series of temporary hosts came in, wish numerous celebrities and intellectuals eager to pay homage to the late host and make themselves part of the show's storied legacy.
During his lifetime, Trebek said that he had "no say" in his replacement, with producers clarifying that the host had expressed no interest in being part of that process.
Most of the guest hosts did not express any interest publicly in replacing Trebek, although Star Trek: The Next Generation's LeVar Burton did so, responding to a popular outcry on social media to give him the job. By the time he finished his guest stint, though, Burton expressed less interest, seeming satisfied with allowing producers to make their decision without anymore lobbying. Bialik has also publicly lobbied for the job, albeit much more subtly than Burton had.
Producers ultimately named...well...Jeopardy! executive producer Mike Richards to the role. Richards had joined Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune in 2020 after more than a decade producing The Price is Right and Let's Make a Deal. But the three-time Emmy winner lasted less than two weeks, and was forced to step down after a history of sexist and anti-Semitic remarks came to light, which drove a look into his behavior behind the scenes of Wheel of Fortune.
When Richards was hired, Bialik had been tapped to join the show as the host of primetime specials and other special syndicated episodes. This made her seem like a front-runner for the job, but her own history of controversial statements -- Bialik has been a vocal critic of vaccine science, which is not a popular position to take in the midst of a pandemic -- may have hurt the odds of Bialik simply moving over to the main podium. Ultimately, they named Jennings and Bialik as a tag-team of hosts; Bialik's job did not change, with Jennings taking over for Richards.
Jennings, who had been a the first guest-host of the post-Trebek era, has had some personal controversies as well -- a number of offensive tweets over the years, all of which resurfaced in the chaotic aftermath of Trebek's passing -- but those do not seem to have tarnished his image with the public or popularity with the fans in the way Richards's did.