Jeopardy Will Reportedly Recycle Questions Due to Writers’ Strike

Jeopardy! Season 39 faced difficulties in its final weeks earlier this year after the Writers Guild of America strike forced series co-host Mayim Bialik to temporarily depart from her duties on the show. Given the strike is still ongoing and there’s virtually no end in sight, the long-running trivia show will be reusing questions from earlier seasons in its touchstone 40th season. Not only that, but the series will also bring back previous contestants, with showrunner Michael Davies saying it “it would not be fair to have new contestants making their first appearance on the Alex Trebek Stage, doing it with non-original material” on the latest episode of Inside Jeopardy!.

Furthermore, Davies confirmed Season 40 would us “a combination of material that our WGA writers wrote before the strike, which is still in the database, and material that has been re-deployed from multiple seasons of the show.”

Currently set to premiere on September 11th, the series will feature a tournament from contestants who previously lost matches in Season 37. Following that, additional contestants from both Season 37 and Season 38 will be featured.

“We decided that, really, we needed to invite back and give a second chance in general to players who probably thought that their chance to come back and play on the Alex Trebek stage had gone forever,” Davies said.

Given Bialik left the show at the onset of the strike, it’s likely her co-host Ken Jennings will be handling the majority, if not all, of the tapings for the forceeable future.

Why is the WGA striking?

The WGA strike began at the beginning of May, after the Guild was unable to come to a consensus with representatives from studios. This is the second time that the WGA has gone on strike in fifteen years, after striking for 100 days from 2007 to 2008.

“Though we negotiated intent on making a fair deal — and though your strike vote gave us the leverage to make some gains — the studios’ responses to our proposals have been wholly insufficient, given the existential crisis writers are facing,” the WGA said in a statement on May 1st. “We must now exert the maximum leverage possible to get a fair contract by withholding our labor.”

The statement continued: “The WGA Negotiating Committee began this process intent on making a fair deal, but the studios’ responses have been wholly insufficient given the existential crisis writers are facing. The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing. From their refusal to guarantee any level of weekly employment in episodic television, to the creation of a ‘day rate’ in comedy variety, to their stonewalling on free work for screenwriters and on AI for all writers, they have closed the door on their labor force and opened the door to writing as an entirely freelance profession. No such deal could ever be contemplated by this membership.”