Despite all the hype around hosting, which played out both on the iconic Jeopardy! stage and beyond in 2021 and 2022, when Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik are now officially Alex Trebek’s permanent successors, the show itself has basically remained unchanged throughout this time. embrace. But that’s not quite the case in the upcoming 39th season, as executive producer Michael Davis aims to bring more sports betting to the game show. Aside from adding new tournaments and the upcoming primetime offering Celebrity Jeopardy!, the mainstream daytime TV product will be shaking up a couple of big ways for its seasonal Tournament of Champions, and obviously those decisions weren’t easy.
After earlier this year we presented left field that the next Tournament of Champions would welcome two “second chance” champions who did not make it to the initial selection, Davis and Co announced that the next tournament would also simulate sports playoffs, giving the three highest-paid winners of the season — new Top-ranked participants.10 Matt Amodio, Amy Schneider and Mattea Roach — immediately advanced to the semifinals without participating in the first game of the games. In addition, the next ToC will change the previous format of the two-day final final, turning it into a first-to-three-wins process, which should make the situation much more unpredictable for both viewers and players.
Michael Davis, who got into the Jeopardy group! fold, after former boss Michael Richards tried to take over the running of the show amid the newly surfaced scandals, began giving fans a deeper look behind the scenes of the show through the burgeoning Inside Jeopardy! Podcast, and this is in the last episode where he, former champ Buzzy Cohen and producer Sarah Foss talked about the upcoming changes. It may seem like Amodio, Schneider and Roach are getting an unfair advantage, but according to Davis, they deserved it by saying:
None of these decisions were taken lightly, but we looked at Mattea, Matt and Amy and had to make a distinction between them and the rest of our players.
Former ToC host Buzzy Cohen provided additional arguments in favor of why they deserve such a unique distinction before the next Tournament of Champions, and explained why not participating in the quarterfinals could be a bigger disadvantage than Jeopardy! fans can expect. According to him:
And you’re not talking about the top three seeded teams that are ahead of everyone by two or three games. They played the historical series of the game Jeopardy! And while this seeding may seem like an advantage, and in some ways it is, it can also be a disadvantage, since the other players they will face in the semifinals will have to practice a little with the buzzer. .
Cohen is definitely telling the truth, considering how important everything related to the buzzer is to Jeopardy! hopefuls. To this end, Michael Davis said that the producers can find a way to help in this process, and in a way that in itself will become part of the history of the game show. According to Davis:
Yes, I would say that the rebuff I received from my team about their seeding was never related to an advantage. It was about the disadvantage that they would then enter the second round or the semifinals without playing a single game. And actually I think one of the things we talked about is how do we give them a practice game that feels like something real? By the way, a training game that could blow up the internet if we ever post it.
Considering how good Matt Amodio, Amy Schneider and Mattea Roach were during their long winning streaks, this hypothetical practice game will be like a minor league version of the GOAT tournament between Ken Jennings, James Holzhauer and Brad Rutter. It looks like Holzhauer would have made big bets on it, too.
No matter how wild 2019 was for Jeopardy!, Holzhauer and Jason Zuffranieri won the competition and entered the top ten of all time, last year brought an extremely popular trio of champions, whose total winnings exceed $ 3.5 million. So while I can understand some people wondering why someone gets special treatment now, even though it wasn’t there before, this is probably the best group of participants to test how it will work. Now we just have to wait for it to launch on Halloween.
Danger! Season 39 debuts in syndication on Monday, September 12th, so check your local listings to find out when it’s playing in your area. Danger to celebrities! — one of the many prime-time shows that are included in the schedule of TV premieres for 2022, so stay tuned!
