Harry Eisenberg - Jeopardy!: A Revealing Look Inside TVs Top Quiz Show

Copyright 1995 by Harry Eisenberg

All rights reserved. Published by Lifetime Books, Inc.

Reproduction, translation or use in any form by any means of any part of this work beyond that permitted by Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act without the permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Requests for permission or further information should be addressed to the Permissions Department, Lifetime Books, Inc., 2131 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, Florida 33020.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Eisenberg, Harry, 1947
Jeopardy! behind the scenes at TVs top quiz show / Harry Eisenberg.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8119-0806-2
eBook ISBN - 978-0-88391-573-8
1. Jeopardy (Television program). I. Title.
PN1992.77.J363E38 1995

791.4572dc20 95-2283

CIP

Time magazine, the leading authority on top-ten lists (along with David Letterman and USA Today), featured (in January, 1990) a select group of TV programs as being the best of the eighties. Only one non-network, syndicated show was named. That same show was also the only game show listed in Times best ten of the decade. That show happened to be Jeopardy!

Of Jeopardy Time wrote: TVs most challenging game show was too smart for the 70s: NBC cancelled it in 1975 after a decade on the air. But it reappeared triumphantly in a new syndicated version in the 80s. Who says TV is getting dumber?

In a similar vein, the fortieth anniversary (April 17,1993) issue of TV Guide presented its picks for the best TV shows of all time. Beating out Password, Whats My Line? and Wheel of Fortune, TV Guides selection for the all-time best game show was Jeopardy. The TV Guide reviewer wrote: We admire the contestants for their striking abilities to accumulate knowledge and said of Jeopardy, Its not just a game show; its a challenge, a goal.

With some 16 million people in its metropolitan area, New York is the biggest plumor applein the TV ratings battle. A good rating in New York will count heavily towards overall success nationwide. While the air times of the networks national evening news shows vary somewhat from city to city, in New York all three had long been on opposite each other at 7:00 P.M . And in the ratings race between the three networks newscasts, ABC news had long been the third-place finisher.

Perhaps feeling they had less to lose, in 1986 the programming and scheduling brass at ABC decided that their national news should break away from the pack and come on the air a half-hour earlier than the others, at 6:30. And it worked. ABCs World News Tonight with Peter Jennings became the ratings leader in the lucrative New York market.

Did ABC News cop the Big Apple simply because New Yorkers, who are famous for keeping late hours, simply felt like watching the news half an hour earlier? Hardly.

ABC needed a show to lure viewers away from the competitions news while at the same time giving those viewers a news option at another time. And so New Yorkers, in droves, broke with what had been a 30-year tradition of watching the national evening news at 7:00 P.M . in order to watch Jeopardy.

The fact that Jeopardy helped propel ABC news into the top-rated position in the nations premier market came as quite a surprise to many, but it shouldnt have. Since its return to television in the fall of 1984 with Alex Trebek as host, Jeopardy has enjoyed exceptionally good ratings. With a daily audience ranging between 17 and 22 million people, Jeopardy from 1985 on has pretty much had a lock on second place among all U.S. syndicated TV shows. It is second only to Wheel of Fortune, a sister show, both productions of Merv Griffin Enterprises and distributed by King World.

Jeopardy has been called the game show without the cleavage. Its been described as the Mount Everest for people who get tired of winning at Trivial Pursuit. TV Guide has called it the only real quiz show on TV and one of the most literate game shows ever. As such, it competes for the same audience of intelligent, educated, aware people as the evening news, attracting viewers to ABCs national news in New York, while drawing viewers away from the competition. (To remain competitive in the New York market, the other networks eventually moved their evening news back to 6:30 as well.)

Host Alex Trebek has made it a point to say that Jeopardy is a quiz show, not a game show. While acknowledging that the shows primary purpose is to entertain the audience, he says, Its making people more aware of the value of education and knowledge. If watching Jeopardy arouses a certain amount of curiosity about a particular subject, maybe theyll pick up a book and read about it. Our message, if you can call it that, is its OK to be bright. Weve heard that many teachers are using the Jeopardy format as a learning tool. All of a sudden kids get interested. If it helps teachers teach and kids learn, thats fantastic.

I was with Jeopardy for seven years, first as a writer and judge on the show and for the last three years as editorial associate producer. I managed the writing and research staffs and was responsible for providing all those categories full of answers and questions. I was there from the beginning, in June 1984, when we faced the distinct possibility wed all be out of a job six months later, until May of 1991. The next year was spent, in part, agonizing over whether to write a tell-all book about the show.

Its hard not to like Jeopardy. It is a wholesome quiz show promoting knowledge and education that can be enjoyed by the entire family. No violence, no sarcasm, no illicit sex, no put-downs, no subtle political messages. Just an intellectual competition of answers and questions.

But what has really been great about Jeopardy has been its success! As the second highest rated series in the history of U.S. syndicated television programs, Jeopardy helps put the lie to the widely held notion that sex and violence are necessary to succeed in the TV ratings wars.

After ten years of the current, syndicated version of the program, Jeopardy has become a household word and is a popular part of American culture. The hero of Operation Desert Storm, General Norman Schwarzkopf, calls it his favorite program. At baseball games, the Final Jeopardy think music is sometimes played while the manager contemplates making a pitching change. Radio promotional contests are often based on the Jeopardy answer-question format. And Jeopardy host Alex Trebek has become a well-known, much appreciated celebrity figure.

I remember sitting in my office as Jeopardy editorial associate producer in 1988 and receiving a call from Kroloff, Marshall and Associates, a Washington, DC advertising agency that was representing the National Geographic Society. The Society was sponsoring Geography Awareness Week in November and was wondering if Jeopardy could help promote it. Geography Awareness Week just happened to coincide with our annual Tournament of Champions, sort of the Jeopardy equivalent of the World Series or the Super Bowl. I very much liked the idea and took it to my boss, producer George Vosburgh. He and his superiors Bob Murphy and Merv Griffin agreed and Geography Awareness Week has been promoted on Jeopardy ever since. Not long after we began the relationship with the National Geographic Society, I was asked if there was any chance Alex might be willing to host the finals of the National Geography Bee in Washington. Now Alex had been doing a considerable amount of charitable work for years but when he heard about this, he was happy to add it to his annual calendar. Promoting education is a noble cause to which Jeopardy, in its own way, has made a contribution.