The name of the game for contestants has stayed largely the same for forty years. But soon, Jeopardy! will be introducing some changes designed specifically to enhance the viewer experience. More specifically, on-screen changes will be made to cater to viewers at home using just a few simple additions.
Jeopardy! is in the midst of its 40th season, hosted now by former GOAT champion Ken Jennings. The show began this season with a “second chance” theme to bring back former contestants in the midst of the WGA strike, which just recently ended. In addition to working out the logistics of running the show with previously used clues, the team has also reimagined the interface on viewers’ TVs to bring to life a long-desired feature.
‘Jeopardy!’ is making a highly desired change to improve viewer experience
At the heart of what keeps Jeopardy! running is, in part, the clues, broken up into a handful of categories that evolve from game to game. Understanding these clues is helpful for understanding the lay of the land on the game show and seeing which categories certain contestants are drawn to. But as it stands, the cameras would show just the contestants or the text of the clue, not the category.
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In the past, showrunner Michael Davies had voiced his desire to keep the category viewable to fans at home but no one on the Jeopardy! team had quite figured out how to lay this information out on the screen. Now, however, they’ve come up with some ideas they are ready to test.
Maintaining a balancing act with a lot of moving parts
Former host Alex Trebek, who died in 2020 at the age of 80, once said the real star of Jeopardy! was never the host, but rather the contestants. That is reflected in the way the screen focuses on the players, but showrunners also want to give viewers at home important information that could be missed in a blink. On top of that, technology has changed drastically since the show debuted four decades ago; as one fan on Reddit noted, “We’re not watching jeopardy on 13 inch CRTs anymore!”
“I know for myself, the first few clues, you’re kind of finding your footing, like ‘Where am I gonna look? Where do I need to focus?'” said longtime producer Sarah Whitcomb Foss. Then, she saw the trial run of having the category information on screen. “And then all of a sudden, it just opens up: ‘Wow! It’s all right here. It’s unlike anything I’ve watched before, but everything is right here for me to see. If I want to see the category, the game board, the contestant, I’ve got it all.”
By time of writing, Davies has not shared exactly how the screens at home will look, but the viewer experience is designed to mimic “what the experience is for the actual contestants and for the producers in the studio watching the show.” The change is still in the testing phase and will appear only on Celebrity Jeopardy! to start off, so that fans of the traditional Jeopardy! can still enjoy things as they are. From there, it depends on fan reaction.
Is there any change you hope Jeopardy! implements, either on screen or in the format of the game itself?
