Ken Jennings Confirmed To Host ‘Jeopardy!’ For Season 40 Amidst Strikes
Ken Jennings will be hosting Jeopardy! as it returns for its 40th season.
The show returns today, September 11, as part of a “changed” season 40, per exec producer Michael Davies.
There had been confusion as to whether Jennings would host solo or whether Mayim Bialik, who has co-hosted the show, would return given the fact that SAG-AFTRA is on strike.
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Deadline revealed in May that The Big Bang Theory and Call Me Kat star walked away from hosting the final week of season 39 of the gameshow as a result of the strike.
The show returns with the Season 37 Jeopardy! Second Chance competition, which features 27 select contestants from Season 37 who didn’t become champions in their initial appearances given the chance to win again.
Davies, who took over as exec producer and showrunner on a permanent basis last year, admitted that a lot of his plans for Season 40 and the post-season episodes had been “derailed” and that the show was now in a “holding pattern”.
Speaking on the Inside Jeopardy! podcast, he said that he admires and misses the writers, who are “beloved and valued members of the Jeopardy! team” but the industrial action has lead to a “changed” Season 40.
Elsewhere, he said that the second and third place prize pots are being increased by $1,000, meaning that second place gets $3,000 and third place $2,000. “We understand that post-Covid, travel plans have increased and how complicated funding a trip to Jeopardy! is for many contestants within our community and we think this is way about time,” he said.
Former champion Jennings is also hosting Celebrity Jeopardy! without Bialik, which returns for its second season on September 27.
Jeopardy! is produced by Sony Pictures Television, distributed domestically by CBS Media Ventures and internationally by Paramount Global Content Distribution.
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