In the fall of 1965, Jeopardy! defected to Noon Eastern time. This proved to be its most popular slot to working men and women, who viewed the game on their lunch break, and on college campuses, where students would schedule their classes around the show (a rare occurrence for any daytime show in the noontime slot at the time!). Then, after 9 years, the roof caved in. In January 1974, NBC made a fatal mistake by moving Jeopardy! from its noon timeslot to 10:30 A.M., opposite CBS’s The $10,000 Pyramid and Now You See It. The Peacock Network tried to fix the ratings damage resulting from this move by restoring it to an afternoon slot, 1:30 P.M., to be precise, in July, but it only hampered the show further; it battled futilely against CBS’ As The World Turns and ABC’s Let’s Make A Deal, both ratings powerhouses. The show, with still a year to go on its contract, concluded its run on NBC January 3, 1975 in a deal with Merv Griffin, with Griffin placing a new game, Wheel Of Fortune, on NBC’s daytime schedule the following Monday. For Jeopardy!‘s entire duration of 11 years and 2,753 episodes, Art Fleming was present for every taping, while Don Pardo missed only one: on April 17, 1967; Wayne Morse announced in his stead. (A syndicated nighttime version, which debuted in September 1974, lasted throughout the rest of the year.)
In October 1978, after plans by CBS to revive Jeopardy! fell through, the show returned to NBC; now produced in Los Angeles (as opposed to old NBC Studios, Rockefeller Center in New York City), Art Fleming returned as host, and John Harlan announced in the place of Don Pardo (who stayed behind in New York to announce Saturday Night Live). The rules of the 1978 version differed entirely from the original: the lowest scoring player in the Jeopardy! round was eliminated from competition, leaving only 2 contestants to play in Double Jeopardy!, and Final Jeopardy! was replaced by a Super Jeopardy! round, where the highest scoring contestant would compete for $5,000. This version struggled to hold its own against CBS mainstay The Price Is Right, but was plastered, and Jeopardy! once again left the airwaves on March 9, 1979. Art Fleming hadn’t hosted a game show since then; he passed away in 1995 at age 70.
In 1984, Merv Griffin Productions noted the success of Wheel Of Fortune in syndication (which debuted in the wake of Jeopardy!’s demise on NBC 9 years back!), which convinced them to try another run. Thus begat a new Jeopardy! in a five days a week syndicated version. This boasted a new set which was patterned after the 1978-79, set but adhered to the classic 1964-75 rules. Alex Trebek hosted in Art Fleming‘s stead, Johnny Gilbert would replace Don Pardo as announcer, and an electronic game board replaced stagehands noisily yanking printed cards, with dollar values multiplied by 10! Wow!! This version continues to delight audiences to this very day.
