Today's Game Show TV Milestone

[AH3RD]

MARCH 30, 1964

Jeopardy!, that fun-filled Merv Griffin-created quiz show wherein questions, not answers, paid off, premiered @ 11:30 a.m. Eastern time on NBC. The host was Art Fleming, and the announcer was Don Pardo. Formerly called What's The Question?, Griffin coined the show’s new title when NBC executive Ed Vane complained that the game needed "more jeopardies."

There were two main rounds in the game: "Jeopardy!" and "Double Jeopardy!". Correct questions would be valued @ $10, $20, $30, $40, and $50 during the first round; these were doubled for the more difficult Double Jeopardy! round. Incorrect responses resulted in a deduction of the question value from the player's score, thereby placing the contestant in “jeopardy“ (hence the title!). Also included were "Daily Doubles" (one during Jeopardy!, and two in Double Jeopardy!); these were hidden on the board, and the contestant selecting the daily double answer would be allowed to wager any or all of their winnings up to that point. (NBC wanted Griffin to get rid of the name “daily double” due to its connection with ontrack horse race betting; Griffin insisted otherwise.) In the end round, "Final Jeopardy!", all three contestants questioned this final answer, and they could wager any/all of their winnings on the outcome. All three contestants kept the money they had won (save for the current version), and the highest-scoring contestant earned the right to return on the next show.

The first categories in the Jeopardy! round were Television, Women, Fictional Characters, Odds and Ends, American History, and Science; Double Jeopardy! categories on the debut telecast were U.S. Geography, Sports, The Funnies, Words, Opera, and Famous Names. The first Final Jeopardy! answer, under the category Famous Quotes, was "'Good night sweet prince' was originally said to him" (correct question: Who was Hamlet?). Mary Eubanks of North Carolina (no relation to Bob Eubanks of The Newlywed Game fame!) was the show's first champion, earning herself $345.

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.

Continued...

[AH3RD]

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.

In 1984, Merv Griffin Productions noted the success of Wheel Of Fortune in syndication (which debuted in the wake of the original 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. 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.

A Happy 40th Anniversary To Jeopardy!!

(Sources of info: A History Of Jeopardy! and Game Shows ‘75: Jeopardy!.)

[Jimmy Owen]

If Jeopardy! tanked at 10:30, why did CBS cancel Pyramid?  Jeopardy! faced Gambit next, not NYSI.

[calliaume]

[quote name=\'Jimmy Owen\' date=\'Mar 30 2004, 02:00 PM\'] If Jeopardy! tanked at 10:30, why did CBS cancel Pyramid?  Jeopardy! faced Gambit next, not NYSI. [/quote]
 This is mostly based on memory from the ATGS days, with a little guesswork:

Jeopardy! moved to 10:30 and perked up a little over what had been there (Baffle).  CBS had next dibs on the next G-T game, which turned out to be Now You See It, and of the shows on their schedule, Pyramid was judged to be the weakest (the others were Joker's Wild, Gambit, TPIR, and Match Game, so it's not like they were a bunch of stiffs).  Gambit was moved to the 10:30 spot and started winning the time slot, so NBC decided to ride out its Jeopardy! contract in the 1:30 suicide slot opposite As the World Turns and Let's Make a Deal.

Do remember that Jeopardy! looked ancient in those days compared to the flash of the CBS games.

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'calliaume\' date=\'Mar 30 2004, 02:24 PM\'][quote name=\'Jimmy Owen\' date=\'Mar 30 2004, 02:00 PM\'] If Jeopardy! tanked at 10:30, why did CBS cancel Pyramid?  Jeopardy! faced Gambit next, not NYSI. [/quote]
This is mostly based on memory from the ATGS days, with a little guesswork:

Jeopardy! moved to 10:30 and perked up a little over what had been there (Baffle).  CBS had next dibs on the next G-T game, which turned out to be Now You See It, and of the shows on their schedule, Pyramid was judged to be the weakest (the others were Joker's Wild, Gambit, TPIR, and Match Game, so it's not like they were a bunch of stiffs).  Gambit was moved to the 10:30 spot and started winning the time slot, so NBC decided to ride out its Jeopardy! contract in the 1:30 suicide slot opposite As the World Turns and Let's Make a Deal.

Do remember that Jeopardy! looked ancient in those days compared to the flash of the CBS games.[/quote]
And most important of all--Lin Bolen didn't want "J!" around at all.  The format and Art Fleming didn't fit her vision of what game shows and hosts should be in the 70s.  The move to 10:30 was an attempt to kill it.  When it didn't happen, she moved it to the 1:30 suicide slot.

It's entirely possible that Merv could've told Bob Rubin to spruce the show up visually while still keeping Art Fleming and the same level of material and Rubin would've done it.  But Bolen would've still tried to get rid of it.  If she got rid of the in-house production "Concentration" because it didn't fit her vision, she had no qualms about getting rid of "J!"--and besides, Merv now had another show on the NBC schedule--"Wheel."

[Ian Wallis]

If Jeopardy! tanked at 10:30, why did CBS cancel Pyramid? Jeopardy! faced Gambit next, not NYSI.

Game show ratings, and why certain shows were cancelled when they were have always puzzled me.  If cancellations are really based on ratings, why then would "Whew" on CBS at 10:30 leave the air in May 1980, and then "Hollywood Squares" on NBC at 10:30 leave the air in June, 1980 (ABC didn't program that slot at the time).  I know that Letterman's show replaced "Squares", but the moves couldn't have been based on ratings.  With only two networks programming the 10:30 slot, *one* of the shows had to have been doing well - but they were both cancelled.

There are other examples of this (especially in that crazy year of 1975), but this is the first one that comes to mind.

[tyshaun1]

[quote name=\'Ian Wallis\' date=\'Mar 31 2004, 09:07 AM\']

If Jeopardy! tanked at 10:30, why did CBS cancel Pyramid? Jeopardy! faced Gambit next, not NYSI.

Game show ratings, and why certain shows were cancelled when they were have always puzzled me.  If cancellations are really based on ratings, why then would "Whew" on CBS at 10:30 leave the air in May 1980, and then "Hollywood Squares" on NBC at 10:30 leave the air in June, 1980 (ABC didn't program that slot at the time).  I know that Letterman's show replaced "Squares", but the moves couldn't have been based on ratings.  With only two networks programming the 10:30 slot, *one* of the shows had to have been doing well - but they were both cancelled.

There are other examples of this (especially in that crazy year of 1975), but this is the first one that comes to mind. [/quote]
 NBC has had a long track record of cancelling game shows in order to save another show or introduce a new show; when Blockbusters '87 debuted, Jake Tauber mentioned in Broadcasting magazine that when the original show was canned, it was still performing pretty well at a 17 share but it was dumped (along with Battlestars and Password Plus) to save "The Doctors" and "Texas", even though neither never did particularly well in the ratings. Just one example (and if the CS '86 story is true, then PYL more than likely was banished so CBS could hold on to TPIR, even though PYL generally won its time slot against $OTC).

Tyshaun

[AH3RD]

One further item: The current version of Jeopardy! patterns its set after the 1978-79 version and the rules after the classic 1964-75 edition.

[Don Howard]

[quote name=\'AH3RD\' date=\'Mar 30 2004, 01:49 PM\'] 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.

 [/quote]
 Super Jeopardy! was played for $5000 if it was your first bonus round with $2500 increases in the bonus availability for each return trip to the end game whether you won it the previous day or not. The last show was on March 2, 1979. Art did host two editions of The NOVA Science Quiz on PBS in 1984 and 1985.