• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, March 8, 2023

Less than a year after Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik were officially announced as alternating hosts on “Jeopardy!,” some of the show’s fans are airing their preference for Jennings and their frustration with Bialik on social media.

A new barrage of anti-Mayim tweets has appeared since a “Jeopardy!” producer revealed last week that Bialik will be taking a four-month turn as the show’s host starting May 1.

“Ken Jennings will be back on March 10 and then he will continue the rest of his syndicated run which will take us through April 28,” the producer said on the show’s podcast “Inside Jeopardy!” “Then Mayim will take over on May 1 and she’ll take us all the way through the summer.”

The announcement and a subsequent tweet from the all-time “Jeopardy!” champion appear to have ignited the Jennings faithful. 

Answering a question posed by a fan on Twitter who wanted to know how he spends his time off from the show, Jennings tweeted (with obvious good humor) “I go into one of those freezer cases from the 'Alien' movies when Mayim is hosting, and vice versa.”

“That’s where I go when she’s hosting too,” tweeted one Jennings fan.

“So 4/28 through the end of the season we have no Ken? Wow,” tweeted another.

Some of the faultfinding with Bialik, a sitcom star with a Ph.D. in neuroscience, is very specific.

“It is you, a bona fide champion, who I want quizzing people. Not someone who snorts when bad answers occur,” tweeted one faultfinder, addressing Jennings directly. 

“Bialik is a fine actor,” wrote another, “but [she] has a really hard time at acting natural. She is pretending to be a host. Jennings nails it.”

“The reason why we all watch Jeopardy! is because of Ken Jennings and his interaction with the panel and the audience. He explains the answers and we learn something every episode. Not like Mayim just saying 'no' and 'yes'," wrote one detractor.

“[I’m] Simply begging the Jeopardy team to stop giving Mayim a platform … she just is not an engaging host,” another Twitter user wrote.

Jennings and Bialik first took up alternating roles as hosts of the long-running quiz show in late August/early September 2021 after the rapid exit of would-be host Michael Richards following revelations over remarks he made years before on a podcast.

The arrangement became official last July. Under the plan, the two would alternate as hosts of the nightly syndicated show, and Bialik would host the prime-time ABC version of the show, “Celebrity Jeopardy!”

For his part, Jennings would host the syndicated show’s annual “Tournament of Champions.” He is also currently slated to host a new prime-time “Jeopardy!” spinoff, “Jeopardy! Masters.” 

The show will feature some of “Jeopardy’s!” greatest champions in competition with each other. Among them will be Amy Schneider, who won 40 consecutive games from November 2021 to January 2022, and won the 2022 “Tournament of Champions.”

She also happens to be a Ken Jennings fan. When asked who she thinks is the better of the two hosts, she chose him. 

“Ken in a landslide,” she said last October in a Reddit Q&A. “No offense to Mayim, but Ken just is ‘Jeopardy!’ in a way that can’t easily be replicated.”