• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, January 31, 2024

The TV Blog said it was a no-brainer more than once, but it wasn’t until late last month that the news broke that Ken Jennings had finally become the sole, official host of “Jeopardy!”

The news was reported in multiple stories in December, citing show sources and Jennings himself, who confirmed it in interviews published over the holidays.

That means it took the show just shy of three years and two months -- ever since the death of Alex Trebek on Nov. 8, 2020 -- to finally install his full-time replacement.

The TV Blog first clamored for it in January 2021. So adamant was I about this crucial issue that I risked repeating myself to drive home the point that this decision should have been easy -- a no-brainer, you might say, which I said three different times.

“Unless he turns out to possess no basic broadcasting skills whatsoever, awarding Ken Jennings with the ‘Jeopardy!’ hosting job sounds like a no-brainer,” the TV Blog wrote on Jan. 7, 2021, referring to the first week of shows without Alex Trebek that would be hosted by Jennings.

Just days later, on Jan. 15, 2021, the TV Blog was already decrying the show’s plan to bring in guest host after guest host indefinitely, even though none had yet appeared.

“Naming Jennings as the new host of ‘Jeopardy!’ is a no-brainer,” said the blog, using that phrase again. “Other than Trebek himself, Jennings is the second-most famous person to ever be associated with ‘Jeopardy!’. … Why not just give it to him and be done with it?”

But they were not done with it, and neither was the TV Blog. On March 12, the TV Blog’s decrying game continued as the guest host procession showed no signs of abating.

The blog even speculated on what late Alex Trebek himself would say about the drawn-out process of hiring his replacement.

“I never knew the man,” I wrote. “But I imagine him saying something like: ‘Enough already. Give the job to Ken Jennings’.”

“For the record, the TV Blog wholeheartedly agrees,” the blog said. “Naming Ken Jennings for the host position is a no-brainer” (usage number 3 of “no-brainer” in just over two months).

A month later, on April 13, I wrote that “Ken Jennings has long seemed to be the only legitimate contender.” The blog noted that he was already on the premises as a producer.

On Sept. 2, the TV Blog demonstrated a gift for redundancy when it said much the same thing, almost in the same way too.

But all of that was a long time ago. Since the beginning of the post-Trebek era, Ken Jennings weathered the guest-host parade, the lightning-fast rise and fall of producer-turned host Mike Richards in late August 2021, and Mayim Bialek.

She shared hosting duties with him roughly from September 2021 until the onset of the actors’ strike last summer, at which time Bialik, also an actress, said she would be unable to go to work.

The actors’ strike ended Nov. 9, and Bialik never returned to “Jeopardy!” On December 15, she made it official, announcing on Instagram that she won’t be back.

That left Ken Jennings, “Jeopardy!’s” all-time champion contestant, as the last host standing, and the job was his.

He is now the full-time host of “Jeopardy!” and stability has returned to what just might be America’s most popular entertainment TV show. 

In the most recent ratings data, “Jeopardy!” averaged 8.599 million viewers per show for the week of January 1-7, according to Nielsen -- the highest viewership in first-run syndication.

Based on those numbers, the importance of “Jeopardy!” is easy to see. It is a no-brainer.