It looks like their futures aren’t in jeopardy.
“Jeopardy!” producer Sarah Whitcomb Foss recently revealed what happens when hosts of the hit game show make mistakes on-air — an issue that has upset fans in the past.
“Of course they make mistakes; we are human, they are human,” Foss said to a fan who asked whether or not the hosts ever mess up while reading clues, speaking during a July 3 episode of the podcast she hosts with past show champion Buzzy Cohen, “Inside Jeopardy!”
“Basically, we tell our contestants to go off of the game board, so no matter what the host says, knowing that the clue copy is almost always totally correct, our contestants are asked to go off that material,” Foss continued.
“So if the host says something slightly different, the contestant should go based on what the clue reads and come up with their response based on that.”
On her podcast, Foss also explained that sometimes “technical issues” come up on the show which are “really not based on a host mess-up.”
“It’s based on a video clue popping up and the video doesn’t play or a video clue that’s supposed to pop up, and you see the text of the video, but you don’t see the video to support it,” she said. “So those are the situations where we need to replace it altogether.”
Currently, the show is co-hosted by Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings, who have been splitting up their duties since July 2022, and fans have pointed out a fair share of blunders between the two of them.
Last month, some viewers called out Bialik over what they believed to be inconsistent hosting rules.
In March, others were outraged when Jennings allowed a contestant to win who correctly guessed “Ewan McGregor” but mispronounced his name.
In August 2022, when Bialik was just getting the hang of the hosting gig, the show’s producers had to intervene during one episode as she mistakenly claimed that a contestant didn’t win points when she really did.
In the past, the show’s executive producer, Michael Davies, has spoken out in support of the two hosts amid some mixed reaction from fans.
He said in an interview with Vulture in May that he wished fans would be “more patient” with Bialik and Jennings.
“I wish many of our fans were more patient in understanding that we’re dealing with two hosts,” Davies said at the time.
“Mayim is a very experienced actress. Ken is a very experienced ‘Jeopardy!’ player. They’re both at the beginning of their hosting careers. There’s an idea that I hold absolute power in making decisions around ‘Jeopardy!’ but I don’t.”
Currently, the show is being impacted by the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike, which started on May 2.
WGA said members were going on strike in an effort to secure higher wages, a better pay structure for streaming services and regulation around artificial intelligence.
Bialik exited the show in the final week of filming Season 39 in solidarity with the writers, an insider confirmed to The Post at the time, but Jennings took over to finish out the season, which wrapped filming on May 19.
NBC is currently airing new episodes of “Jeopardy!” season 39.
The show was hosted by Alex Trebek from 1984 until his death in 2020.
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