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“Jeopardy!” is making some changes for their upcoming 40th season amid the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike.
Showrunner Michael Davies shared an update on the long-running trivia show — hosted by Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings — on Monday’s episode of the “Inside Jeopardy!” podcast, sharing that the show’s fall season will re-use questions and bring back past runners-up to compete again.
“I believe, principally, that it would not be fair to have new contestants making their first appearance on the Alex Trebek Stage with non-original material,” Davies explained. “We’re going to open the season with a second chance tournament for players from season 37 who lost their initial game. Winners from that will advance to a season 37 and season 38 Champions Wildcard.”
The season 40 questions, he added, will be “a combination of material that our WGA writers wrote before the strike, which is still in the database, and material that has been re-deployed from multiple multiple seasons of the show.”
Additionally, Davies shared that writing for season 2 of “Celebrity Jeopardy!”, set to premiere later this year, was completed prior to the strike and the show will feature completely original questions.
The showrunner also shared an update to contestant prizes, revealing that second and third place finishers will receive $3,000 and $2,000, respectively — a $1,000 increase to the runner-up prizes, due in part to the fact that contestants fund their own travel to appear on the show.
“This is something that we’ve been working on ever since I really took the reins of the show, something that obviously is discussed widely within our social communities and within the community of our contestants,” Davies explained. “We understand that post-COVID, travel costs have increased. We understand how complicated funding a trip to ‘Jeopardy!’ is for many contestants within our community, and we think this is way about time that we did this.”
“Jeopardy!” airs on weeknights — click here to find your local time and TV station. “Celebrity Jeopardy!” season 2 is set to premiere later this year.
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