Jeopardy! is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin, in which contestants are presented with clues in the form of answers and must phrase their responses in the form of a question. The show has experienced a long life in several incarnations over the course of over a half-century, spending more than 12 years as a daytime network program and having currently run in syndication for 41 seasons. It has also gained a worldwide following with a multitude of international adaptations.

Overview Main series

Spin-offs

1964–1975

Original series (1964–1975) The original Jeopardy! series, hosted by Art Fleming, premiered at 11:30a.m. Eastern (10:30 Central) on March 30, 1964, replacing the game show Missing Links, and originating from studios at the NBC headquarters in New York City's 30 Rockefeller Plaza. NBC moved the program to 12:00 noon Eastern (11:00a.m. Central) after eighteen months, replacing Call My Bluff, making it accessible to businessmen coming home for their lunch break or else watching it on restaurant or bar sets, and college students departing their classes for the day watching it on student center or dormitory sets. These two constituencies, who ordinarily did not have the time or interest to view other daytime programs, made the show a runaway hit, propelling its ratings to second place among all daytime game shows by the end of the decade—second only to its immediate lead-in, The Hollywood Squares. The show had practically no trouble whatsoever against soap operas such as Love of Life and Where the Heart Is on CBS and mostly sitcom reruns on ABC.

In 1973, Lin Bolen, then Vice President of Daytime Programming at NBC, began eliminating longer-running game shows from the network in an aggressive attempt to bolster ratings among women aged 18 to 34, a desirable demographic to advertisers on daytime programs of that day; Jeopardy! had not performed especially strongly among those viewers, despite its overwhelming success among men and young people. Refreshing the daytime lineup became especially imperative to Bolen when CBS launched a surprise success in the soap opera The Young and the Restless at 12:00p.m. EST (11:00a.m. CST) in March 1973, drawing away younger audiences in particular. Although Jeopardy! continued to produce high ratings in the 12:00 noon time slot (also against the ABC revival of Password), Bolen moved the game to 10:30a.m. Eastern (9:30 Central) on January 7, 1974, putting it up against CBS' The $10,000 Pyramid,NBC Master Books, Daily Broadcast Log, Motion Picture and Television Reading Room, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. to make room for Jackpot!, a stylish, youth-oriented riddle contest hosted by Geoff Edwards, in Jeopardy! former timeslot. Bolen and other NBC executives were surprised, though, when Jeopardy! actually beat Pyramid for several weeks in February and March, prompting CBS to cancel Pyramid for failing to draw, according to packager Bob Stewart (who also produced Jackpot!), a 30 share that CBS daytime executives required a show to have in order to stay on its daytime schedule (Pyramid returned several weeks later on ABC in an afternoon slot and went on to become one of the most popular games of the 1970s and 1980s). CBS relocated Gambit to 10:30a.m. on April 1, which ran about even with Jeopardy! in the ratings, with Gambit having perhaps a slight lead, due to its more traditional housewife target audience. Remarkably, Jeopardy! stayed strong despite losing much of its core audience, who was usually either at work or in classrooms during that hour and thus could not watch the show then.

However, Bolen was not interested in seeing an aging show like Jeopardy! stand in the way of her plans for a more youthful image for NBC's daytime lineup, so she resolved to prepare it for eventual cancellation, a rare instance of a network deliberately trying to undermine one of its programs. So, on July 1 of the same year, NBC moved Jeopardy! to yet another timeslot, this time to 1:30p.m. EST (12:30p.m. CST) (replacing Three on a Match, yet another Bob Stewart-produced game) and placed it against ABC's Let's Make a Deal and CBS' As the World Turns, both of which had easily beaten the ratings of several programs placed in that same time slot by NBC since December 1968. At that time, Deal moved to ABC from NBC, which had carried it in that very time slot during much of the 1960s, in a dispute by packagers Stefan Hatos and Monty Hall over the latter network's refusal to make a weekly primetime version of the show permanent.

With the July move, many of the previously tenaciously devoted viewers began abandoning the program; most of the remaining ones were either middle-aged housewives or elderly retirees, two groups undesirable to advertisers due to their usually fixed retail brand preferences, rendering them unpersuadable to try new ones. As such, advertising revenues fell, a scenario not helped by the severe economic recession occurring in late 1974. Jeopardy! became the seventh show since 1968 to fall at 1:30p.m. EST (12:30p.m. CST), and a cancellation notice was issued in November 1974. Its replacement was the expansion of Another World to a full hour, the first daytime serial to expand to that duration, in a schedule switch with How to Survive a Marriage. In April 1975, another serial, Days of Our Lives began occupying that time slot and eventually brought success to NBC there (Days moved exclusively to the network streaming service Peacock in September 2022, with NBC News Daily airing in its 1:30p.m. EST (12:30p.m. CST) timeslot.). Jeopardy! broadcast the 2,753rd and final episode of its original network run on January 3, 1975.David Schwartz, Steve Ryan & Fred Wostbrock, The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows, 3rd Ed., Checkmark Books, 1999, p. 113. Some affiliates, including KNBC in Los Angeles, aired reruns in various other timeslots through the first quarter of that year. To compensate Griffin for canceling the program, which still had a year left on its contract, NBC purchased Wheel of Fortune, another creation of his, which premiered on January 6, 1975 (the following Monday) at 10:30a.m. Eastern (9:30 Central).

Weekly syndicated version (1974–1975) Griffin secured the rights from NBC to produce new episodes for first-run syndication, with Metromedia (who also syndicated Griffin's talk show) as their distributor. Griffin took this action mainly to keep the show in production in light of the show's deteriorating ratings on NBC daytime that eventually led to the 1975 cancellation. NBC had repeatedly refused Griffin's requests to do so in the past. These episodes began airing weekly in September 1974 and featured many contestants who were previous champions on the NBC version. Thirty-nine episodes were produced, with reruns of this version also airing in syndication through about summer 1975. Most stations aired this during the Prime Time Access slots in the early evening before network primetime programming began, usually in a "checkerboard" pattern with other weekly shows, meaning a different syndicated show aired each night, like the networks in prime time. By 1974, though, the market was flooded with evening versions of network games like the Hollywood Squares and The Price Is Right, and Jeopardy!, already on a popularity downswing for some time, did not get anywhere near nationwide clearance, thus dooming it to failure after one season.

Unique to this version was a bonus awarded at the end of the program, after Final Jeopardy! was completed. The episode's champion selected a prize hidden behind the thirty squares on the Jeopardy! board. Among the prizes was a $25,000 cash award which was hidden behind two squares. In order to win the top prize, the champion had to find both $25,000 cards in succession (winning the prize on a second pick if it was not the latter half of the grand prize). In later episodes, the bonus board was dropped and the evening's champion received a prize based upon his or her final score, with a Chevrolet Vega or Chevrolet Caprice (or even additional cash prizes of $10,000 or $25,000) as possibilities.

The All-New Jeopardy! (1978–1979) Launching on October 2, 1978, the revived Jeopardy! took the spot of the soap opera For Richer, For Poorer on NBC's daytime schedule, in a schedule switch with The Hollywood Squares. It initially aired weekdays at 10:30a.m. From its debut until January 5, 1979, Jeopardy! aired against the first half-hour of The Price Is Right on CBS. As such, the show found itself unable to build an audience.

On January 8, 1979, NBC moved Jeopardy! from 10:30a.m. to noon, taking over the first half hour of the talk/variety program America Alive! Although the original series had occupied that time slot during much of its run, the television climate in 1979 was much different than it was in the 1960s and early 1970s. The 12:00p.m. slot was one that network affiliates often chose to preempt in favor of showing other programming such as a midday local newscast or a syndicated offering such as another game show or a talk show. In markets that did air Jeopardy! at noon, the show found itself losing the ratings battle against The $20,000 Pyramid on ABC and The Young and the Restless on CBS, two shows that, ironically enough, had competed against the original in 1974 and 1973, respectively. NBC decided to pull the plug on the revived Jeopardy! series shortly after the move, and its 108th and final episode aired on March 2, 1979. Its place on the schedule was taken by Password Plus, which at the time had been airing at 12:30p.m., and the cancellation allowed NBC to expand its top-rated soap opera, Another World, to ninety minutes from sixty, later in the afternoon.

Originating from the NBC Studios in Burbank, California, this version featured some unique gameplay elements of its own. Among the most notable of these changes is that the lowest scoring contestant was eliminated from further play after the Jeopardy! round. The remaining two contestants then played the Double Jeopardy! round.Merv Griffin Productions. The All-New Jeopardy!. Final episode. Starring Art Fleming. Featuring Charlie, Susan, and Doug. March 2, 1979.

In a second major change, no Final Jeopardy! round was played. Instead, the leader at the end of Double Jeopardy! was declared the day's champion, and the champion then played a bonus round called Super Jeopardy! for a cash bonus. The round consisted of five categories (instead of six as in the main game), each with five clues numbered 1 to 5. The object of the round was to select and correctly respond to five clues that formed a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line on the board before accumulating three strikes, given if the contestant failed to correctly respond to a chosen clue (whether by giving an incorrect response, running out of time, or passing). If the contestant struck out, $100 was awarded for each correct answer given, but if the contestant was successful, they would win a cash bonus based on how many days they had been champion. In a contestant's first time playing the Super Jeopardy! round, the top prize was $5,000, and for each successive time a champion played the Super Jeopardy! round (regardless of whether or not the contestant had won the round the day before), the prize would increase by $2,500—so a second trip was played for $7,500, a third $10,000, a fourth $12,500, and a fifth and final trip $15,000. A contestant could earn $50,000 from Super Jeopardy! alone, provided that the contestant won each Super Jeopardy! round over a five-day reign as champion.Merv Griffin Productions. The All-New Jeopardy!. Premiere episode. Starring Art Fleming. Featuring Jim, Richard, and Emily. October 2, 1978.