The Newsletter #46: Ranking the Jeopardy! Guest Hosts

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that one of the purest pleasures in my life is watching Jeopardy! every single night. Growing up in my house, Jeopardy! was one of the shows that I connected with alongside my parents, as we would watch almost every night from the time I was probably 8 or 9 until now. I stayed with my parents for a few nights a month ago because I was having a minor procedure done at a hospital near them, and the one thing we made sure to do together was watch Jeopardy!. My grandparents watched, too, up until they died, and we would get on the phone and discuss good champions and players all the time. I can remember never wanting to miss an episode of Ken Jennings’ run, and even when I didn’t have cable, trying to find ways to see episodes of the show. We knew that Alex Trebek eventually passing was an inevitability, but it didn’t make it any easier when it did happen. I don’t generally understand the culture around celebrity deaths, but when J! played that tribute package at the end of his last taped episode of the show, I cried. He just seemed like a very good man and he was genuinely very, very good at hosting this game show which had been a huge part of my life for most of it.

That said, I thought having guest hosts was a pretty good idea. J! rarely ever falls into the gimmick category, and in fact, any time they’ve tried to do anything gimmick-y, the fans make enough noise that it just falls to the wayside. The game is the thing. That said, this allowed Jeopardy! the rare opportunity to let different people take the game for a spin. To see who could inject just the right amount of personality into this show while still letting the game and the contestants be the focus. It’s something that wasn’t easy, and if you watch early episodes of Trebek’s hosting run, you can see how even he had to grow into it. You get roughly 20 seconds at the start of a game and maybe 1.5 seconds every 10 or so clues to show your personality and your aptitude for hosting it, and when you compact that into a run of either 5 or 10 episodes of hosting, it might not be readily apparent.

Thankfully for us, Jeopardy! made some genuinely stupid choices, and some genuinely inspired ones, that allow me to make this ranking with some authority. I won’t say too much about the pair of hosts that they eventually chose, since I’ve already said my piece on Twitter and my rankings here will make it obvious what I thought of them. I just hope they’ll figure it out and the two bad choices they’ve made for hosts don’t ruin the game I love. Here’s how I’m ranking the guest hosts, with each category being out of 10 except for Voice, which is out of 5:

Voice: It felt more fair to make this category only out of 5, since you can’t control your own voice pitch and timbre. But it does make a difference. Alex read clues for over 30 years with a certain amount of gravitas and having a bad voice can ruin the enjoyment of watching the game.

Clue Reading: This, to me, is the most important skill, and the most underrated. Being able to read the clues in a clear, concise, consistent cadence, while also knowing how to respond to correct and incorrect answers to keep the game moving is of utmost importance. You might be thinking, “but John, anyone can read a clue” but if you watched every guest host, you’d learn that well, not everyone can.

Interviews: Jeopardy! often gets lambasted for the short contestant interviews they do in the middle of the first J! round, after the first commercial break. They’re often boring, repetitive (how many contestants stories are just “I watched Jeopardy a lot” or “I’m trying to visit every US National Park”) and don’t add a whole lot to the game. But Alex knew how to make them important and to make the contestants feel important (except the one girl he called a loser), and it’s a part of the game you have to be good at to be a good host.

Likeability: This one goes without saying. Some people just have that “IT” factor. As I said, Jeopardy! isn’t Family Feud, where the host has tons of opportunities to inject themselves into the game and be the star of the show. On J!, you have a limited opportunity to seem likeable, just as the contestants do, and it’s not always easy. Likeability is so important, in fact, that I’ll be using it to break ties between guest host scores.

Ok, here we go!

16. Dr. Mehmet Oz

Voice: 0
Clue Reading: 2
Interviews: 1
Likeability: 0
TOTAL: 3

We’re lucky Dr. Oz wasn’t good at hosting the show. It was already difficult that Jeopardy! had allowed this piece of shit huckster to have any time on a show about the acquisition of knowledge, but could you imagine if he was good? It would’ve made it very conflicting. Thankfully, he was as bad at this as he is avoiding surgical procedures on his face, and it allowed for 10 days of straight hate-watching, as he bumbled his way through the clues and tried his hardest to appear likeable through gritted teeth filled with bullshit.

15. Mike Richards

Voice: 4
Clue Reading: 6
Interviews: 5
Likeability: 2
TOTAL: 17

Without even getting into all the nonsense that is the executive producer of Jeopardy! hiring himself to be the host of the show after saying his dream is to host a game show and suspiciously moving to the EP role of a particular show right around the time that show’s beloved host announced he had cancer, he just simply was not good at it. Coming across like a used car salesman who thinks he knows more than you do, he seemed nervous most of the time, stumbled his way through reading clues, and came across like what the default create-a-host would look like in a game show video game. I hope to god he figures it out.

14. Katie Couric

Voice: 2
Clue Reading: 6
Interviews: 4
Likeability: 5
TOTAL: 17

Katie Couric was the first true tourist on the show, and it was genuinely startling to see someone command Jeopardy! who didn’t actually seem like they wanted to be there. Ken Jennings clearly saw himself as the favourite and wanted the job, and for all of Mike Richards’ faults, it was clear he was trying very hard. Katie Couric hosted the show like she just found out her flight got cancelled. She had little energy and you could tell by Game 3 she wasn’t making any attempt to get any better at it and was just filling a role.

13. Mayim Bialik

Voice: 2
Clue Reading: 6
Interviews: 6
Likeability: 6
TOTAL: 20

What was she laughing at? I’ll admit, the first couple games, I thought she was pretty good. Maybe it was Blossom nostalgia, maybe it was the fact we had 5 male hosts in a row and it was nice to hear a female voice, I’m not sure. But as soon as you picked up on her vocal tic of laughing at absolutely nothing and for no reason at all, it was impossible to un-hear it and it made the rest of her hosting tenure nearly unbearable. The fact that Sony’s version of doing damage control on the initial backlash to the Mike Richards hiring was to also hire an anti-vax, snake oil saleswoman who was also bad at hosting was when I started believing that I might actually stop watching it.

12. George Stephanopoulos

Voice: 2
Clue Reading: 6
Interviews: 8
Likeability: 6
TOTAL: 22

It was known for a while that Stephanopolous was interested in hosting the show, back from the early days of Trebek’s cancer diagnosis, and you could tell he was excited about it. He was clearly happy to talk to the players and let them be a part of the show, but unfortunately he’s more of a bumbling grandpa at this stage in the game than anything else. He was passable and simply nothing more.

11. LeVar Burton

Voice: 5
Clue Reading: 3
Interviews: 5
Likeability: 10
TOTAL: 23

Look, who doesn’t love LeVar Burton? He literally got the hosting stint because of a Twitter campaign, and in the wake of the hiring announcements people are STILL campaigning for him to host. Unfortunately, I can only speculate that the people who are still pounding the table for his hiring didn’t watch a single second of his hosting stint, because he was absolutely dreadful at it. His stilted cadence made it hard on the contestants to time their buzzer consistently, he frequently bumbled over words and ruled on contestant responses too early, and he never seemed comfortable with a single aspect of the entire game. Considering he was one of the later guest hosts and would’ve had more time to prepare, his style just never fit the game and he was likely the worst host, technically speaking, outside of Dr. Oz.

10. Bill Whitaker

Voice: 5
Clue Reading: 10
Interviews: 5
Likeability: 5
TOTAL: 25

You could fall asleep to Bill Whitaker reading clues, and I mean that as a compliment. He’s just so steady, a professional’s professional, who kept a no-nonsense demanour and hosting style which I appreciated. From a technical standpoint, he was nearly flawless. Unfortunately, he was the type of flawless that made him feel like a complete automaton. He injected absolutely zero personality into the game whatsoever, and you could even tell by the end of it, he was boring himself.

9. Dr. Sanjay Gupta

Voice: 4
Clue Reading: 7
Interviews: 7
Likeability: 7
TOTAL: 25

As you can tell by the even scores across the board, he was a solid host. Capable, and absolutely nothing more. I found his responses to correct/incorrect answers a bit jarring and I think the contestants did too, but otherwise, he was an agreeable host who I think is what people who didn’t mind the Mike Richards hiring think Mike Richards is.

8. Anderson Cooper

Voice: 5
Clue Reading: 9
Interviews: 6
Likeability: 7
TOTAL: 27

Anderson Cooper is a very likeable man, a person who stands out as having personality on a news network that’s generally devoid of it (or it’s ghoulish). Unfortunately, he could not bring that same feeling to hosting Jeopardy!, as he seemed like a guy who was kinda just there. Here’s my conspiracy theory, because I was actually shocked he wasn’t better at it:

The rumours when Alex initially got cancer were that Cooper was one of the frontrunners to take over. This made sense to people. A likeable guy in broadcast journalism, a man who seems to care about facts, someone pleasant to have around. Even an email leaked that passed between the J! people and Cooper himself, where he noted that he was “always interested” in hosting. Then it got down to crunch time, and he realized he didn’t actually want it. CNN has given him too much money and too much platform, and he couldn’t imagine giving that up. Knowing that Sony wanted someone who would only do Jeopardy!, he deliberately did the bare minimum so as not to be considered. I could be wrong but…I could also be right.

7. Robin Roberts

Voice: 4
Clue Reading: 8
Interviews: 8
Likeability: 8
TOTAL: 28

The entire time she hosted, Robin Roberts came across like a fan. It was cool…but then she kept on doing it, for her entire time hosting, and it became just slightly grating. That said, after weeks of professionals with similar broadcasting credentials to Roberts coming in and trying to play it cool, it was refreshing that she was honest in her love for the show and her desire to be a good host. And she was! She knew the right way to get in and out of clues, she kept a consistent cadence, and she seemed genuinely happy to get to know the contestants in a way few other guest hosts did. You wouldn’t have wanted her to become the permanent host, but to see a fan get to take a short vacation on a set of something they clearly love was enjoyable.

6. Savannah Guthrie

Voice: 4
Clue Reading: 9
Interviews: 7
Likeability: 9
TOTAL: 29

I would say this is the part of the list where every host from here on out I would’ve been happy to see get the show. It’s interesting to me that Guthrie made it clear she had no interest in becoming the permanent host of the show, because her aptitude for it was noticeable from the jump. She was a little wooden and fake in the interview portion of the show, but she always displayed consistent enthusiasm and I thought she might’ve had the best natural rhythm for clue reading of all the hosts outside of one who is in my top 2. The first person on my list who truly excelled at the hosting aspect of Jeopardy! despite some minor shortcomings.

5. Joe Buck

Voice: 4
Clue Reading: 9
Interviews: 9
Likeability: 8
TOTAL: 30

I would say Joe Buck might be the host who surprised me the most relative to how I thought they’d be. Often criticized for being a bit too rote on sports broadcasts, I worried that on a show that’s much less exciting than calling a World Series Game 7, he would revert to being even more staid and the criticisms of him as a sports commentator (which I don’t generally agree with) would become more apparent. Instead, he was the opposite. Engaging and an extremely natural interviewer, I thought Buck was a very good host who showed chops I didn’t think he’d have. His clue reading was exceptional and despite the fact it sorta feels like he’s yelling all the time, I loved his stint as host when I thought he might end up near the bottom of my list.

4. Buzzy Cohen

Voice: 4
Clue Reading: 9
Interviews: 8
Likeability: 9
TOTAL: 30

I’m not afraid to say it: I hated Buzzy as a player. Maybe it was just his obnoxious glasses or his Jimmy Neutron haircut, but he always came across as very pompous when he played and I was thrilled when he got absolutely destroyed in the Jeopardy! All-Star Game Wild Card match, scoring $0. But look, a man can change, and whether or not he changed or I did, Buzzy was a really excellent host of the show. I think playing the game so many times lends itself to knowing the right way to host the game, and he had that in spades, with phenomenal clue reads and a genuine passion for the show. It was clear he had worked hard to become a good host, and it paid off. It was a big ask to host the Tournament of Champions for your first time hosting, and not only did he not ruin it, but he was one of the highlights of the tournament.

3. Ken Jennings

Voice: 3
Clue Reading: 9
Interviews: 10
Likeability: 9
TOTAL: 31

Ken got the longest dress rehearsal of any host, taking the reins of the show for 6 weeks after Alex Trebek’s untimely passing. You can’t play Jeopardy over 100 times without knowing how to host it well, and Jennings was extremely good at it. I heard some criticisms that he seemed like he was a bit pompous towards the contestants, but I got none of that at all from him. He seemed genuinely passionate, actively encouraged contestants to bet and win a lot (an Alex hallmark), and he was easily the best interviewer of any guest host, finding ways to quickly relate to each contestant’s anecdote and making punchy jokes about them. His voice is a bit too reedy for my liking and I did find that and his cadence a bit of an adjustment, but once he settled in, he was a very good host and deserved the long run he had with it.

2. David Faber

Voice: 5
Clue Reading: 10
Interviews: 8
Likeability: 9
TOTAL: 32

I have no idea who David Faber is. I had long-since stopped following along to the announcement of who was hosting next, and when I flipped on the TV to see this man with a bad haircut telling me he did financial news reporting, I feared the worst. Instead, what we got was easily the best clue reader of the entire guest hosting run, who slipped in and out of clues like it was nothing with a classically trained voice that didn’t come across as overly polished but just nice to listen to. I would imagine that had he got the hosting gig, he would’ve gotten even better at the interviews, and given that my #1 choice was always going to be unlikely to host the show, Faber is my defacto #1. I also loved the idea that for a lot of people watching the show, he would’ve been a relative unknown and could’ve remade his image as the J! host, much in the same way Trebek did in the 80s. Alas, he doesn’t also executive produce Jeopardy! and never had a chance.

1. Aaron Rodgers

Voice: 4
Clue Reading: 9
Interviews: 10
Likeability: 10
TOTAL: 33

I did my first TV taping at the Just for Laughs Festival in 2016. As a Canadian comedian, you grow up watching JFL on TV, in reruns, in primetime. It’s the holy grail for us, something you work your whole career towards achieving. Also at that festival, former Los Angeles Clippers and current Brooklyn Nets power forward Blake Griffin was there, hosting a series of shows called “Midnight Surprise”, where big acts on an unannounced lineup would pop in to do sets in a black box theatre that held 100 people. As a sports fan, I was intrigued. I knew Griffin had done a live table read of Space Jam at UCB in LA, with himself playing Michael Jordan. I knew that he was friends with comedian Joe Mande, and appeared in various online comedy sketches and at comedy shows. But I had never seen him do stand-up. He was…extremely funny. Here was a guy who is 6’10”, one of the most popular and recognizable athletes in the world, popping into a comedy festival while making nearly $20m a year playing basketball, and being really, really good at it. It was infuriating. I mean, not actually. I didn’t lose sleep over it or anything, but I had to get to Just for Laughs by cutting my teeth across small towns in Canada, playing gigs in paper mill towns and curling clubs and taking bush planes to remote stages to hone material in the hopes of getting seen by the right people to even be considered to be on the fest. It just didn’t make any sense to me that a guy who had absolutely no need to be funny, or to even have a personality at all, was very naturally and easily good at the thing I spent most of my adult life doing.

I asked the woman who books Just for Laughs how the Blake Griffin thing came together, and she said he called them. He had tried comedy a few times, and thought it just might be fun to come to Montreal and hang out, watch some comedy, and maybe do a few shows. So they gave him some shows, and he crushed them. I met him at an afterparty, and he was very gregarious, willing to talk to anyone who was around. I said, “hey man, I heard from JFL that you called them and asked them to be on the festival, that’s super cool that you love comedy and just wanted to be a part of it,” and without skipping a beat, he replied, “is that cool, or is it desperate?” And I was like, jesus fucking christ this guy is also immediately funny in a one-on-one conversation with a guy he just met? It seemed so unlikely and yet, here it was, staring me in the face.

That’s also what it felt like watching Aaron Rodgers host Jeopardy! He makes $25m a year to be one of the best athletes on earth, and then he was also incredibly, almost impossibly good at hosting a 22-minute trivia game show where the biggest appeal is simply knowing obscure facts. It made almost no sense. And then you heard that he was serious about wanting the job. That his freakish preparation almost scared the producers of the show (though we now know that was likely Mike Richards being scared he was gonna lose the job he had earmarked himself for). That he professed to be a massive, lifelong fan of the show. It started to make a bit more sense. But it still seemed crazy! Why would this pro athlete be any good at anything else? He’s already (arguably) the best QB in the NFL, how could he be the best at this?

But he was. He was affable, kind, cared a great deal about the players, made jokes at their and his own expense, read clues well, and gave off the sense there was nowhere else on earth he’d rather be. Then he held out of Packers’ training camp and you REALLY got the sense he might not rather be anywhere else and that him hosting Jeopardy! was more than just a lark. It didn’t come to be, but that doesn’t take anything away from the fact that out of 16 guest hosts, the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, a Super Bowl champion and future Hall of Famer, was the best.

There’s been a rumour floated that it’s possible Richards got the job because he would be the easiest to let go if you hire Aaron Rodgers in 1-3 years when he retires from football. He could transition back to being executive producer, and Rodgers could fulfill the destiny he set forth over 10 games in April 2021. It might be wishful thinking, but somehow the star athlete with the famous girlfriend and the hundreds of million dollars earned is the right man for the job. Who knew.