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Ken Jennings & Mayim Bialik will host Jeopardy for the rest of 2021

ABC Television's TCA Winter Press Tour 2020

It’s been quiet-ish around Jeopardy for two weeks. It was at the end of August that Mike Richards was finally fired from Jeopardy, and that only came after Sony bent over backwards to accommodate Richards, a man with a history of gender discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, sexism, racism and anti-Semitism. They even hired a minder for Richards in case he blurted out something sexist. In the end, the Jeopardy crew and the general public were like “no more.” Instead of heading into another audition process, Sony has been treading water for a few weeks, looking at all of their options and trying to figure out just how much damage they did to one of jewels in their syndicated crown. And so Sony has made a decision: for the rest of the year, they’re just going to have Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings host.

“Jeopardy!” won’t be going back to its revolving door of guest hosts after the quick exit of Mike Richards — TMZ’s learned it’ll be Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings for the rest of 2021. Sony production sources tell us the quiz show is going to keep it semi-consistent from here on out — at least for this year — with Mayim on hosting duty for more than half of the episodes, and Jennings shooting a few weeks worth of episodes.

We’re told execs have not decided about next season yet, but are still searching for a full-time, permanent replacement for Alex Trebek, and as we’ve told you … Mayim still seems to be the frontrunner.

When Richards stepped down as host, he suggested — in an internal memo to staffers — “Jeopardy!” would return to a series of guest hosts. However, he was also ousted as Executive Producer less than 2 weeks later … so it’s clear his plan no longer carried weight.

As you know … Richards was tapped to replace Trebek on the syndicated daily version of the game show, but controversial comments he made years ago on his podcast resurfaced shortly afterward, and he quit after shooting just 5 episodes.

Similarly, while former champ Jennings is still guest hosting, we’re told he’s not seen as a real contender for the permanent gig … due to past controversial tweets. Meanwhile, LeVar Burton’s still out there … but Sony honchos already decided he’s not their guy. We’ve reached out to Sony, so far, no word back.

[From TMZ]

I think this is an okay temporary solution, just because Sony doesn’t want any more drama, and the public needs a few months off to forget about this utter debacle. Ken and Mayim are both massively problematic so I hope neither of them gets the “permanent host” gig. I wonder why, even now, Sony is so hellbent on NOT hiring LeVar Burton? That dude is an angel.

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Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Jeopardy IG.

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