Sorry Levar, I hope you don’t get the hosting gig. I don’t think I could handle “That’s RIGHT!” for more than a week.
Like many others, I was looking forward to LeVar Burton hosting Jeopardy! But after three days of him, I can’t wait for the week to end. Way too hyper.
Yes, and it is totally contrary to Alex Trebek’s even temperament and quiet dignity.
I don’t mind his upbeat personality, but his cadence while reading the questions is just weird. He seems to emphasize random words, and raises and lowers his volume arbitrarily. It’s very distracting.
While I do think he would improve given time, I’m afraid he is low on the list of guest hosts for me.
Wasn’t Buzzy Cohen overly enthusiastic the first day? He seemed to settle down after that, though. I wonder if someone talked to him. Perhaps in this case no one bothered?
I think LeVar is too slow on calling on the contestants when they ring in, and it kills the rhythm of the game for me. He’s better than some, but not as good as the majority.
My revised rankings:
- Buzzy Cohen
- Anderson Cooper
- Sanjay Gupta
- Mike Richards
- Aaron Rodgers
- Mayim Bialik
- Ken Jennings
- George Stephanopoulos
- LaVar Burton
- Robin Roberts
- Savannah Guthrie
- Katie Couric
- Bill Whitaker
- Mehmet Oz
There was a weird moment in yesterday’s game where LeVar said “No…uh, Yes!” in response to a contestant’s answer. And the answer was a person’s name (Andrew Carnegie), so it’s not like it was some weird alternative answer that the judges hadn’t considered.
I had some enthusiasm for the idea of LeVar Burton when it was first mentioned, and some great love for him as a long-time Star Trek fan, but I’m sorry to say he has not lived up to expectations.
Same. Seems like a great guy and he’s a good actor. He’s not a particularly good Jeopardy host.
And yet, some people think hosting a show such as this is easy.
Maybe it’s easy to do it adequately (everyone has been at least acceptable so far) but hard to do it really well. We all have opinions on who is in the top tier, but I’d continue watching if any one of these guests hosts got the permanent job.
I noticed that as well. The only thing that I could think of was that Levar had always heard the name pronounced as “car-NAY-ghee” and the contestant said “CAR-nu-ghee”. Or that LeVar was looking at the wrong answer or something.
I’ve noticed that many of the guest hosts have a bit of a strange rhythm in how quickly they call on a contestant or how quickly they verify the answer’s correctness. I thought LeVar and some of the other guest hosts sometimes sounded shocked that the contestant had the correct answer.
Yes, I assume the judges are talking in their earpiece, telling them whether or not to accept the answer if it’s not exactly what was on the card. But it’s weird how the guest hosts have been so much worse at making those calls than Trebek was. If there was a clue where they were, say, going for “grater,” but someone rang in and said “what is a shredder?” Alex would just say “yes, we were going for grater, but we’ll also accept shredder” without missing a beat. But the guest hosts will just stay silent for a long, awkward pause, then sort of nervously say “yes, shredder, that’s correct” without any further explanation.
Also, not to be morbid, but given the common view that the new permanent host should be someone who would last, I’m kind of surprised Burton had such support to begin with. He’s already 64.
I’ve never been on the show, but my guess is that while it seemed Alex Trebek made a call like that (is shredder an acceptable substitute for grater?) without missing a beat, there may have been a pause while the judges ruled, and that was edited out.
Then why aren’t they editing it out with the guest hosts?
Also ISTM the camera stays on the contestant with no cutaways.
Game shows are taped live; the tape runs for thirty minutes. Editing and re-taping is very expensive, several thousand dollars per minute due to union wages and overtime minimums. That is money gone from the production company’s profit. You might occasionally see a notice at the end of the show that “Certain outcomes not related to …” did not effect the final score. This has to do with FCC regulations from the game show scandals of the 1950s.
This applies to ‘real’ game shows where real prizes are won, not to ‘reality’ game shows where the host / producer decides who wins.
Assuming this is a reply to me, then why would they have edited it out with Alex?
Since it is so expensive they only edit a game when something has gone very wrong in a way that can’t be easily and/or quickly corrected … somebody fell down on stage, a fire alarm went off, etc.
Which is why, contra Dewey_Finn, I don’t think they ever edited those rulings.
Do you think this is 1959. There is no “tape”. You can edit digital in less time than it takes to type this. And “overtime”? They record five shows a day. They have the rest of the week to edit.