What is a brand extension? ‘Jeopardy!’ attempts to answer question of TV’s future

As the TV landscape continues to shape-shift, few programs have remained true to their original concept after decades on the air.

Sony Pictures Television’s game show “Jeopardy!” not only has survived but also has thrived over its 42-year run. The daily version is ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on TV in the 2025-26 season, with an average audience of 8.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and 20 million viewers over the course of a week. The show even weathered a major uproar over the botched host transition that followed the death of beloved emcee Alex Trebek in 2020.

In recent years, Sony has sought to expand the “Jeopardy!” brand beyond the loyal core of viewers who still make a nightly appointment to watch the syndicated edition on local stations across the country, including KABC in Los Angeles, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which returns on ABC’s prime time lineup next year.

A new sports-focused iteration, “ESPN Jeopardy!” launches Friday on Disney+, Hulu and the ESPN app, with sportscaster Joe Buck as host for 10 hour-long episodes that feature celebrities and ESPN personalities as contestants. “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” with host Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” recently launched its second season, moving from Amazon Prime to Netflix.

Sony unveiled a “Jeopardy!” YouTube page in March featuring a special edition in which drag queen Monét X Change, singer Rebecca Black and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan competed. “This audience is a little younger than I’m used to,” host Ken Jennings said after eliciting a laugh when he noted the charities selected by the contestants “are eating.”

Getting younger people into the “Jeopardy!” tent is a mission that began four years ago under Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television, and Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer. While “Jeopardy!” stands taller than most of the competition on traditional TV, it’s part of a habit that is slowly fading away as streaming platforms are the video destination of choice for viewers under 50. The median age of the “Jeopardy!” audience is 70, according to Nielsen.

“Like all other broadcast shows, it’s up against the stark reality that the audience is shrinking and not coming back,” said Claire McNear, author of “Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!”

There have been “Jeopardy!” spinoffs before. A sports version appeared on Sony’s now-defunct streaming platform Crackle in 2014. “Rock & Roll Jeopardy” ran for several years on VH-1 during cable’s heyday in the late 1990s. But the new push of brand extensions is aimed at ensuring the game remains a cultural staple for future generations.

“About four years ago, I thought it was the right time to look at it as a franchise,” Prete said in a recent interview. “How could we find other audiences who may not be watching on linear TV anymore? How can we reach those folks and provide them with a version of Jeopardy that spoke to them, but always being respectful of ‘Jeopardy!’ itself?”

The YouTube special demonstrated the potential to reach new fans. The episode and related video content scored 8.7 million views, with 86% of viewers under 34. The same percentage never had watched “Jeopardy!” before. A second special episode for the platform will be released in the fall. The YouTube channel also offers selected vintage episodes of the show featuring early appearances by contestants who compete in “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.”

NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, which offers “Jeopardy!” episodes one day after they air on TV, launched “Jeopardy! TODAY,” a daily interactive game for subscribers developed by the Los Angeles-based pop culture gaming company Lil Snack.

Only 1% of the Netflix streaming audience for “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” overlaps with those watching the traditional flagship broadcast edition. Davies expects the ESPN edition to also bring in a younger male crowd through the promotion it will receive across the sports media behemoth’s channels and digital properties.

“The audience generally matches the platform that it’s on,” Davies said. The common denominator for all of the editions is audiences who are more upscale and better educated than the average TV viewer, he added.

While the formula appears to be working, Sony executives say they have to proceed cautiously with one of the few crown jewels left on broadcast television; last year, the syndicated and ABC versions brought in a total of $93 million in ad revenue, according to iSpot. The executives learned about the passion of “Jeopardy!” fans when Sony tried to replace Trebek with Mike Richards, the program’s executive producer at the time. Richards lasted one day as host, exiting after a story by McNear revealed he had made demeaning remarks about women and used offensive ethnic tropes on a podcast in 2014.

Richards already had a shaky relationship with the “Jeopardy!” audience, as he was given the job after overseeing the search and audition process to replace Trebek, creating the appearance of self-dealing.

“The biggest lesson there was to listen to our fans and stay close to them,” Prete said. “They’re the biggest critics and they’re the experts.”

Prete asked Davies, a veteran game show producer who helped make “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” a hit, to oversee “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis after Richards departed. Davies has remained in the position and helped guide the brand expansion, fully aware of the special care and handling required.

His first job in the entertainment business was working for Merv Griffin, the big band singer, talk show host and impresario who created “Jeopardy!” for NBC in 1964 and revived it for syndication two decades later. Davies recalled how network executives over the years implored Griffin to make the game easier; they believed the questions about science, history and geography were over the heads of most of the audience. Griffin told them he would but never did.

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings.

(Tyler Golden/Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television)

“He would go back to the writing staff and say ‘make it harder,’” Davies said. “Merv always believed that the toughness of ‘Jeopardy!’ is what made it good. We have 110,000 people apply to be on the show every year. We take 400. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.36%. Harvard’s is roughly 3.6%.”

While the subject matter on the spinoffs is lighter than the flagship show, Davies said they use the same veteran writing staff that creates the cleverly constructed clues. He has added writers with expertise in sports and pop culture for the streaming shows.

Davies has made production changes to “Jeopardy!” over his tenure, updating the set and the game board. But he knows the signature elements such as the “thinking music” played during final “Jeopardy!” and off-camera announcer — 98-year-old Johnny Gilbert, who has been with the show since 1984 — are essential to every version of the program.

Davies does not expect to turn out more niche versions of “Jeopardy!” But he would like to bring back the high school and college competitions the show held in the past. Sony also is planning a live “Jeopardy!” competition, a throwback to the early days of TV quiz shows.

“‘Jeopardy!’ has to have a live version,” Davies said. “Live quizzes are really terrifying.”

As the TV landscape continues to shape-shift, few programs have remained true to their original concept after decades on the air.

Sony Pictures Television’s game show “Jeopardy!” not only has survived but also has thrived over its 42-year run. The daily version is ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on TV in the 2025-26 season, with an average audience of 8.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and 20 million viewers over the course of a week. The show even weathered a major uproar over the botched host transition that followed the death of beloved emcee Alex Trebek in 2020.

In recent years, Sony has sought to expand the “Jeopardy!” brand beyond the loyal core of viewers who still make a nightly appointment to watch the syndicated edition on local stations across the country, including KABC in Los Angeles, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which returns on ABC’s prime time lineup next year.

A new sports-focused iteration, “ESPN Jeopardy!” launches Friday on Disney+, Hulu and the ESPN app, with sportscaster Joe Buck as host for 10 hour-long episodes that feature celebrities and ESPN personalities as contestants. “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” with host Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” recently launched its second season, moving from Amazon Prime to Netflix.

Sony unveiled a “Jeopardy!” YouTube page in March featuring a special edition in which drag queen Monét X Change, singer Rebecca Black and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan competed. “This audience is a little younger than I’m used to,” host Ken Jennings said after eliciting a laugh when he noted the charities selected by the contestants “are eating.”

Getting younger people into the “Jeopardy!” tent is a mission that began four years ago under Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television, and Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer. While “Jeopardy!” stands taller than most of the competition on traditional TV, it’s part of a habit that is slowly fading away as streaming platforms are the video destination of choice for viewers under 50. The median age of the “Jeopardy!” audience is 70, according to Nielsen.

“Like all other broadcast shows, it’s up against the stark reality that the audience is shrinking and not coming back,” said Claire McNear, author of “Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!”

There have been “Jeopardy!” spinoffs before. A sports version appeared on Sony’s now-defunct streaming platform Crackle in 2014. “Rock & Roll Jeopardy” ran for several years on VH-1 during cable’s heyday in the late 1990s. But the new push of brand extensions is aimed at ensuring the game remains a cultural staple for future generations.

“About four years ago, I thought it was the right time to look at it as a franchise,” Prete said in a recent interview. “How could we find other audiences who may not be watching on linear TV anymore? How can we reach those folks and provide them with a version of Jeopardy that spoke to them, but always being respectful of ‘Jeopardy!’ itself?”

The YouTube special demonstrated the potential to reach new fans. The episode and related video content scored 8.7 million views, with 86% of viewers under 34. The same percentage never had watched “Jeopardy!” before. A second special episode for the platform will be released in the fall. The YouTube channel also offers selected vintage episodes of the show featuring early appearances by contestants who compete in “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.”

NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, which offers “Jeopardy!” episodes one day after they air on TV, launched “Jeopardy! TODAY,” a daily interactive game for subscribers developed by the Los Angeles-based pop culture gaming company Lil Snack.

Only 1% of the Netflix streaming audience for “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” overlaps with those watching the traditional flagship broadcast edition. Davies expects the ESPN edition to also bring in a younger male crowd through the promotion it will receive across the sports media behemoth’s channels and digital properties.

“The audience generally matches the platform that it’s on,” Davies said. The common denominator for all of the editions is audiences who are more upscale and better educated than the average TV viewer, he added.

While the formula appears to be working, Sony executives say they have to proceed cautiously with one of the few crown jewels left on broadcast television; last year, the syndicated and ABC versions brought in a total of $93 million in ad revenue, according to iSpot. The executives learned about the passion of “Jeopardy!” fans when Sony tried to replace Trebek with Mike Richards, the program’s executive producer at the time. Richards lasted one day as host, exiting after a story by McNear revealed he had made demeaning remarks about women and used offensive ethnic tropes on a podcast in 2014.

Richards already had a shaky relationship with the “Jeopardy!” audience, as he was given the job after overseeing the search and audition process to replace Trebek, creating the appearance of self-dealing.

“The biggest lesson there was to listen to our fans and stay close to them,” Prete said. “They’re the biggest critics and they’re the experts.”

Prete asked Davies, a veteran game show producer who helped make “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” a hit, to oversee “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis after Richards departed. Davies has remained in the position and helped guide the brand expansion, fully aware of the special care and handling required.

His first job in the entertainment business was working for Merv Griffin, the big band singer, talk show host and impresario who created “Jeopardy!” for NBC in 1964 and revived it for syndication two decades later. Davies recalled how network executives over the years implored Griffin to make the game easier; they believed the questions about science, history and geography were over the heads of most of the audience. Griffin told them he would but never did.

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings.

(Tyler Golden/Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television)

“He would go back to the writing staff and say ‘make it harder,’” Davies said. “Merv always believed that the toughness of ‘Jeopardy!’ is what made it good. We have 110,000 people apply to be on the show every year. We take 400. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.36%. Harvard’s is roughly 3.6%.”

While the subject matter on the spinoffs is lighter than the flagship show, Davies said they use the same veteran writing staff that creates the cleverly constructed clues. He has added writers with expertise in sports and pop culture for the streaming shows.

Davies has made production changes to “Jeopardy!” over his tenure, updating the set and the game board. But he knows the signature elements such as the “thinking music” played during final “Jeopardy!” and off-camera announcer — 98-year-old Johnny Gilbert, who has been with the show since 1984 — are essential to every version of the program.

Davies does not expect to turn out more niche versions of “Jeopardy!” But he would like to bring back the high school and college competitions the show held in the past. Sony also is planning a live “Jeopardy!” competition, a throwback to the early days of TV quiz shows.

“‘Jeopardy!’ has to have a live version,” Davies said. “Live quizzes are really terrifying.”

As the TV landscape continues to shape-shift, few programs have remained true to their original concept after decades on the air.

Sony Pictures Television’s game show “Jeopardy!” not only has survived but also has thrived over its 42-year run. The daily version is ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on TV in the 2025-26 season, with an average audience of 8.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and 20 million viewers over the course of a week. The show even weathered a major uproar over the botched host transition that followed the death of beloved emcee Alex Trebek in 2020.

In recent years, Sony has sought to expand the “Jeopardy!” brand beyond the loyal core of viewers who still make a nightly appointment to watch the syndicated edition on local stations across the country, including KABC in Los Angeles, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which returns on ABC’s prime time lineup next year.

A new sports-focused iteration, “ESPN Jeopardy!” launches Friday on Disney+, Hulu and the ESPN app, with sportscaster Joe Buck as host for 10 hour-long episodes that feature celebrities and ESPN personalities as contestants. “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” with host Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” recently launched its second season, moving from Amazon Prime to Netflix.

Sony unveiled a “Jeopardy!” YouTube page in March featuring a special edition in which drag queen Monét X Change, singer Rebecca Black and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan competed. “This audience is a little younger than I’m used to,” host Ken Jennings said after eliciting a laugh when he noted the charities selected by the contestants “are eating.”

Getting younger people into the “Jeopardy!” tent is a mission that began four years ago under Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television, and Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer. While “Jeopardy!” stands taller than most of the competition on traditional TV, it’s part of a habit that is slowly fading away as streaming platforms are the video destination of choice for viewers under 50. The median age of the “Jeopardy!” audience is 70, according to Nielsen.

“Like all other broadcast shows, it’s up against the stark reality that the audience is shrinking and not coming back,” said Claire McNear, author of “Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!”

There have been “Jeopardy!” spinoffs before. A sports version appeared on Sony’s now-defunct streaming platform Crackle in 2014. “Rock & Roll Jeopardy” ran for several years on VH-1 during cable’s heyday in the late 1990s. But the new push of brand extensions is aimed at ensuring the game remains a cultural staple for future generations.

“About four years ago, I thought it was the right time to look at it as a franchise,” Prete said in a recent interview. “How could we find other audiences who may not be watching on linear TV anymore? How can we reach those folks and provide them with a version of Jeopardy that spoke to them, but always being respectful of ‘Jeopardy!’ itself?”

The YouTube special demonstrated the potential to reach new fans. The episode and related video content scored 8.7 million views, with 86% of viewers under 34. The same percentage never had watched “Jeopardy!” before. A second special episode for the platform will be released in the fall. The YouTube channel also offers selected vintage episodes of the show featuring early appearances by contestants who compete in “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.”

NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, which offers “Jeopardy!” episodes one day after they air on TV, launched “Jeopardy! TODAY,” a daily interactive game for subscribers developed by the Los Angeles-based pop culture gaming company Lil Snack.

Only 1% of the Netflix streaming audience for “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” overlaps with those watching the traditional flagship broadcast edition. Davies expects the ESPN edition to also bring in a younger male crowd through the promotion it will receive across the sports media behemoth’s channels and digital properties.

“The audience generally matches the platform that it’s on,” Davies said. The common denominator for all of the editions is audiences who are more upscale and better educated than the average TV viewer, he added.

While the formula appears to be working, Sony executives say they have to proceed cautiously with one of the few crown jewels left on broadcast television; last year, the syndicated and ABC versions brought in a total of $93 million in ad revenue, according to iSpot. The executives learned about the passion of “Jeopardy!” fans when Sony tried to replace Trebek with Mike Richards, the program’s executive producer at the time. Richards lasted one day as host, exiting after a story by McNear revealed he had made demeaning remarks about women and used offensive ethnic tropes on a podcast in 2014.

Richards already had a shaky relationship with the “Jeopardy!” audience, as he was given the job after overseeing the search and audition process to replace Trebek, creating the appearance of self-dealing.

“The biggest lesson there was to listen to our fans and stay close to them,” Prete said. “They’re the biggest critics and they’re the experts.”

Prete asked Davies, a veteran game show producer who helped make “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” a hit, to oversee “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis after Richards departed. Davies has remained in the position and helped guide the brand expansion, fully aware of the special care and handling required.

His first job in the entertainment business was working for Merv Griffin, the big band singer, talk show host and impresario who created “Jeopardy!” for NBC in 1964 and revived it for syndication two decades later. Davies recalled how network executives over the years implored Griffin to make the game easier; they believed the questions about science, history and geography were over the heads of most of the audience. Griffin told them he would but never did.

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings.

(Tyler Golden/Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television)

“He would go back to the writing staff and say ‘make it harder,’” Davies said. “Merv always believed that the toughness of ‘Jeopardy!’ is what made it good. We have 110,000 people apply to be on the show every year. We take 400. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.36%. Harvard’s is roughly 3.6%.”

While the subject matter on the spinoffs is lighter than the flagship show, Davies said they use the same veteran writing staff that creates the cleverly constructed clues. He has added writers with expertise in sports and pop culture for the streaming shows.

Davies has made production changes to “Jeopardy!” over his tenure, updating the set and the game board. But he knows the signature elements such as the “thinking music” played during final “Jeopardy!” and off-camera announcer — 98-year-old Johnny Gilbert, who has been with the show since 1984 — are essential to every version of the program.

Davies does not expect to turn out more niche versions of “Jeopardy!” But he would like to bring back the high school and college competitions the show held in the past. Sony also is planning a live “Jeopardy!” competition, a throwback to the early days of TV quiz shows.

“‘Jeopardy!’ has to have a live version,” Davies said. “Live quizzes are really terrifying.”

As the TV landscape continues to shape-shift, few programs have remained true to their original concept after decades on the air.

Sony Pictures Television’s game show “Jeopardy!” not only has survived but also has thrived over its 42-year run. The daily version is ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on TV in the 2025-26 season, with an average audience of 8.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and 20 million viewers over the course of a week. The show even weathered a major uproar over the botched host transition that followed the death of beloved emcee Alex Trebek in 2020.

In recent years, Sony has sought to expand the “Jeopardy!” brand beyond the loyal core of viewers who still make a nightly appointment to watch the syndicated edition on local stations across the country, including KABC in Los Angeles, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which returns on ABC’s prime time lineup next year.

A new sports-focused iteration, “ESPN Jeopardy!” launches Friday on Disney+, Hulu and the ESPN app, with sportscaster Joe Buck as host for 10 hour-long episodes that feature celebrities and ESPN personalities as contestants. “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” with host Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” recently launched its second season, moving from Amazon Prime to Netflix.

Sony unveiled a “Jeopardy!” YouTube page in March featuring a special edition in which drag queen Monét X Change, singer Rebecca Black and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan competed. “This audience is a little younger than I’m used to,” host Ken Jennings said after eliciting a laugh when he noted the charities selected by the contestants “are eating.”

Getting younger people into the “Jeopardy!” tent is a mission that began four years ago under Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television, and Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer. While “Jeopardy!” stands taller than most of the competition on traditional TV, it’s part of a habit that is slowly fading away as streaming platforms are the video destination of choice for viewers under 50. The median age of the “Jeopardy!” audience is 70, according to Nielsen.

“Like all other broadcast shows, it’s up against the stark reality that the audience is shrinking and not coming back,” said Claire McNear, author of “Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!”

There have been “Jeopardy!” spinoffs before. A sports version appeared on Sony’s now-defunct streaming platform Crackle in 2014. “Rock & Roll Jeopardy” ran for several years on VH-1 during cable’s heyday in the late 1990s. But the new push of brand extensions is aimed at ensuring the game remains a cultural staple for future generations.

“About four years ago, I thought it was the right time to look at it as a franchise,” Prete said in a recent interview. “How could we find other audiences who may not be watching on linear TV anymore? How can we reach those folks and provide them with a version of Jeopardy that spoke to them, but always being respectful of ‘Jeopardy!’ itself?”

The YouTube special demonstrated the potential to reach new fans. The episode and related video content scored 8.7 million views, with 86% of viewers under 34. The same percentage never had watched “Jeopardy!” before. A second special episode for the platform will be released in the fall. The YouTube channel also offers selected vintage episodes of the show featuring early appearances by contestants who compete in “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.”

NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, which offers “Jeopardy!” episodes one day after they air on TV, launched “Jeopardy! TODAY,” a daily interactive game for subscribers developed by the Los Angeles-based pop culture gaming company Lil Snack.

Only 1% of the Netflix streaming audience for “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” overlaps with those watching the traditional flagship broadcast edition. Davies expects the ESPN edition to also bring in a younger male crowd through the promotion it will receive across the sports media behemoth’s channels and digital properties.

“The audience generally matches the platform that it’s on,” Davies said. The common denominator for all of the editions is audiences who are more upscale and better educated than the average TV viewer, he added.

While the formula appears to be working, Sony executives say they have to proceed cautiously with one of the few crown jewels left on broadcast television; last year, the syndicated and ABC versions brought in a total of $93 million in ad revenue, according to iSpot. The executives learned about the passion of “Jeopardy!” fans when Sony tried to replace Trebek with Mike Richards, the program’s executive producer at the time. Richards lasted one day as host, exiting after a story by McNear revealed he had made demeaning remarks about women and used offensive ethnic tropes on a podcast in 2014.

Richards already had a shaky relationship with the “Jeopardy!” audience, as he was given the job after overseeing the search and audition process to replace Trebek, creating the appearance of self-dealing.

“The biggest lesson there was to listen to our fans and stay close to them,” Prete said. “They’re the biggest critics and they’re the experts.”

Prete asked Davies, a veteran game show producer who helped make “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” a hit, to oversee “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis after Richards departed. Davies has remained in the position and helped guide the brand expansion, fully aware of the special care and handling required.

His first job in the entertainment business was working for Merv Griffin, the big band singer, talk show host and impresario who created “Jeopardy!” for NBC in 1964 and revived it for syndication two decades later. Davies recalled how network executives over the years implored Griffin to make the game easier; they believed the questions about science, history and geography were over the heads of most of the audience. Griffin told them he would but never did.

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings.

(Tyler Golden/Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television)

“He would go back to the writing staff and say ‘make it harder,’” Davies said. “Merv always believed that the toughness of ‘Jeopardy!’ is what made it good. We have 110,000 people apply to be on the show every year. We take 400. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.36%. Harvard’s is roughly 3.6%.”

While the subject matter on the spinoffs is lighter than the flagship show, Davies said they use the same veteran writing staff that creates the cleverly constructed clues. He has added writers with expertise in sports and pop culture for the streaming shows.

Davies has made production changes to “Jeopardy!” over his tenure, updating the set and the game board. But he knows the signature elements such as the “thinking music” played during final “Jeopardy!” and off-camera announcer — 98-year-old Johnny Gilbert, who has been with the show since 1984 — are essential to every version of the program.

Davies does not expect to turn out more niche versions of “Jeopardy!” But he would like to bring back the high school and college competitions the show held in the past. Sony also is planning a live “Jeopardy!” competition, a throwback to the early days of TV quiz shows.

“‘Jeopardy!’ has to have a live version,” Davies said. “Live quizzes are really terrifying.”

As the TV landscape continues to shape-shift, few programs have remained true to their original concept after decades on the air.

Sony Pictures Television’s game show “Jeopardy!” not only has survived but also has thrived over its 42-year run. The daily version is ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on TV in the 2025-26 season, with an average audience of 8.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and 20 million viewers over the course of a week. The show even weathered a major uproar over the botched host transition that followed the death of beloved emcee Alex Trebek in 2020.

In recent years, Sony has sought to expand the “Jeopardy!” brand beyond the loyal core of viewers who still make a nightly appointment to watch the syndicated edition on local stations across the country, including KABC in Los Angeles, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which returns on ABC’s prime time lineup next year.

A new sports-focused iteration, “ESPN Jeopardy!” launches Friday on Disney+, Hulu and the ESPN app, with sportscaster Joe Buck as host for 10 hour-long episodes that feature celebrities and ESPN personalities as contestants. “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” with host Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” recently launched its second season, moving from Amazon Prime to Netflix.

Sony unveiled a “Jeopardy!” YouTube page in March featuring a special edition in which drag queen Monét X Change, singer Rebecca Black and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan competed. “This audience is a little younger than I’m used to,” host Ken Jennings said after eliciting a laugh when he noted the charities selected by the contestants “are eating.”

Getting younger people into the “Jeopardy!” tent is a mission that began four years ago under Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television, and Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer. While “Jeopardy!” stands taller than most of the competition on traditional TV, it’s part of a habit that is slowly fading away as streaming platforms are the video destination of choice for viewers under 50. The median age of the “Jeopardy!” audience is 70, according to Nielsen.

“Like all other broadcast shows, it’s up against the stark reality that the audience is shrinking and not coming back,” said Claire McNear, author of “Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!”

There have been “Jeopardy!” spinoffs before. A sports version appeared on Sony’s now-defunct streaming platform Crackle in 2014. “Rock & Roll Jeopardy” ran for several years on VH-1 during cable’s heyday in the late 1990s. But the new push of brand extensions is aimed at ensuring the game remains a cultural staple for future generations.

“About four years ago, I thought it was the right time to look at it as a franchise,” Prete said in a recent interview. “How could we find other audiences who may not be watching on linear TV anymore? How can we reach those folks and provide them with a version of Jeopardy that spoke to them, but always being respectful of ‘Jeopardy!’ itself?”

The YouTube special demonstrated the potential to reach new fans. The episode and related video content scored 8.7 million views, with 86% of viewers under 34. The same percentage never had watched “Jeopardy!” before. A second special episode for the platform will be released in the fall. The YouTube channel also offers selected vintage episodes of the show featuring early appearances by contestants who compete in “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.”

NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, which offers “Jeopardy!” episodes one day after they air on TV, launched “Jeopardy! TODAY,” a daily interactive game for subscribers developed by the Los Angeles-based pop culture gaming company Lil Snack.

Only 1% of the Netflix streaming audience for “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” overlaps with those watching the traditional flagship broadcast edition. Davies expects the ESPN edition to also bring in a younger male crowd through the promotion it will receive across the sports media behemoth’s channels and digital properties.

“The audience generally matches the platform that it’s on,” Davies said. The common denominator for all of the editions is audiences who are more upscale and better educated than the average TV viewer, he added.

While the formula appears to be working, Sony executives say they have to proceed cautiously with one of the few crown jewels left on broadcast television; last year, the syndicated and ABC versions brought in a total of $93 million in ad revenue, according to iSpot. The executives learned about the passion of “Jeopardy!” fans when Sony tried to replace Trebek with Mike Richards, the program’s executive producer at the time. Richards lasted one day as host, exiting after a story by McNear revealed he had made demeaning remarks about women and used offensive ethnic tropes on a podcast in 2014.

Richards already had a shaky relationship with the “Jeopardy!” audience, as he was given the job after overseeing the search and audition process to replace Trebek, creating the appearance of self-dealing.

“The biggest lesson there was to listen to our fans and stay close to them,” Prete said. “They’re the biggest critics and they’re the experts.”

Prete asked Davies, a veteran game show producer who helped make “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” a hit, to oversee “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis after Richards departed. Davies has remained in the position and helped guide the brand expansion, fully aware of the special care and handling required.

His first job in the entertainment business was working for Merv Griffin, the big band singer, talk show host and impresario who created “Jeopardy!” for NBC in 1964 and revived it for syndication two decades later. Davies recalled how network executives over the years implored Griffin to make the game easier; they believed the questions about science, history and geography were over the heads of most of the audience. Griffin told them he would but never did.

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings.

(Tyler Golden/Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television)

“He would go back to the writing staff and say ‘make it harder,’” Davies said. “Merv always believed that the toughness of ‘Jeopardy!’ is what made it good. We have 110,000 people apply to be on the show every year. We take 400. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.36%. Harvard’s is roughly 3.6%.”

While the subject matter on the spinoffs is lighter than the flagship show, Davies said they use the same veteran writing staff that creates the cleverly constructed clues. He has added writers with expertise in sports and pop culture for the streaming shows.

Davies has made production changes to “Jeopardy!” over his tenure, updating the set and the game board. But he knows the signature elements such as the “thinking music” played during final “Jeopardy!” and off-camera announcer — 98-year-old Johnny Gilbert, who has been with the show since 1984 — are essential to every version of the program.

Davies does not expect to turn out more niche versions of “Jeopardy!” But he would like to bring back the high school and college competitions the show held in the past. Sony also is planning a live “Jeopardy!” competition, a throwback to the early days of TV quiz shows.

“‘Jeopardy!’ has to have a live version,” Davies said. “Live quizzes are really terrifying.”

As the TV landscape continues to shape-shift, few programs have remained true to their original concept after decades on the air.

Sony Pictures Television’s game show “Jeopardy!” not only has survived but also has thrived over its 42-year run. The daily version is ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on TV in the 2025-26 season, with an average audience of 8.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and 20 million viewers over the course of a week. The show even weathered a major uproar over the botched host transition that followed the death of beloved emcee Alex Trebek in 2020.

In recent years, Sony has sought to expand the “Jeopardy!” brand beyond the loyal core of viewers who still make a nightly appointment to watch the syndicated edition on local stations across the country, including KABC in Los Angeles, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which returns on ABC’s prime time lineup next year.

A new sports-focused iteration, “ESPN Jeopardy!” launches Friday on Disney+, Hulu and the ESPN app, with sportscaster Joe Buck as host for 10 hour-long episodes that feature celebrities and ESPN personalities as contestants. “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” with host Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” recently launched its second season, moving from Amazon Prime to Netflix.

Sony unveiled a “Jeopardy!” YouTube page in March featuring a special edition in which drag queen Monét X Change, singer Rebecca Black and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan competed. “This audience is a little younger than I’m used to,” host Ken Jennings said after eliciting a laugh when he noted the charities selected by the contestants “are eating.”

Getting younger people into the “Jeopardy!” tent is a mission that began four years ago under Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television, and Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer. While “Jeopardy!” stands taller than most of the competition on traditional TV, it’s part of a habit that is slowly fading away as streaming platforms are the video destination of choice for viewers under 50. The median age of the “Jeopardy!” audience is 70, according to Nielsen.

“Like all other broadcast shows, it’s up against the stark reality that the audience is shrinking and not coming back,” said Claire McNear, author of “Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!”

There have been “Jeopardy!” spinoffs before. A sports version appeared on Sony’s now-defunct streaming platform Crackle in 2014. “Rock & Roll Jeopardy” ran for several years on VH-1 during cable’s heyday in the late 1990s. But the new push of brand extensions is aimed at ensuring the game remains a cultural staple for future generations.

“About four years ago, I thought it was the right time to look at it as a franchise,” Prete said in a recent interview. “How could we find other audiences who may not be watching on linear TV anymore? How can we reach those folks and provide them with a version of Jeopardy that spoke to them, but always being respectful of ‘Jeopardy!’ itself?”

The YouTube special demonstrated the potential to reach new fans. The episode and related video content scored 8.7 million views, with 86% of viewers under 34. The same percentage never had watched “Jeopardy!” before. A second special episode for the platform will be released in the fall. The YouTube channel also offers selected vintage episodes of the show featuring early appearances by contestants who compete in “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.”

NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, which offers “Jeopardy!” episodes one day after they air on TV, launched “Jeopardy! TODAY,” a daily interactive game for subscribers developed by the Los Angeles-based pop culture gaming company Lil Snack.

Only 1% of the Netflix streaming audience for “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” overlaps with those watching the traditional flagship broadcast edition. Davies expects the ESPN edition to also bring in a younger male crowd through the promotion it will receive across the sports media behemoth’s channels and digital properties.

“The audience generally matches the platform that it’s on,” Davies said. The common denominator for all of the editions is audiences who are more upscale and better educated than the average TV viewer, he added.

While the formula appears to be working, Sony executives say they have to proceed cautiously with one of the few crown jewels left on broadcast television; last year, the syndicated and ABC versions brought in a total of $93 million in ad revenue, according to iSpot. The executives learned about the passion of “Jeopardy!” fans when Sony tried to replace Trebek with Mike Richards, the program’s executive producer at the time. Richards lasted one day as host, exiting after a story by McNear revealed he had made demeaning remarks about women and used offensive ethnic tropes on a podcast in 2014.

Richards already had a shaky relationship with the “Jeopardy!” audience, as he was given the job after overseeing the search and audition process to replace Trebek, creating the appearance of self-dealing.

“The biggest lesson there was to listen to our fans and stay close to them,” Prete said. “They’re the biggest critics and they’re the experts.”

Prete asked Davies, a veteran game show producer who helped make “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” a hit, to oversee “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis after Richards departed. Davies has remained in the position and helped guide the brand expansion, fully aware of the special care and handling required.

His first job in the entertainment business was working for Merv Griffin, the big band singer, talk show host and impresario who created “Jeopardy!” for NBC in 1964 and revived it for syndication two decades later. Davies recalled how network executives over the years implored Griffin to make the game easier; they believed the questions about science, history and geography were over the heads of most of the audience. Griffin told them he would but never did.

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings.

(Tyler Golden/Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television)

“He would go back to the writing staff and say ‘make it harder,’” Davies said. “Merv always believed that the toughness of ‘Jeopardy!’ is what made it good. We have 110,000 people apply to be on the show every year. We take 400. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.36%. Harvard’s is roughly 3.6%.”

While the subject matter on the spinoffs is lighter than the flagship show, Davies said they use the same veteran writing staff that creates the cleverly constructed clues. He has added writers with expertise in sports and pop culture for the streaming shows.

Davies has made production changes to “Jeopardy!” over his tenure, updating the set and the game board. But he knows the signature elements such as the “thinking music” played during final “Jeopardy!” and off-camera announcer — 98-year-old Johnny Gilbert, who has been with the show since 1984 — are essential to every version of the program.

Davies does not expect to turn out more niche versions of “Jeopardy!” But he would like to bring back the high school and college competitions the show held in the past. Sony also is planning a live “Jeopardy!” competition, a throwback to the early days of TV quiz shows.

“‘Jeopardy!’ has to have a live version,” Davies said. “Live quizzes are really terrifying.”

As the TV landscape continues to shape-shift, few programs have remained true to their original concept after decades on the air.

Sony Pictures Television’s game show “Jeopardy!” not only has survived but also has thrived over its 42-year run. The daily version is ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on TV in the 2025-26 season, with an average audience of 8.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and 20 million viewers over the course of a week. The show even weathered a major uproar over the botched host transition that followed the death of beloved emcee Alex Trebek in 2020.

In recent years, Sony has sought to expand the “Jeopardy!” brand beyond the loyal core of viewers who still make a nightly appointment to watch the syndicated edition on local stations across the country, including KABC in Los Angeles, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which returns on ABC’s prime time lineup next year.

A new sports-focused iteration, “ESPN Jeopardy!” launches Friday on Disney+, Hulu and the ESPN app, with sportscaster Joe Buck as host for 10 hour-long episodes that feature celebrities and ESPN personalities as contestants. “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” with host Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” recently launched its second season, moving from Amazon Prime to Netflix.

Sony unveiled a “Jeopardy!” YouTube page in March featuring a special edition in which drag queen Monét X Change, singer Rebecca Black and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan competed. “This audience is a little younger than I’m used to,” host Ken Jennings said after eliciting a laugh when he noted the charities selected by the contestants “are eating.”

Getting younger people into the “Jeopardy!” tent is a mission that began four years ago under Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television, and Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer. While “Jeopardy!” stands taller than most of the competition on traditional TV, it’s part of a habit that is slowly fading away as streaming platforms are the video destination of choice for viewers under 50. The median age of the “Jeopardy!” audience is 70, according to Nielsen.

“Like all other broadcast shows, it’s up against the stark reality that the audience is shrinking and not coming back,” said Claire McNear, author of “Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!”

There have been “Jeopardy!” spinoffs before. A sports version appeared on Sony’s now-defunct streaming platform Crackle in 2014. “Rock & Roll Jeopardy” ran for several years on VH-1 during cable’s heyday in the late 1990s. But the new push of brand extensions is aimed at ensuring the game remains a cultural staple for future generations.

“About four years ago, I thought it was the right time to look at it as a franchise,” Prete said in a recent interview. “How could we find other audiences who may not be watching on linear TV anymore? How can we reach those folks and provide them with a version of Jeopardy that spoke to them, but always being respectful of ‘Jeopardy!’ itself?”

The YouTube special demonstrated the potential to reach new fans. The episode and related video content scored 8.7 million views, with 86% of viewers under 34. The same percentage never had watched “Jeopardy!” before. A second special episode for the platform will be released in the fall. The YouTube channel also offers selected vintage episodes of the show featuring early appearances by contestants who compete in “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.”

NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, which offers “Jeopardy!” episodes one day after they air on TV, launched “Jeopardy! TODAY,” a daily interactive game for subscribers developed by the Los Angeles-based pop culture gaming company Lil Snack.

Only 1% of the Netflix streaming audience for “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” overlaps with those watching the traditional flagship broadcast edition. Davies expects the ESPN edition to also bring in a younger male crowd through the promotion it will receive across the sports media behemoth’s channels and digital properties.

“The audience generally matches the platform that it’s on,” Davies said. The common denominator for all of the editions is audiences who are more upscale and better educated than the average TV viewer, he added.

While the formula appears to be working, Sony executives say they have to proceed cautiously with one of the few crown jewels left on broadcast television; last year, the syndicated and ABC versions brought in a total of $93 million in ad revenue, according to iSpot. The executives learned about the passion of “Jeopardy!” fans when Sony tried to replace Trebek with Mike Richards, the program’s executive producer at the time. Richards lasted one day as host, exiting after a story by McNear revealed he had made demeaning remarks about women and used offensive ethnic tropes on a podcast in 2014.

Richards already had a shaky relationship with the “Jeopardy!” audience, as he was given the job after overseeing the search and audition process to replace Trebek, creating the appearance of self-dealing.

“The biggest lesson there was to listen to our fans and stay close to them,” Prete said. “They’re the biggest critics and they’re the experts.”

Prete asked Davies, a veteran game show producer who helped make “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” a hit, to oversee “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis after Richards departed. Davies has remained in the position and helped guide the brand expansion, fully aware of the special care and handling required.

His first job in the entertainment business was working for Merv Griffin, the big band singer, talk show host and impresario who created “Jeopardy!” for NBC in 1964 and revived it for syndication two decades later. Davies recalled how network executives over the years implored Griffin to make the game easier; they believed the questions about science, history and geography were over the heads of most of the audience. Griffin told them he would but never did.

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings.

(Tyler Golden/Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television)

“He would go back to the writing staff and say ‘make it harder,’” Davies said. “Merv always believed that the toughness of ‘Jeopardy!’ is what made it good. We have 110,000 people apply to be on the show every year. We take 400. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.36%. Harvard’s is roughly 3.6%.”

While the subject matter on the spinoffs is lighter than the flagship show, Davies said they use the same veteran writing staff that creates the cleverly constructed clues. He has added writers with expertise in sports and pop culture for the streaming shows.

Davies has made production changes to “Jeopardy!” over his tenure, updating the set and the game board. But he knows the signature elements such as the “thinking music” played during final “Jeopardy!” and off-camera announcer — 98-year-old Johnny Gilbert, who has been with the show since 1984 — are essential to every version of the program.

Davies does not expect to turn out more niche versions of “Jeopardy!” But he would like to bring back the high school and college competitions the show held in the past. Sony also is planning a live “Jeopardy!” competition, a throwback to the early days of TV quiz shows.

“‘Jeopardy!’ has to have a live version,” Davies said. “Live quizzes are really terrifying.”

As the TV landscape continues to shape-shift, few programs have remained true to their original concept after decades on the air.

Sony Pictures Television’s game show “Jeopardy!” not only has survived but also has thrived over its 42-year run. The daily version is ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on TV in the 2025-26 season, with an average audience of 8.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and 20 million viewers over the course of a week. The show even weathered a major uproar over the botched host transition that followed the death of beloved emcee Alex Trebek in 2020.

In recent years, Sony has sought to expand the “Jeopardy!” brand beyond the loyal core of viewers who still make a nightly appointment to watch the syndicated edition on local stations across the country, including KABC in Los Angeles, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which returns on ABC’s prime time lineup next year.

A new sports-focused iteration, “ESPN Jeopardy!” launches Friday on Disney+, Hulu and the ESPN app, with sportscaster Joe Buck as host for 10 hour-long episodes that feature celebrities and ESPN personalities as contestants. “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” with host Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” recently launched its second season, moving from Amazon Prime to Netflix.

Sony unveiled a “Jeopardy!” YouTube page in March featuring a special edition in which drag queen Monét X Change, singer Rebecca Black and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan competed. “This audience is a little younger than I’m used to,” host Ken Jennings said after eliciting a laugh when he noted the charities selected by the contestants “are eating.”

Getting younger people into the “Jeopardy!” tent is a mission that began four years ago under Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television, and Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer. While “Jeopardy!” stands taller than most of the competition on traditional TV, it’s part of a habit that is slowly fading away as streaming platforms are the video destination of choice for viewers under 50. The median age of the “Jeopardy!” audience is 70, according to Nielsen.

“Like all other broadcast shows, it’s up against the stark reality that the audience is shrinking and not coming back,” said Claire McNear, author of “Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!”

There have been “Jeopardy!” spinoffs before. A sports version appeared on Sony’s now-defunct streaming platform Crackle in 2014. “Rock & Roll Jeopardy” ran for several years on VH-1 during cable’s heyday in the late 1990s. But the new push of brand extensions is aimed at ensuring the game remains a cultural staple for future generations.

“About four years ago, I thought it was the right time to look at it as a franchise,” Prete said in a recent interview. “How could we find other audiences who may not be watching on linear TV anymore? How can we reach those folks and provide them with a version of Jeopardy that spoke to them, but always being respectful of ‘Jeopardy!’ itself?”

The YouTube special demonstrated the potential to reach new fans. The episode and related video content scored 8.7 million views, with 86% of viewers under 34. The same percentage never had watched “Jeopardy!” before. A second special episode for the platform will be released in the fall. The YouTube channel also offers selected vintage episodes of the show featuring early appearances by contestants who compete in “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.”

NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, which offers “Jeopardy!” episodes one day after they air on TV, launched “Jeopardy! TODAY,” a daily interactive game for subscribers developed by the Los Angeles-based pop culture gaming company Lil Snack.

Only 1% of the Netflix streaming audience for “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” overlaps with those watching the traditional flagship broadcast edition. Davies expects the ESPN edition to also bring in a younger male crowd through the promotion it will receive across the sports media behemoth’s channels and digital properties.

“The audience generally matches the platform that it’s on,” Davies said. The common denominator for all of the editions is audiences who are more upscale and better educated than the average TV viewer, he added.

While the formula appears to be working, Sony executives say they have to proceed cautiously with one of the few crown jewels left on broadcast television; last year, the syndicated and ABC versions brought in a total of $93 million in ad revenue, according to iSpot. The executives learned about the passion of “Jeopardy!” fans when Sony tried to replace Trebek with Mike Richards, the program’s executive producer at the time. Richards lasted one day as host, exiting after a story by McNear revealed he had made demeaning remarks about women and used offensive ethnic tropes on a podcast in 2014.

Richards already had a shaky relationship with the “Jeopardy!” audience, as he was given the job after overseeing the search and audition process to replace Trebek, creating the appearance of self-dealing.

“The biggest lesson there was to listen to our fans and stay close to them,” Prete said. “They’re the biggest critics and they’re the experts.”

Prete asked Davies, a veteran game show producer who helped make “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” a hit, to oversee “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis after Richards departed. Davies has remained in the position and helped guide the brand expansion, fully aware of the special care and handling required.

His first job in the entertainment business was working for Merv Griffin, the big band singer, talk show host and impresario who created “Jeopardy!” for NBC in 1964 and revived it for syndication two decades later. Davies recalled how network executives over the years implored Griffin to make the game easier; they believed the questions about science, history and geography were over the heads of most of the audience. Griffin told them he would but never did.

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings.

(Tyler Golden/Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television)

“He would go back to the writing staff and say ‘make it harder,’” Davies said. “Merv always believed that the toughness of ‘Jeopardy!’ is what made it good. We have 110,000 people apply to be on the show every year. We take 400. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.36%. Harvard’s is roughly 3.6%.”

While the subject matter on the spinoffs is lighter than the flagship show, Davies said they use the same veteran writing staff that creates the cleverly constructed clues. He has added writers with expertise in sports and pop culture for the streaming shows.

Davies has made production changes to “Jeopardy!” over his tenure, updating the set and the game board. But he knows the signature elements such as the “thinking music” played during final “Jeopardy!” and off-camera announcer — 98-year-old Johnny Gilbert, who has been with the show since 1984 — are essential to every version of the program.

Davies does not expect to turn out more niche versions of “Jeopardy!” But he would like to bring back the high school and college competitions the show held in the past. Sony also is planning a live “Jeopardy!” competition, a throwback to the early days of TV quiz shows.

“‘Jeopardy!’ has to have a live version,” Davies said. “Live quizzes are really terrifying.”

As the TV landscape continues to shape-shift, few programs have remained true to their original concept after decades on the air.

Sony Pictures Television’s game show “Jeopardy!” not only has survived but also has thrived over its 42-year run. The daily version is ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on TV in the 2025-26 season, with an average audience of 8.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and 20 million viewers over the course of a week. The show even weathered a major uproar over the botched host transition that followed the death of beloved emcee Alex Trebek in 2020.

In recent years, Sony has sought to expand the “Jeopardy!” brand beyond the loyal core of viewers who still make a nightly appointment to watch the syndicated edition on local stations across the country, including KABC in Los Angeles, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which returns on ABC’s prime time lineup next year.

A new sports-focused iteration, “ESPN Jeopardy!” launches Friday on Disney+, Hulu and the ESPN app, with sportscaster Joe Buck as host for 10 hour-long episodes that feature celebrities and ESPN personalities as contestants. “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” with host Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” recently launched its second season, moving from Amazon Prime to Netflix.

Sony unveiled a “Jeopardy!” YouTube page in March featuring a special edition in which drag queen Monét X Change, singer Rebecca Black and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan competed. “This audience is a little younger than I’m used to,” host Ken Jennings said after eliciting a laugh when he noted the charities selected by the contestants “are eating.”

Getting younger people into the “Jeopardy!” tent is a mission that began four years ago under Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television, and Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer. While “Jeopardy!” stands taller than most of the competition on traditional TV, it’s part of a habit that is slowly fading away as streaming platforms are the video destination of choice for viewers under 50. The median age of the “Jeopardy!” audience is 70, according to Nielsen.

“Like all other broadcast shows, it’s up against the stark reality that the audience is shrinking and not coming back,” said Claire McNear, author of “Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!”

There have been “Jeopardy!” spinoffs before. A sports version appeared on Sony’s now-defunct streaming platform Crackle in 2014. “Rock & Roll Jeopardy” ran for several years on VH-1 during cable’s heyday in the late 1990s. But the new push of brand extensions is aimed at ensuring the game remains a cultural staple for future generations.

“About four years ago, I thought it was the right time to look at it as a franchise,” Prete said in a recent interview. “How could we find other audiences who may not be watching on linear TV anymore? How can we reach those folks and provide them with a version of Jeopardy that spoke to them, but always being respectful of ‘Jeopardy!’ itself?”

The YouTube special demonstrated the potential to reach new fans. The episode and related video content scored 8.7 million views, with 86% of viewers under 34. The same percentage never had watched “Jeopardy!” before. A second special episode for the platform will be released in the fall. The YouTube channel also offers selected vintage episodes of the show featuring early appearances by contestants who compete in “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.”

NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, which offers “Jeopardy!” episodes one day after they air on TV, launched “Jeopardy! TODAY,” a daily interactive game for subscribers developed by the Los Angeles-based pop culture gaming company Lil Snack.

Only 1% of the Netflix streaming audience for “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” overlaps with those watching the traditional flagship broadcast edition. Davies expects the ESPN edition to also bring in a younger male crowd through the promotion it will receive across the sports media behemoth’s channels and digital properties.

“The audience generally matches the platform that it’s on,” Davies said. The common denominator for all of the editions is audiences who are more upscale and better educated than the average TV viewer, he added.

While the formula appears to be working, Sony executives say they have to proceed cautiously with one of the few crown jewels left on broadcast television; last year, the syndicated and ABC versions brought in a total of $93 million in ad revenue, according to iSpot. The executives learned about the passion of “Jeopardy!” fans when Sony tried to replace Trebek with Mike Richards, the program’s executive producer at the time. Richards lasted one day as host, exiting after a story by McNear revealed he had made demeaning remarks about women and used offensive ethnic tropes on a podcast in 2014.

Richards already had a shaky relationship with the “Jeopardy!” audience, as he was given the job after overseeing the search and audition process to replace Trebek, creating the appearance of self-dealing.

“The biggest lesson there was to listen to our fans and stay close to them,” Prete said. “They’re the biggest critics and they’re the experts.”

Prete asked Davies, a veteran game show producer who helped make “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” a hit, to oversee “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis after Richards departed. Davies has remained in the position and helped guide the brand expansion, fully aware of the special care and handling required.

His first job in the entertainment business was working for Merv Griffin, the big band singer, talk show host and impresario who created “Jeopardy!” for NBC in 1964 and revived it for syndication two decades later. Davies recalled how network executives over the years implored Griffin to make the game easier; they believed the questions about science, history and geography were over the heads of most of the audience. Griffin told them he would but never did.

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings.

(Tyler Golden/Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television)

“He would go back to the writing staff and say ‘make it harder,’” Davies said. “Merv always believed that the toughness of ‘Jeopardy!’ is what made it good. We have 110,000 people apply to be on the show every year. We take 400. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.36%. Harvard’s is roughly 3.6%.”

While the subject matter on the spinoffs is lighter than the flagship show, Davies said they use the same veteran writing staff that creates the cleverly constructed clues. He has added writers with expertise in sports and pop culture for the streaming shows.

Davies has made production changes to “Jeopardy!” over his tenure, updating the set and the game board. But he knows the signature elements such as the “thinking music” played during final “Jeopardy!” and off-camera announcer — 98-year-old Johnny Gilbert, who has been with the show since 1984 — are essential to every version of the program.

Davies does not expect to turn out more niche versions of “Jeopardy!” But he would like to bring back the high school and college competitions the show held in the past. Sony also is planning a live “Jeopardy!” competition, a throwback to the early days of TV quiz shows.

“‘Jeopardy!’ has to have a live version,” Davies said. “Live quizzes are really terrifying.”

As the TV landscape continues to shape-shift, few programs have remained true to their original concept after decades on the air.

Sony Pictures Television’s game show “Jeopardy!” not only has survived but also has thrived over its 42-year run. The daily version is ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on TV in the 2025-26 season, with an average audience of 8.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and 20 million viewers over the course of a week. The show even weathered a major uproar over the botched host transition that followed the death of beloved emcee Alex Trebek in 2020.

In recent years, Sony has sought to expand the “Jeopardy!” brand beyond the loyal core of viewers who still make a nightly appointment to watch the syndicated edition on local stations across the country, including KABC in Los Angeles, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which returns on ABC’s prime time lineup next year.

A new sports-focused iteration, “ESPN Jeopardy!” launches Friday on Disney+, Hulu and the ESPN app, with sportscaster Joe Buck as host for 10 hour-long episodes that feature celebrities and ESPN personalities as contestants. “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” with host Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” recently launched its second season, moving from Amazon Prime to Netflix.

Sony unveiled a “Jeopardy!” YouTube page in March featuring a special edition in which drag queen Monét X Change, singer Rebecca Black and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan competed. “This audience is a little younger than I’m used to,” host Ken Jennings said after eliciting a laugh when he noted the charities selected by the contestants “are eating.”

Getting younger people into the “Jeopardy!” tent is a mission that began four years ago under Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television, and Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer. While “Jeopardy!” stands taller than most of the competition on traditional TV, it’s part of a habit that is slowly fading away as streaming platforms are the video destination of choice for viewers under 50. The median age of the “Jeopardy!” audience is 70, according to Nielsen.

“Like all other broadcast shows, it’s up against the stark reality that the audience is shrinking and not coming back,” said Claire McNear, author of “Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!”

There have been “Jeopardy!” spinoffs before. A sports version appeared on Sony’s now-defunct streaming platform Crackle in 2014. “Rock & Roll Jeopardy” ran for several years on VH-1 during cable’s heyday in the late 1990s. But the new push of brand extensions is aimed at ensuring the game remains a cultural staple for future generations.

“About four years ago, I thought it was the right time to look at it as a franchise,” Prete said in a recent interview. “How could we find other audiences who may not be watching on linear TV anymore? How can we reach those folks and provide them with a version of Jeopardy that spoke to them, but always being respectful of ‘Jeopardy!’ itself?”

The YouTube special demonstrated the potential to reach new fans. The episode and related video content scored 8.7 million views, with 86% of viewers under 34. The same percentage never had watched “Jeopardy!” before. A second special episode for the platform will be released in the fall. The YouTube channel also offers selected vintage episodes of the show featuring early appearances by contestants who compete in “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.”

NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, which offers “Jeopardy!” episodes one day after they air on TV, launched “Jeopardy! TODAY,” a daily interactive game for subscribers developed by the Los Angeles-based pop culture gaming company Lil Snack.

Only 1% of the Netflix streaming audience for “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” overlaps with those watching the traditional flagship broadcast edition. Davies expects the ESPN edition to also bring in a younger male crowd through the promotion it will receive across the sports media behemoth’s channels and digital properties.

“The audience generally matches the platform that it’s on,” Davies said. The common denominator for all of the editions is audiences who are more upscale and better educated than the average TV viewer, he added.

While the formula appears to be working, Sony executives say they have to proceed cautiously with one of the few crown jewels left on broadcast television; last year, the syndicated and ABC versions brought in a total of $93 million in ad revenue, according to iSpot. The executives learned about the passion of “Jeopardy!” fans when Sony tried to replace Trebek with Mike Richards, the program’s executive producer at the time. Richards lasted one day as host, exiting after a story by McNear revealed he had made demeaning remarks about women and used offensive ethnic tropes on a podcast in 2014.

Richards already had a shaky relationship with the “Jeopardy!” audience, as he was given the job after overseeing the search and audition process to replace Trebek, creating the appearance of self-dealing.

“The biggest lesson there was to listen to our fans and stay close to them,” Prete said. “They’re the biggest critics and they’re the experts.”

Prete asked Davies, a veteran game show producer who helped make “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” a hit, to oversee “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis after Richards departed. Davies has remained in the position and helped guide the brand expansion, fully aware of the special care and handling required.

His first job in the entertainment business was working for Merv Griffin, the big band singer, talk show host and impresario who created “Jeopardy!” for NBC in 1964 and revived it for syndication two decades later. Davies recalled how network executives over the years implored Griffin to make the game easier; they believed the questions about science, history and geography were over the heads of most of the audience. Griffin told them he would but never did.

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings.

(Tyler Golden/Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television)

“He would go back to the writing staff and say ‘make it harder,’” Davies said. “Merv always believed that the toughness of ‘Jeopardy!’ is what made it good. We have 110,000 people apply to be on the show every year. We take 400. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.36%. Harvard’s is roughly 3.6%.”

While the subject matter on the spinoffs is lighter than the flagship show, Davies said they use the same veteran writing staff that creates the cleverly constructed clues. He has added writers with expertise in sports and pop culture for the streaming shows.

Davies has made production changes to “Jeopardy!” over his tenure, updating the set and the game board. But he knows the signature elements such as the “thinking music” played during final “Jeopardy!” and off-camera announcer — 98-year-old Johnny Gilbert, who has been with the show since 1984 — are essential to every version of the program.

Davies does not expect to turn out more niche versions of “Jeopardy!” But he would like to bring back the high school and college competitions the show held in the past. Sony also is planning a live “Jeopardy!” competition, a throwback to the early days of TV quiz shows.

“‘Jeopardy!’ has to have a live version,” Davies said. “Live quizzes are really terrifying.”

As the TV landscape continues to shape-shift, few programs have remained true to their original concept after decades on the air.

Sony Pictures Television’s game show “Jeopardy!” not only has survived but also has thrived over its 42-year run. The daily version is ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on TV in the 2025-26 season, with an average audience of 8.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and 20 million viewers over the course of a week. The show even weathered a major uproar over the botched host transition that followed the death of beloved emcee Alex Trebek in 2020.

In recent years, Sony has sought to expand the “Jeopardy!” brand beyond the loyal core of viewers who still make a nightly appointment to watch the syndicated edition on local stations across the country, including KABC in Los Angeles, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which returns on ABC’s prime time lineup next year.

A new sports-focused iteration, “ESPN Jeopardy!” launches Friday on Disney+, Hulu and the ESPN app, with sportscaster Joe Buck as host for 10 hour-long episodes that feature celebrities and ESPN personalities as contestants. “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” with host Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” recently launched its second season, moving from Amazon Prime to Netflix.

Sony unveiled a “Jeopardy!” YouTube page in March featuring a special edition in which drag queen Monét X Change, singer Rebecca Black and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan competed. “This audience is a little younger than I’m used to,” host Ken Jennings said after eliciting a laugh when he noted the charities selected by the contestants “are eating.”

Getting younger people into the “Jeopardy!” tent is a mission that began four years ago under Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television, and Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer. While “Jeopardy!” stands taller than most of the competition on traditional TV, it’s part of a habit that is slowly fading away as streaming platforms are the video destination of choice for viewers under 50. The median age of the “Jeopardy!” audience is 70, according to Nielsen.

“Like all other broadcast shows, it’s up against the stark reality that the audience is shrinking and not coming back,” said Claire McNear, author of “Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!”

There have been “Jeopardy!” spinoffs before. A sports version appeared on Sony’s now-defunct streaming platform Crackle in 2014. “Rock & Roll Jeopardy” ran for several years on VH-1 during cable’s heyday in the late 1990s. But the new push of brand extensions is aimed at ensuring the game remains a cultural staple for future generations.

“About four years ago, I thought it was the right time to look at it as a franchise,” Prete said in a recent interview. “How could we find other audiences who may not be watching on linear TV anymore? How can we reach those folks and provide them with a version of Jeopardy that spoke to them, but always being respectful of ‘Jeopardy!’ itself?”

The YouTube special demonstrated the potential to reach new fans. The episode and related video content scored 8.7 million views, with 86% of viewers under 34. The same percentage never had watched “Jeopardy!” before. A second special episode for the platform will be released in the fall. The YouTube channel also offers selected vintage episodes of the show featuring early appearances by contestants who compete in “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.”

NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, which offers “Jeopardy!” episodes one day after they air on TV, launched “Jeopardy! TODAY,” a daily interactive game for subscribers developed by the Los Angeles-based pop culture gaming company Lil Snack.

Only 1% of the Netflix streaming audience for “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” overlaps with those watching the traditional flagship broadcast edition. Davies expects the ESPN edition to also bring in a younger male crowd through the promotion it will receive across the sports media behemoth’s channels and digital properties.

“The audience generally matches the platform that it’s on,” Davies said. The common denominator for all of the editions is audiences who are more upscale and better educated than the average TV viewer, he added.

While the formula appears to be working, Sony executives say they have to proceed cautiously with one of the few crown jewels left on broadcast television; last year, the syndicated and ABC versions brought in a total of $93 million in ad revenue, according to iSpot. The executives learned about the passion of “Jeopardy!” fans when Sony tried to replace Trebek with Mike Richards, the program’s executive producer at the time. Richards lasted one day as host, exiting after a story by McNear revealed he had made demeaning remarks about women and used offensive ethnic tropes on a podcast in 2014.

Richards already had a shaky relationship with the “Jeopardy!” audience, as he was given the job after overseeing the search and audition process to replace Trebek, creating the appearance of self-dealing.

“The biggest lesson there was to listen to our fans and stay close to them,” Prete said. “They’re the biggest critics and they’re the experts.”

Prete asked Davies, a veteran game show producer who helped make “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” a hit, to oversee “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis after Richards departed. Davies has remained in the position and helped guide the brand expansion, fully aware of the special care and handling required.

His first job in the entertainment business was working for Merv Griffin, the big band singer, talk show host and impresario who created “Jeopardy!” for NBC in 1964 and revived it for syndication two decades later. Davies recalled how network executives over the years implored Griffin to make the game easier; they believed the questions about science, history and geography were over the heads of most of the audience. Griffin told them he would but never did.

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings.

(Tyler Golden/Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television)

“He would go back to the writing staff and say ‘make it harder,’” Davies said. “Merv always believed that the toughness of ‘Jeopardy!’ is what made it good. We have 110,000 people apply to be on the show every year. We take 400. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.36%. Harvard’s is roughly 3.6%.”

While the subject matter on the spinoffs is lighter than the flagship show, Davies said they use the same veteran writing staff that creates the cleverly constructed clues. He has added writers with expertise in sports and pop culture for the streaming shows.

Davies has made production changes to “Jeopardy!” over his tenure, updating the set and the game board. But he knows the signature elements such as the “thinking music” played during final “Jeopardy!” and off-camera announcer — 98-year-old Johnny Gilbert, who has been with the show since 1984 — are essential to every version of the program.

Davies does not expect to turn out more niche versions of “Jeopardy!” But he would like to bring back the high school and college competitions the show held in the past. Sony also is planning a live “Jeopardy!” competition, a throwback to the early days of TV quiz shows.

“‘Jeopardy!’ has to have a live version,” Davies said. “Live quizzes are really terrifying.”

As the TV landscape continues to shape-shift, few programs have remained true to their original concept after decades on the air.

Sony Pictures Television’s game show “Jeopardy!” not only has survived but also has thrived over its 42-year run. The daily version is ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on TV in the 2025-26 season, with an average audience of 8.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and 20 million viewers over the course of a week. The show even weathered a major uproar over the botched host transition that followed the death of beloved emcee Alex Trebek in 2020.

In recent years, Sony has sought to expand the “Jeopardy!” brand beyond the loyal core of viewers who still make a nightly appointment to watch the syndicated edition on local stations across the country, including KABC in Los Angeles, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which returns on ABC’s prime time lineup next year.

A new sports-focused iteration, “ESPN Jeopardy!” launches Friday on Disney+, Hulu and the ESPN app, with sportscaster Joe Buck as host for 10 hour-long episodes that feature celebrities and ESPN personalities as contestants. “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” with host Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” recently launched its second season, moving from Amazon Prime to Netflix.

Sony unveiled a “Jeopardy!” YouTube page in March featuring a special edition in which drag queen Monét X Change, singer Rebecca Black and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan competed. “This audience is a little younger than I’m used to,” host Ken Jennings said after eliciting a laugh when he noted the charities selected by the contestants “are eating.”

Getting younger people into the “Jeopardy!” tent is a mission that began four years ago under Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television, and Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer. While “Jeopardy!” stands taller than most of the competition on traditional TV, it’s part of a habit that is slowly fading away as streaming platforms are the video destination of choice for viewers under 50. The median age of the “Jeopardy!” audience is 70, according to Nielsen.

“Like all other broadcast shows, it’s up against the stark reality that the audience is shrinking and not coming back,” said Claire McNear, author of “Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!”

There have been “Jeopardy!” spinoffs before. A sports version appeared on Sony’s now-defunct streaming platform Crackle in 2014. “Rock & Roll Jeopardy” ran for several years on VH-1 during cable’s heyday in the late 1990s. But the new push of brand extensions is aimed at ensuring the game remains a cultural staple for future generations.

“About four years ago, I thought it was the right time to look at it as a franchise,” Prete said in a recent interview. “How could we find other audiences who may not be watching on linear TV anymore? How can we reach those folks and provide them with a version of Jeopardy that spoke to them, but always being respectful of ‘Jeopardy!’ itself?”

The YouTube special demonstrated the potential to reach new fans. The episode and related video content scored 8.7 million views, with 86% of viewers under 34. The same percentage never had watched “Jeopardy!” before. A second special episode for the platform will be released in the fall. The YouTube channel also offers selected vintage episodes of the show featuring early appearances by contestants who compete in “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.”

NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, which offers “Jeopardy!” episodes one day after they air on TV, launched “Jeopardy! TODAY,” a daily interactive game for subscribers developed by the Los Angeles-based pop culture gaming company Lil Snack.

Only 1% of the Netflix streaming audience for “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” overlaps with those watching the traditional flagship broadcast edition. Davies expects the ESPN edition to also bring in a younger male crowd through the promotion it will receive across the sports media behemoth’s channels and digital properties.

“The audience generally matches the platform that it’s on,” Davies said. The common denominator for all of the editions is audiences who are more upscale and better educated than the average TV viewer, he added.

While the formula appears to be working, Sony executives say they have to proceed cautiously with one of the few crown jewels left on broadcast television; last year, the syndicated and ABC versions brought in a total of $93 million in ad revenue, according to iSpot. The executives learned about the passion of “Jeopardy!” fans when Sony tried to replace Trebek with Mike Richards, the program’s executive producer at the time. Richards lasted one day as host, exiting after a story by McNear revealed he had made demeaning remarks about women and used offensive ethnic tropes on a podcast in 2014.

Richards already had a shaky relationship with the “Jeopardy!” audience, as he was given the job after overseeing the search and audition process to replace Trebek, creating the appearance of self-dealing.

“The biggest lesson there was to listen to our fans and stay close to them,” Prete said. “They’re the biggest critics and they’re the experts.”

Prete asked Davies, a veteran game show producer who helped make “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” a hit, to oversee “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis after Richards departed. Davies has remained in the position and helped guide the brand expansion, fully aware of the special care and handling required.

His first job in the entertainment business was working for Merv Griffin, the big band singer, talk show host and impresario who created “Jeopardy!” for NBC in 1964 and revived it for syndication two decades later. Davies recalled how network executives over the years implored Griffin to make the game easier; they believed the questions about science, history and geography were over the heads of most of the audience. Griffin told them he would but never did.

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings.

(Tyler Golden/Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television)

“He would go back to the writing staff and say ‘make it harder,’” Davies said. “Merv always believed that the toughness of ‘Jeopardy!’ is what made it good. We have 110,000 people apply to be on the show every year. We take 400. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.36%. Harvard’s is roughly 3.6%.”

While the subject matter on the spinoffs is lighter than the flagship show, Davies said they use the same veteran writing staff that creates the cleverly constructed clues. He has added writers with expertise in sports and pop culture for the streaming shows.

Davies has made production changes to “Jeopardy!” over his tenure, updating the set and the game board. But he knows the signature elements such as the “thinking music” played during final “Jeopardy!” and off-camera announcer — 98-year-old Johnny Gilbert, who has been with the show since 1984 — are essential to every version of the program.

Davies does not expect to turn out more niche versions of “Jeopardy!” But he would like to bring back the high school and college competitions the show held in the past. Sony also is planning a live “Jeopardy!” competition, a throwback to the early days of TV quiz shows.

“‘Jeopardy!’ has to have a live version,” Davies said. “Live quizzes are really terrifying.”

As the TV landscape continues to shape-shift, few programs have remained true to their original concept after decades on the air.

Sony Pictures Television’s game show “Jeopardy!” not only has survived but also has thrived over its 42-year run. The daily version is ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on TV in the 2025-26 season, with an average audience of 8.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and 20 million viewers over the course of a week. The show even weathered a major uproar over the botched host transition that followed the death of beloved emcee Alex Trebek in 2020.

In recent years, Sony has sought to expand the “Jeopardy!” brand beyond the loyal core of viewers who still make a nightly appointment to watch the syndicated edition on local stations across the country, including KABC in Los Angeles, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which returns on ABC’s prime time lineup next year.

A new sports-focused iteration, “ESPN Jeopardy!” launches Friday on Disney+, Hulu and the ESPN app, with sportscaster Joe Buck as host for 10 hour-long episodes that feature celebrities and ESPN personalities as contestants. “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” with host Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” recently launched its second season, moving from Amazon Prime to Netflix.

Sony unveiled a “Jeopardy!” YouTube page in March featuring a special edition in which drag queen Monét X Change, singer Rebecca Black and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan competed. “This audience is a little younger than I’m used to,” host Ken Jennings said after eliciting a laugh when he noted the charities selected by the contestants “are eating.”

Getting younger people into the “Jeopardy!” tent is a mission that began four years ago under Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television, and Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer. While “Jeopardy!” stands taller than most of the competition on traditional TV, it’s part of a habit that is slowly fading away as streaming platforms are the video destination of choice for viewers under 50. The median age of the “Jeopardy!” audience is 70, according to Nielsen.

“Like all other broadcast shows, it’s up against the stark reality that the audience is shrinking and not coming back,” said Claire McNear, author of “Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!”

There have been “Jeopardy!” spinoffs before. A sports version appeared on Sony’s now-defunct streaming platform Crackle in 2014. “Rock & Roll Jeopardy” ran for several years on VH-1 during cable’s heyday in the late 1990s. But the new push of brand extensions is aimed at ensuring the game remains a cultural staple for future generations.

“About four years ago, I thought it was the right time to look at it as a franchise,” Prete said in a recent interview. “How could we find other audiences who may not be watching on linear TV anymore? How can we reach those folks and provide them with a version of Jeopardy that spoke to them, but always being respectful of ‘Jeopardy!’ itself?”

The YouTube special demonstrated the potential to reach new fans. The episode and related video content scored 8.7 million views, with 86% of viewers under 34. The same percentage never had watched “Jeopardy!” before. A second special episode for the platform will be released in the fall. The YouTube channel also offers selected vintage episodes of the show featuring early appearances by contestants who compete in “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.”

NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, which offers “Jeopardy!” episodes one day after they air on TV, launched “Jeopardy! TODAY,” a daily interactive game for subscribers developed by the Los Angeles-based pop culture gaming company Lil Snack.

Only 1% of the Netflix streaming audience for “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” overlaps with those watching the traditional flagship broadcast edition. Davies expects the ESPN edition to also bring in a younger male crowd through the promotion it will receive across the sports media behemoth’s channels and digital properties.

“The audience generally matches the platform that it’s on,” Davies said. The common denominator for all of the editions is audiences who are more upscale and better educated than the average TV viewer, he added.

While the formula appears to be working, Sony executives say they have to proceed cautiously with one of the few crown jewels left on broadcast television; last year, the syndicated and ABC versions brought in a total of $93 million in ad revenue, according to iSpot. The executives learned about the passion of “Jeopardy!” fans when Sony tried to replace Trebek with Mike Richards, the program’s executive producer at the time. Richards lasted one day as host, exiting after a story by McNear revealed he had made demeaning remarks about women and used offensive ethnic tropes on a podcast in 2014.

Richards already had a shaky relationship with the “Jeopardy!” audience, as he was given the job after overseeing the search and audition process to replace Trebek, creating the appearance of self-dealing.

“The biggest lesson there was to listen to our fans and stay close to them,” Prete said. “They’re the biggest critics and they’re the experts.”

Prete asked Davies, a veteran game show producer who helped make “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” a hit, to oversee “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis after Richards departed. Davies has remained in the position and helped guide the brand expansion, fully aware of the special care and handling required.

His first job in the entertainment business was working for Merv Griffin, the big band singer, talk show host and impresario who created “Jeopardy!” for NBC in 1964 and revived it for syndication two decades later. Davies recalled how network executives over the years implored Griffin to make the game easier; they believed the questions about science, history and geography were over the heads of most of the audience. Griffin told them he would but never did.

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings.

(Tyler Golden/Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television)

“He would go back to the writing staff and say ‘make it harder,’” Davies said. “Merv always believed that the toughness of ‘Jeopardy!’ is what made it good. We have 110,000 people apply to be on the show every year. We take 400. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.36%. Harvard’s is roughly 3.6%.”

While the subject matter on the spinoffs is lighter than the flagship show, Davies said they use the same veteran writing staff that creates the cleverly constructed clues. He has added writers with expertise in sports and pop culture for the streaming shows.

Davies has made production changes to “Jeopardy!” over his tenure, updating the set and the game board. But he knows the signature elements such as the “thinking music” played during final “Jeopardy!” and off-camera announcer — 98-year-old Johnny Gilbert, who has been with the show since 1984 — are essential to every version of the program.

Davies does not expect to turn out more niche versions of “Jeopardy!” But he would like to bring back the high school and college competitions the show held in the past. Sony also is planning a live “Jeopardy!” competition, a throwback to the early days of TV quiz shows.

“‘Jeopardy!’ has to have a live version,” Davies said. “Live quizzes are really terrifying.”

As the TV landscape continues to shape-shift, few programs have remained true to their original concept after decades on the air.

Sony Pictures Television’s game show “Jeopardy!” not only has survived but also has thrived over its 42-year run. The daily version is ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on TV in the 2025-26 season, with an average audience of 8.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and 20 million viewers over the course of a week. The show even weathered a major uproar over the botched host transition that followed the death of beloved emcee Alex Trebek in 2020.

In recent years, Sony has sought to expand the “Jeopardy!” brand beyond the loyal core of viewers who still make a nightly appointment to watch the syndicated edition on local stations across the country, including KABC in Los Angeles, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which returns on ABC’s prime time lineup next year.

A new sports-focused iteration, “ESPN Jeopardy!” launches Friday on Disney+, Hulu and the ESPN app, with sportscaster Joe Buck as host for 10 hour-long episodes that feature celebrities and ESPN personalities as contestants. “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” with host Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” recently launched its second season, moving from Amazon Prime to Netflix.

Sony unveiled a “Jeopardy!” YouTube page in March featuring a special edition in which drag queen Monét X Change, singer Rebecca Black and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan competed. “This audience is a little younger than I’m used to,” host Ken Jennings said after eliciting a laugh when he noted the charities selected by the contestants “are eating.”

Getting younger people into the “Jeopardy!” tent is a mission that began four years ago under Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television, and Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer. While “Jeopardy!” stands taller than most of the competition on traditional TV, it’s part of a habit that is slowly fading away as streaming platforms are the video destination of choice for viewers under 50. The median age of the “Jeopardy!” audience is 70, according to Nielsen.

“Like all other broadcast shows, it’s up against the stark reality that the audience is shrinking and not coming back,” said Claire McNear, author of “Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!”

There have been “Jeopardy!” spinoffs before. A sports version appeared on Sony’s now-defunct streaming platform Crackle in 2014. “Rock & Roll Jeopardy” ran for several years on VH-1 during cable’s heyday in the late 1990s. But the new push of brand extensions is aimed at ensuring the game remains a cultural staple for future generations.

“About four years ago, I thought it was the right time to look at it as a franchise,” Prete said in a recent interview. “How could we find other audiences who may not be watching on linear TV anymore? How can we reach those folks and provide them with a version of Jeopardy that spoke to them, but always being respectful of ‘Jeopardy!’ itself?”

The YouTube special demonstrated the potential to reach new fans. The episode and related video content scored 8.7 million views, with 86% of viewers under 34. The same percentage never had watched “Jeopardy!” before. A second special episode for the platform will be released in the fall. The YouTube channel also offers selected vintage episodes of the show featuring early appearances by contestants who compete in “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.”

NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, which offers “Jeopardy!” episodes one day after they air on TV, launched “Jeopardy! TODAY,” a daily interactive game for subscribers developed by the Los Angeles-based pop culture gaming company Lil Snack.

Only 1% of the Netflix streaming audience for “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” overlaps with those watching the traditional flagship broadcast edition. Davies expects the ESPN edition to also bring in a younger male crowd through the promotion it will receive across the sports media behemoth’s channels and digital properties.

“The audience generally matches the platform that it’s on,” Davies said. The common denominator for all of the editions is audiences who are more upscale and better educated than the average TV viewer, he added.

While the formula appears to be working, Sony executives say they have to proceed cautiously with one of the few crown jewels left on broadcast television; last year, the syndicated and ABC versions brought in a total of $93 million in ad revenue, according to iSpot. The executives learned about the passion of “Jeopardy!” fans when Sony tried to replace Trebek with Mike Richards, the program’s executive producer at the time. Richards lasted one day as host, exiting after a story by McNear revealed he had made demeaning remarks about women and used offensive ethnic tropes on a podcast in 2014.

Richards already had a shaky relationship with the “Jeopardy!” audience, as he was given the job after overseeing the search and audition process to replace Trebek, creating the appearance of self-dealing.

“The biggest lesson there was to listen to our fans and stay close to them,” Prete said. “They’re the biggest critics and they’re the experts.”

Prete asked Davies, a veteran game show producer who helped make “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” a hit, to oversee “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis after Richards departed. Davies has remained in the position and helped guide the brand expansion, fully aware of the special care and handling required.

His first job in the entertainment business was working for Merv Griffin, the big band singer, talk show host and impresario who created “Jeopardy!” for NBC in 1964 and revived it for syndication two decades later. Davies recalled how network executives over the years implored Griffin to make the game easier; they believed the questions about science, history and geography were over the heads of most of the audience. Griffin told them he would but never did.

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings.

(Tyler Golden/Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television)

“He would go back to the writing staff and say ‘make it harder,’” Davies said. “Merv always believed that the toughness of ‘Jeopardy!’ is what made it good. We have 110,000 people apply to be on the show every year. We take 400. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.36%. Harvard’s is roughly 3.6%.”

While the subject matter on the spinoffs is lighter than the flagship show, Davies said they use the same veteran writing staff that creates the cleverly constructed clues. He has added writers with expertise in sports and pop culture for the streaming shows.

Davies has made production changes to “Jeopardy!” over his tenure, updating the set and the game board. But he knows the signature elements such as the “thinking music” played during final “Jeopardy!” and off-camera announcer — 98-year-old Johnny Gilbert, who has been with the show since 1984 — are essential to every version of the program.

Davies does not expect to turn out more niche versions of “Jeopardy!” But he would like to bring back the high school and college competitions the show held in the past. Sony also is planning a live “Jeopardy!” competition, a throwback to the early days of TV quiz shows.

“‘Jeopardy!’ has to have a live version,” Davies said. “Live quizzes are really terrifying.”

As the TV landscape continues to shape-shift, few programs have remained true to their original concept after decades on the air.

Sony Pictures Television’s game show “Jeopardy!” not only has survived but also has thrived over its 42-year run. The daily version is ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on TV in the 2025-26 season, with an average audience of 8.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and 20 million viewers over the course of a week. The show even weathered a major uproar over the botched host transition that followed the death of beloved emcee Alex Trebek in 2020.

In recent years, Sony has sought to expand the “Jeopardy!” brand beyond the loyal core of viewers who still make a nightly appointment to watch the syndicated edition on local stations across the country, including KABC in Los Angeles, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which returns on ABC’s prime time lineup next year.

A new sports-focused iteration, “ESPN Jeopardy!” launches Friday on Disney+, Hulu and the ESPN app, with sportscaster Joe Buck as host for 10 hour-long episodes that feature celebrities and ESPN personalities as contestants. “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” with host Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” recently launched its second season, moving from Amazon Prime to Netflix.

Sony unveiled a “Jeopardy!” YouTube page in March featuring a special edition in which drag queen Monét X Change, singer Rebecca Black and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan competed. “This audience is a little younger than I’m used to,” host Ken Jennings said after eliciting a laugh when he noted the charities selected by the contestants “are eating.”

Getting younger people into the “Jeopardy!” tent is a mission that began four years ago under Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television, and Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer. While “Jeopardy!” stands taller than most of the competition on traditional TV, it’s part of a habit that is slowly fading away as streaming platforms are the video destination of choice for viewers under 50. The median age of the “Jeopardy!” audience is 70, according to Nielsen.

“Like all other broadcast shows, it’s up against the stark reality that the audience is shrinking and not coming back,” said Claire McNear, author of “Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!”

There have been “Jeopardy!” spinoffs before. A sports version appeared on Sony’s now-defunct streaming platform Crackle in 2014. “Rock & Roll Jeopardy” ran for several years on VH-1 during cable’s heyday in the late 1990s. But the new push of brand extensions is aimed at ensuring the game remains a cultural staple for future generations.

“About four years ago, I thought it was the right time to look at it as a franchise,” Prete said in a recent interview. “How could we find other audiences who may not be watching on linear TV anymore? How can we reach those folks and provide them with a version of Jeopardy that spoke to them, but always being respectful of ‘Jeopardy!’ itself?”

The YouTube special demonstrated the potential to reach new fans. The episode and related video content scored 8.7 million views, with 86% of viewers under 34. The same percentage never had watched “Jeopardy!” before. A second special episode for the platform will be released in the fall. The YouTube channel also offers selected vintage episodes of the show featuring early appearances by contestants who compete in “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.”

NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, which offers “Jeopardy!” episodes one day after they air on TV, launched “Jeopardy! TODAY,” a daily interactive game for subscribers developed by the Los Angeles-based pop culture gaming company Lil Snack.

Only 1% of the Netflix streaming audience for “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” overlaps with those watching the traditional flagship broadcast edition. Davies expects the ESPN edition to also bring in a younger male crowd through the promotion it will receive across the sports media behemoth’s channels and digital properties.

“The audience generally matches the platform that it’s on,” Davies said. The common denominator for all of the editions is audiences who are more upscale and better educated than the average TV viewer, he added.

While the formula appears to be working, Sony executives say they have to proceed cautiously with one of the few crown jewels left on broadcast television; last year, the syndicated and ABC versions brought in a total of $93 million in ad revenue, according to iSpot. The executives learned about the passion of “Jeopardy!” fans when Sony tried to replace Trebek with Mike Richards, the program’s executive producer at the time. Richards lasted one day as host, exiting after a story by McNear revealed he had made demeaning remarks about women and used offensive ethnic tropes on a podcast in 2014.

Richards already had a shaky relationship with the “Jeopardy!” audience, as he was given the job after overseeing the search and audition process to replace Trebek, creating the appearance of self-dealing.

“The biggest lesson there was to listen to our fans and stay close to them,” Prete said. “They’re the biggest critics and they’re the experts.”

Prete asked Davies, a veteran game show producer who helped make “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” a hit, to oversee “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis after Richards departed. Davies has remained in the position and helped guide the brand expansion, fully aware of the special care and handling required.

His first job in the entertainment business was working for Merv Griffin, the big band singer, talk show host and impresario who created “Jeopardy!” for NBC in 1964 and revived it for syndication two decades later. Davies recalled how network executives over the years implored Griffin to make the game easier; they believed the questions about science, history and geography were over the heads of most of the audience. Griffin told them he would but never did.

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings.

(Tyler Golden/Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television)

“He would go back to the writing staff and say ‘make it harder,’” Davies said. “Merv always believed that the toughness of ‘Jeopardy!’ is what made it good. We have 110,000 people apply to be on the show every year. We take 400. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.36%. Harvard’s is roughly 3.6%.”

While the subject matter on the spinoffs is lighter than the flagship show, Davies said they use the same veteran writing staff that creates the cleverly constructed clues. He has added writers with expertise in sports and pop culture for the streaming shows.

Davies has made production changes to “Jeopardy!” over his tenure, updating the set and the game board. But he knows the signature elements such as the “thinking music” played during final “Jeopardy!” and off-camera announcer — 98-year-old Johnny Gilbert, who has been with the show since 1984 — are essential to every version of the program.

Davies does not expect to turn out more niche versions of “Jeopardy!” But he would like to bring back the high school and college competitions the show held in the past. Sony also is planning a live “Jeopardy!” competition, a throwback to the early days of TV quiz shows.

“‘Jeopardy!’ has to have a live version,” Davies said. “Live quizzes are really terrifying.”

As the TV landscape continues to shape-shift, few programs have remained true to their original concept after decades on the air.

Sony Pictures Television’s game show “Jeopardy!” not only has survived but also has thrived over its 42-year run. The daily version is ranked as the most-watched entertainment program on TV in the 2025-26 season, with an average audience of 8.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and 20 million viewers over the course of a week. The show even weathered a major uproar over the botched host transition that followed the death of beloved emcee Alex Trebek in 2020.

In recent years, Sony has sought to expand the “Jeopardy!” brand beyond the loyal core of viewers who still make a nightly appointment to watch the syndicated edition on local stations across the country, including KABC in Los Angeles, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” which returns on ABC’s prime time lineup next year.

A new sports-focused iteration, “ESPN Jeopardy!” launches Friday on Disney+, Hulu and the ESPN app, with sportscaster Joe Buck as host for 10 hour-long episodes that feature celebrities and ESPN personalities as contestants. “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” with host Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” recently launched its second season, moving from Amazon Prime to Netflix.

Sony unveiled a “Jeopardy!” YouTube page in March featuring a special edition in which drag queen Monét X Change, singer Rebecca Black and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan competed. “This audience is a little younger than I’m used to,” host Ken Jennings said after eliciting a laugh when he noted the charities selected by the contestants “are eating.”

Getting younger people into the “Jeopardy!” tent is a mission that began four years ago under Suzanne Prete, president of game shows at Sony Pictures Television, and Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer. While “Jeopardy!” stands taller than most of the competition on traditional TV, it’s part of a habit that is slowly fading away as streaming platforms are the video destination of choice for viewers under 50. The median age of the “Jeopardy!” audience is 70, according to Nielsen.

“Like all other broadcast shows, it’s up against the stark reality that the audience is shrinking and not coming back,” said Claire McNear, author of “Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!”

There have been “Jeopardy!” spinoffs before. A sports version appeared on Sony’s now-defunct streaming platform Crackle in 2014. “Rock & Roll Jeopardy” ran for several years on VH-1 during cable’s heyday in the late 1990s. But the new push of brand extensions is aimed at ensuring the game remains a cultural staple for future generations.

“About four years ago, I thought it was the right time to look at it as a franchise,” Prete said in a recent interview. “How could we find other audiences who may not be watching on linear TV anymore? How can we reach those folks and provide them with a version of Jeopardy that spoke to them, but always being respectful of ‘Jeopardy!’ itself?”

The YouTube special demonstrated the potential to reach new fans. The episode and related video content scored 8.7 million views, with 86% of viewers under 34. The same percentage never had watched “Jeopardy!” before. A second special episode for the platform will be released in the fall. The YouTube channel also offers selected vintage episodes of the show featuring early appearances by contestants who compete in “Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.”

NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, which offers “Jeopardy!” episodes one day after they air on TV, launched “Jeopardy! TODAY,” a daily interactive game for subscribers developed by the Los Angeles-based pop culture gaming company Lil Snack.

Only 1% of the Netflix streaming audience for “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” overlaps with those watching the traditional flagship broadcast edition. Davies expects the ESPN edition to also bring in a younger male crowd through the promotion it will receive across the sports media behemoth’s channels and digital properties.

“The audience generally matches the platform that it’s on,” Davies said. The common denominator for all of the editions is audiences who are more upscale and better educated than the average TV viewer, he added.

While the formula appears to be working, Sony executives say they have to proceed cautiously with one of the few crown jewels left on broadcast television; last year, the syndicated and ABC versions brought in a total of $93 million in ad revenue, according to iSpot. The executives learned about the passion of “Jeopardy!” fans when Sony tried to replace Trebek with Mike Richards, the program’s executive producer at the time. Richards lasted one day as host, exiting after a story by McNear revealed he had made demeaning remarks about women and used offensive ethnic tropes on a podcast in 2014.

Richards already had a shaky relationship with the “Jeopardy!” audience, as he was given the job after overseeing the search and audition process to replace Trebek, creating the appearance of self-dealing.

“The biggest lesson there was to listen to our fans and stay close to them,” Prete said. “They’re the biggest critics and they’re the experts.”

Prete asked Davies, a veteran game show producer who helped make “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” a hit, to oversee “Jeopardy!” on an interim basis after Richards departed. Davies has remained in the position and helped guide the brand expansion, fully aware of the special care and handling required.

His first job in the entertainment business was working for Merv Griffin, the big band singer, talk show host and impresario who created “Jeopardy!” for NBC in 1964 and revived it for syndication two decades later. Davies recalled how network executives over the years implored Griffin to make the game easier; they believed the questions about science, history and geography were over the heads of most of the audience. Griffin told them he would but never did.

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings.

(Tyler Golden/Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television)

“He would go back to the writing staff and say ‘make it harder,’” Davies said. “Merv always believed that the toughness of ‘Jeopardy!’ is what made it good. We have 110,000 people apply to be on the show every year. We take 400. That’s an acceptance rate of 0.36%. Harvard’s is roughly 3.6%.”

While the subject matter on the spinoffs is lighter than the flagship show, Davies said they use the same veteran writing staff that creates the cleverly constructed clues. He has added writers with expertise in sports and pop culture for the streaming shows.

Davies has made production changes to “Jeopardy!” over his tenure, updating the set and the game board. But he knows the signature elements such as the “thinking music” played during final “Jeopardy!” and off-camera announcer — 98-year-old Johnny Gilbert, who has been with the show since 1984 — are essential to every version of the program.

Davies does not expect to turn out more niche versions of “Jeopardy!” But he would like to bring back the high school and college competitions the show held in the past. Sony also is planning a live “Jeopardy!” competition, a throwback to the early days of TV quiz shows.

“‘Jeopardy!’ has to have a live version,” Davies said. “Live quizzes are really terrifying.”