Game shows have been around forever, either on radio or television, and they will not be going away soon. Some things have changed, and some things have remained basically the same. The competition for ratings is much more dire and desperate these days with hundreds of TV channels, streaming and other things vying for viewers shorter and shorter attention spans. If you look at a brief history of TV game shows (they're all on YouTube so go look now.....I'll wait............................................................glad you're back!), you will see that the pacing has incrementally become faster over the decades because every second of dead air is a second of a network's earnings wasted. Also, if you haven't noticed, what is being allowed on TV in regard to language and content has also changed quite a bit, especially when it comes to the major networks who traditionally were the last ones to 'work blue', as opposed to HBO who surprises me whenever it does the exact opposite. Finally, the traditional game show host has taken a giant flying leap out the window in the 21st Century and it comes down to ratings. Networks and studios have supposedly whittled this process down to an exact science. Focus groups, Q Scores, sex appeal, knowledge of the game you're hosting (just kidding-that's what cue cards are for, you dummy!): all of these are taken into consideration in some shape or form. When Regis Philbin was picked to host the U.S. version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" in 1999, many people were shocked for several reasons. First, many people assumed he had never hosted a game show before. It had been over 25 years but, yes, he had hosted a game show before. Secondly, other people thought he might be too old for the job. That might be somewhat debatable as he was 68 at the time but, hey, if Bob Barker was still going strong, why not Reeg?
In the case of Jeopardy, when the syndicated version started in 1984, my best guess is that Merv Griffin auditioned several veteran game show hosts and a couple wild cards and then went with his gut on who should get the job. Things were so much different 40 years ago. Remember, Merv Griffin WAS Merv Griffin Productions. To whom did he have to answer? No one, except maybe his conscience and even that has never been scientifically proven. No network, just a pretty solid and proven concept and very a new syndication company eager to make some cash (King World at the time). Today it's all different. Almost no one wants veteran game show hosts. They want proven entertainers. Except Sony, I guess.
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