The first Jeopardy! show aired on March 30, 1964. The game show is 50 years old and as popular as ever now. Alex Trebek began hosting in 1984, since then the show has been on television daily. Jeopardy has won a record 30 Daytime Emmys and has gained the spot as one of America’s best loved quiz shows.
Trebek was best known for hosting shows such as The Wizard of Odds and Battlestars. Due to this, when he began Jeopardy, it was given absurd time slots and was even pulled from many stations. But 30 years later, Trebek and the quiz show’s ratings are still on top.
A professor at Union University in Tennessee, Steve Beverly, says Jeopardy‘s answer to success is, “it’s still the best mental exercise on television. It has one of the greatest play-along capacities. And if you’re sitting at home, and you’re good on respective categories, it gives you as a viewer the ability to sit there and say, ‘You idiot!’ when a contestant misses the question.”
History was the first category introduced on the famous board of the game show. Now 25 million viewers tune in weekly to join Trebek and the quiz show contestants.
