The legendary game-show host had a distinctive ability to toggle between gravitas, gentleness, and theatricality.
When Alex Trebek began hosting Jeopardy, Ronald Reagan was in his first term, Ghostbusters was a recent box-office hit, and most Millennials hadn’t been born yet. Now, after nearly four decades, his time behind the podium is done. Trebek, a TV icon, died over the weekend from pancreatic cancer that he was diagnosed with a year and a half ago. That diagnosis, and the resulting chemotherapy, did not stop Trebek from continuing to host the show, even when he was in serious pain. He was in the studio as recently as 11 days ago, meaning that—because Jeopardy is taped well in advance—several episodes featuring Trebek have yet to be released. The final one, which is scheduled to air on Christmas Day, will close out the year, and an era. In an industry where hosts come and go, and many shows have short runs, Trebek had a rare lifetime appointment. During his tenure, he hosted more than 8,000 episodes of Jeopardy, and the program became one of the most watched game shows in the history of American television. What propelled Trebek’s success was his distinctive ability to toggle between gravitas, gentleness, and theatricality. Jeopardy has remained popular even as the media landscape has shifted around it. When journalists and critics have written appraisals of Jeopardy in recent years, they’ve remarked on its commitment to facts and truth, and marveled at its appeal at a time when trivia questions are easily Google-able. These may be fruitful lines of inquiry, but perhaps they obscure a simple, enduring reason for Jeopardy’s popularity: Viewers enjoy testing their knowledge and, even more, the satisfaction of shouting out a correct response.
