daily double
Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings will continue sharing Jeopardy! hosting duties through summer 2022
Who will be the next permanent Jeopardy! host? It looks like that question will drag on well into 2022.
Jeopardy! announced Wednesday that Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings will continue to share hosting duties for the rest of the current season, which runs through July 29, 2022. The quiz show previously tapped Bialik and Jennings to host through the end of 2021. At the time, there was some speculation a permanent daily host could be in place by the start of 2022, but it appears that decision has been put off a bit longer.
After the death of longtime host Alex Trebek, Jeopardy! brought in a rotating series of guest hosts, including Jennings and Bialik. By August, Sony made the surprise announcement that the show's own executive producer, Mike Richards, would be the new daily host, while Bialik was hired to host primetime and spinoff series. But Richards quickly stepped down amid controversy over resurfaced offensive podcast comments and discrimination lawsuits.
Since then, Bialik and Jennings have been rotating Jeopardy! hosting duties, but no permanent plan has been announced. Fans have speculated the show could potentially either have Bialik and Jennings share hosting duties permanently, the same way Bialik would have shared hosting duties with Richards, or hire Bialik full time. In August, in fact, TMZ reported Sony was originally interested in Bialik for the permanent job, but she was too busy, including with her Fox sitcom Call Me Kat.
Jennings has been another fan favorite to get the permanent hosting job, though The Wall Street Journal has reported he wasn't selected during the initial job search because of his offensive old tweets. Bialik, meanwhile, has expressed interest in the permanent gig. If the hope is to eventually have a single daily host, though, don't expect that to happen until at least the start of the show's next season, which typically begins in September.