Watching Jeopardy! is one of my daily rituals. But it still doesn’t sit right with me that Ken Jennings won the gig of exclusive host by crossing a picket line.
Recently a decades-old clip of Jennings making a vaguely populist gibe against corporate bosses made the rounds on social media, prompting a lot of “Based Ken” replies. Like a true Debbie Downer, I felt compelled to point out that “Nevertheless, the only reason he’s the sole host of Jeopardy is that he crossed the Writers Guild picket line when Mayim Bialik would not.”
Most of the responses I’ve received were intellectually lazy and dishonest. I’m not going to respond 299 characters at a time, so I’m firing up the old blog.
What most of the posts defending Jennings’ picket line crossing really boil down to is that people on the left hated Mayim Bialik. She’s a Zionist, vaccine skeptic with weird “mommy” politics. I’ll be honest. When she and Jennings split the hosting duties from 2021-2023, I kinda liked her infectious enthusiasm for the contestants and found his ESPN-style commentary about game play and betting (plus his obvious love for incessant tournaments of repeat contestants) to be slightly irksome.
But that’s not really relevant to the ugly way that Kennings gained full control of the hosting duties, which is that when SONY producers announced that they would continue to produce new episodes of Jeopardy! (with old, unused and recycled answers) when the Writers Guild went on strike in May 2023. Bialik refused to cross the picket line and record new episodes, while Jennings dutifully reported for work. As a result, when the writers’ strike was settled, producers announced that Bialik’s schedule wouldn’t fit new tapings for the rest of the season, and then, a few months later, announced that only Jennings would officially be returning in the next season.
The lame excuses I’ve been pelted with are that Bialik is a SAG-AFTRA member who had to respect the picket line, while Jennings “would have simply gotten fired.” That representative of the Right deviation Mayim Bialik only respected the workers’ picket lines because she was legally compelled to, while our revolutionary hero Ken Jennings had to scab or lose his job. Is that really the argument?
Fact is that either host could have been fired for refusing to cross the picket line, but only one risked her job in solidarity. Look, there were other SAG-AFTRA members who did cross the picket lines, most notably Drew Barrymore, who wanted to keep her new talk show cranking out new episodes (Oh, but she “owned it,” like a girl boss). Perhaps Barrymore faced some sanction from her union, but she did not lose her job or show.
If both Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik announced together that they would not host a non-union Jeopardy!, would SONY have fired them both? Maybe, but the producers were still feeling the heat from the period immediately after Alex Trebek died, when Jeopardy! executive producer Mike Richards staged a contest in which dozens of celebrities tried out for a week of hosting duties before deciding that he, himself, was the best possible choice. If SONY decided to fire both hosts for acting in solidarity with their striking writers, I got to imagine that the ensuing controversy would be incendiary. I also have to imagine that before taking such a personal and professional risk that Bialik reached out to Jennings and tried to convince him to join in solidarity.
He didn’t, and that, regrettably, remains a black mark on his tenure. He didn’t even–as far as I can tell–show any inclination to support the writers. There was no statement during the strike itself, and he didn’t even use a non-strike excuse to try to delay the start of the new season (“I’m sorry, I can’t begin taping that week. I have a mandatory colonoscopy and/or bad case of the gout”).
Jennings probably always would have been made the exclusive host of Jeopardy! SONY was not happy having two hosts, a situation they sort of backed themselves into after Mike Richards’ Jeopardy Hunger Games! It was surely more expensive to keep two hosts under contract, the split hosting duties diluted brand awareness, and Jennings probably had the popularity edge with most viewers. All of which makes Bialik’s pro-union stand braver, and Jennings’ decision to scab more disappointing.