OMG! JEOPARDY! Ken Jennings has revealed his drastic measure to stop fans from receiving notifications about the show.

Ken Jennings reveals drastic measure to stop fans from ‘getting their hands’ on notes because it could ‘break’ show

JEOPARDY! host Ken Jennings has revealed his drastic measure to stop fans from getting show notes.

Ken, 50, shared behind-the-scenes tidbits in a tell-all interview.

Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings revealed the lengthy process of scanning his show notesCredit: Getty

Ken revealed he “used the paper and crayon” on his notes when he first started hosting Jeopardy! in 2020Credit: Getty
On the latest Omnibus podcast episode with John Roderick, the Jeopardy! host described how the show notes have evolved over the years.

He revealed there is no prompter on the game show, especially during his predecessor’s time.

“I have a screen on that podium, but Alex [Trebek] did not,” Ken shared.

“He had a piece of paper. He would X out clues with a crayon.”

“Sometimes you would see him at the break, he would be gesturing with the pen like he was Bob Dole,” the host went on, mentioning the late Republican Leader of the Senate.

“A pen would squeak occasionally, so he would switch to these long, black crayons that he imported from Japan or something because they were silent.”

THE SCANNING PROCESS

“Do you use the screen? Or do you use paper?” the interviewer then asked.

Ken explained the process of how he ended up scanning his show notes.

“When I first started hosting, I used the paper and crayon,” he said.

“During the guest host, they would child-proof the show to eliminate mistakes.”

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“In order to synchronize the clue with the board better, they put in a screen,” the star continued.

“Here’s what happens. I still get a paper script.”

“I still mark it up with all the pronunciation notes, and Alex’s little notations, and all the rest,” Ken described.

“Do not accept whatever if I need to write notes to myself, stuff like that.”

Jeopardy! Host Timeline

Jeopardy! has had a tumultuous history regarding hosts after the death of the iconic Alex Trebek in 2020. Here are all of the hosts since the game show’s inception in 1964.

Art Fleming – 1964 to 1975, he was the original host of the daytime version of Jeopardy! on NBC.

Alex Trebek – 1984 to 2020, the late, great Alex hosted Jeopardy!’s modern iteration for 36 years until his death from pancreatic cancer.

Guest hosts – 2020 to 2021, Jeopardy! tested out a series of guest hosts for week or two-week stints, including Anderson Cooper, LaVar Burton, and Aaron Rodgers.

Mike Richards – 2021, he was named host for one week before resigning amid controversy. He was the show’s executive producer at the time.

Mayim Bialik – 2021 to 2023, when Mike was announced as the show’s new host, Mayim was chosen to host tournaments and primetime specials.

Mayim and Ken Jennings – 2022 to 2023, 74-time champion Ken (the longest-winning contestant ever) joined Mayim as a guest host and they split hosting duties.

Ken Jennings – 2023 to present. Last December, Mayim announced on Instagram that she would “no longer” host Jeopardy! after a lengthy hiatus, having stood with the writer’s strike, and Ken was named sole host.

Ken now helms all editions of Jeopardy! including Celebrity Jeopardy!, the nightly show, and other primetime specials like Masters.

“And then, that gets scanned in before every show.”

“I think new people were hired to run this massive scamming operation,” he joked.

“If I can host this show better on Alex’s level, we could fire all these people, but no, I will never be able to,” the host concluded.

ALEX’S SCRIPTS

During that conversation, Ken shared another fond memory about the late host.

“When I was first asked to guest host Jeopardy!, they gave me a set of scripts that Alex had already gone over,” he recalled.

“And he had written essentially musical notations above the words of the clues to kind of show these words run together, here’s where the pause is, here’s where you emphasize.”

“It wasn’t exactly like the pitch of every syllable, but he wanted to convey to himself in the moment to really get the right information, to convey the right sense of meaning here,” he ended with.

Ken and actress Mayim Bialik, 47, were named co-hosts after Alex’s tragic death in November 2020.