Originally Posted by
Jeffrey
IMO, not this. Trebek is critical to the show's success and has won 5 Emmy Awards for a reason.
I can easily understand paying Trebek $10 million per year. I can't easily understand paying Vanna White $10 million per year to flip letters.
Sure, Trebek is great, and the Jeopardy-watching crowd loves him, in part just due to familiarity.
But it's not like the job is brain science/rocket surgery. I am confident that I could do it. Would I be Trebek? No, of course not. I would have my own style, which differs from his. Would people want Trebek back? Probably, at least at first. But I could do the job and do it well, and the show would continue to be a success without him.
Trebek was likely a large part of Jeopardy's success, but now that the train has a lot of momentum, I do not believe that he is still mission critical. A large part of the appeal of the show is in its format. Merv knew what he was doing when he created the show.
Sadly, Trebek is likely not much longer for this world. Even if he survives the pancreatic cancer there has to come a time when he retires. Is Jeopardy going to go off the air when that happens? No. possible. way. The show itself is now iconic, and it will outlive either Trebek's death or his retirement (I hope it is the latter, but I fear it will be the former).
"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust