“I’ll take behind-the-scenes on Jeopardy for 100, Alex!” There’s more going on behind the scenes than you think.
Published on August 18, 2024, 3:01 p.m. ET
America’s favorite game show, Danger!has captivated audiences for decades. The quiz show challenges quiz stars to prove their knowledge in a unique format that turns the concept of questions and answers on its head. Since 1964, when the show began, there have been over 700,000 challenges.
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During the show, the questions are asked and directed by host Ken Jennings, who replaced the late Alex Trebek. Although Ken is an experienced quizzer himself, he doesn’t just make up the questions. In fact, there is a strong team of producers and writers who make sure the show runs as smoothly as possible.
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Who writes the questions for “Jeopardy!”?
Behind the scenes of the show is a team of writers. According to the Danger! Website, the current team consists of John Durate, Mark Gaberman, Debbie Griffin, Michelle Loud, Robert McClenaghan, Jim Rhine and Billy Wisse. Michelle and Billy also serve as producers of the show.
The team is part of the Writers’ Guild of America, which posed a problem for the show when the union went on strike. While most people viewed the strike from the perspective of fictional stories and movies that follow a script, other aspects of the industry were also affected, such as game shows and talk shows. Some of these programs, such as Danger! for a way to continue their productions without exceeding the limits by hiring new writers who would violate the strike.
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Thanks to its long history and large pool of questions, the quiz show was able to continue by simply reusing old questions from years past, making the game new and old at the same time. During that short time, the show technically had no active writers. Once the writers made a deal with the networks and went back to work, they were able to start researching and coming up with new quiz questions – or, well, technically answers – for future shows.
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How do the writers of “Jeopardy!” come up with their questions?
It may seem like a simple Google search to find funny quiz questions, but according to the Jeopardy! Writers’ Room, there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes. The process has to start somewhere, and Billy said they either come up with a witty category title and fit the quiz in from there, or just start with a general topic and figure out an approach later.
While that’s the plan, Michelle admitted that it’s not always so black and white. In fact, she confessed that she makes up quiz questions at random. “Apollo13 came out and a Whitney Houston song was playing on the radio when I saw the poster,” she said. “I said to myself in the car, ‘Whitney Houston, we have a problem.’ And the next day I wrote it down in the BEFORE & AFTER category.”
Regardless of how they come up with the questions, the next step is to really take the time to research to make sure they don’t get it wrong. One misstep in research could cost a contestant thousands of dollars and change the course of the contest.
