Ken Jennings Will Temporarily Succeed Alex Trebek on ‘Jeopardy!’
Two weeks after the death of the beloved “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek, the game show announced Monday that it was not ready to commit to a new quizmaster just yet.
The show said that “Jeopardy!” would start taping new episodes later this month but would employ a series of short-term hosts, starting with Ken Jennings, the record-breaking contestant who won the show’s “Greatest of All Time” tournament earlier this year.
Jennings wrote on Twitter that “there will only ever be one Alex Trebek” but that he was honored to be helping out the program.
Trebek, who had hosted the show since 1984, died on Nov. 8 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He had been in the studio just 10 days before his death, and the show said at the time that episodes with him as host would air through Dec. 25. Because of expected television pre-emptions during Christmas and New Year’s, the show has shifted Trebek’s final episodes to the week of Jan. 4.
