After 34 Years of Hosting Jeopardy, Alex Trebek Drops Obvious Retirement Hint
As a kid growing up in the rural American South, I didn’t have a lot of recourse for entertainment. This was well before the days of smartphones.
In fact, cable television was only just starting to appear. But it wasn’t readily available for someone living out in the sticks.
So when I wanted to watch TV, I had to be content with the four channels our “rabbit ears” antennae brought in. Still, I could usually count on catching a little “He-Man,” “Murder She Wrote” or “Jeopardy!”
“Jeopardy!” is one of those rare television institutions that has enjoyed a nearly perpetual presence on the airwaves. Since its March 20, 1964, debut, the show has featured a trio of contestants and a 30-square board with bafflingly difficult trivia.
But there’s one thing it hasn’t always enjoyed — the calm presence of Alex Trebek. Though Trebek is synonymous with the show today, he didn’t begin hosting it until the mid-eighties.
Trebek hadn’t always planned to enter show business. As an undergraduate at the University of Ottawa in the late 1950s, he’d majored in philosophy.
That all changed when he began a fill-in report for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and then became involved with game shows, which proved far more profitable. He hosted a number of Canadian shows before moving to Hollywood, where he helmed “The Wizard of Odds,” “High Rollers” and “The $128,000 Question.”
ABC came calling in 1984, and the rest (as they say) was history. Trebek joined “Jeopardy!,” won five Daytime Emmys and hosted some 7,000 episodes.
However, those days are drawing to a close. Trebek told Fox News’ Harvey Levin that there’s a “50/50 [chance] and a little less” that he’ll continue on the show when his contract is up in 2020.
He revealed other details in the interview, including how his parents’ divorce when he was 12 contributed to his youthful rabble rousing. He also discussed how Hollywood execs didn’t initially like his signature mustache.
“When we did the pilot,” Trebek recalled, “[someone] came to me and said, ‘Alex, uh, how strongly do you feel about your mustache?’ I said, ‘Very.’
“And that was the end of that. … We trimmed back a lot of it for the show.”
Trebek also told Levin that he was trying to not leave “Jeopardy!” in the lurch. He said that he suggested a certain play-by-play announcer for the Los Angeles Kings.
He also added, “There is an attorney, Laura Coates. She’s African-American and she appears on some of the cable news shows from time to time.”
Never one to get too puffed up, Trebek told Levin, “When I was kid, I wanted to be a doctor, a pilot, or Prime Minister of Canada. I have achieved none of my goals. You are looking at a failure.”
Hardly, Alex. In fact, I think most of us would give our eye teeth to have had a tenth of your success.
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