For several months, the producers at the primetime game show Jeopardy! have been testing hosts to replace the iconic Alex Trebek. Fan favorites included actress and neuroscientist Mayim Bialik, and actor and children’s television host Levar Burton. Other guest hosts included Savannah Guthrie, Katie Couric, Ken Jennings, Anderson Cooper, Sanjay Gupta, or Robin Roberts. The lineup showed the commitment of the show’s producers to pick a qualified, diverse candidate.
Or so we thought.
The executive producer of the show who oversaw the process was 36-year old Mike Richards, and after a careful review of all the celebrity auditions, the new Jeopardy! host will be: Mike Richards. Fans are none too pleased. It was a move that would make Dick Cheney proud. (If you recall, Cheney headed up the committee to search for W’s veep, and wound up selecting himself.) Worse, Richards was selected despite allegations from models on Price Is Right, his former employer, who claimed discrimination and harassment.
Richards tenure at the Price Is Right was rife with lawsuits. Model Brandi Cochran said she was discriminated against after she become pregnant. She alleged she delayed getting pregnant because of the harassment she witnessed of other models who did. In 2008, when she finally became pregnant after a miscarriage, she tried her best to hide it to not incur the producers’ wrath. Eventually, she told Richards and said he was upset and collapsed into his hands:
“He asked her twice, in an annoyed tone, ‘Twins? Are you serious? ... You’re serious?’”
Cochran said Richards acted like a jerk toward her after that. He didn’t talk to her as much and also implied she would have been fired had he had learned about her pregnancy sooner. She said she was pressured to announce her pregnancy on air, and was given less work. She claimed to have suffered a hostile working environment, and had to endure jokes about her weight gain. In the end, however, she was successful in being awarded more than $7.7 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
Cochran’s suit also alleged that Richards was the one who wanted all the models to dress more provocatively, and found excuses to put them in bikinis more often. Another model, Shane Stirling, also sued for being fired as a result of her pregnancy, but in her case, the suit was tossed because the statute of limitations had already run out. Richards and the other producers said she was fired because of lack of chemistry with host Drew Carey. There was a third model, Lanisha Cole, who settled out of court, but Richards was dropped as a defendant.
Jeopardy! had a rare chance to go in a bold direction and find a new audience with its healthy pool of celebrity candidates. It wasn’t lost on anyone that for the past few months, the producers made a big show out of highlighting a range of diverse, popular candidates only to pick their own executive producer—and one with some skeletons in his closet.
At least Twitter had some action:
As for me, I wasn’t much of a Jeopardy! fan to begin with, but I am a huge fan of Mayim Bialik, and perhaps would have given it a shot if she had hosted. I also love Levar Burton, and think this would have been a nice arc for him. He encouraged kids for decades to read, and now he’d be playing host to several of them as grown-ups, which would have showed that reading and education pays off.
To be fair, other applicants shined. Aaron Rodgers was good, as was Ken Jennings—and he really earned a place in the show's history. Mike Richards is more than capable of hosting, but I really don’t know what he brings to the table. He certainly isn’t going to bring anything new or different. As I said, given the production they made about the new potential candidates—many with large fan bases—only to pick someone in-house with a less than stellar past is a big slap in the face. If anything, I think the show is likely going to lose viewers.
I hope they enjoyed their recent high ratings. I don’t think they will be getting those again anytime soon.
