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      Ryan Seacrest to Succeed Pat Sajak as ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Host

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      The game show has demonstrated remarkable durability even as traditional television has declined in the wake of streaming entertainment.Ryan Seacrest, the dexterous Hollywood master of ceremonies, was named the next host of “Wheel of Fortune” on Tuesday, succeeding the longtime host Pat Sajak in 2024.The selection of a star like Mr. Seacrest by Sony Pictures Television, the studio behind the show, is a big bet on “Wheel of Fortune.” The show has demonstrated remarkable durability even as traditional television has declined in the wake of streaming entertainment.The swift decision by Sony executives, made just two weeks after Mr. Sajak announced he would step down next year, also suggests that they are hoping to avoid the succession fiasco that nearly overwhelmed their other hit game show, “Jeopardy!”Vanna White, Mr. Sajak’s longtime “Wheel of Fortune” co-host, is under contract for another year, and is in negotiations to continue with the show, said a person with knowledge of the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity.“I’m truly humbled to be stepping into the footsteps of the legendary Pat Sajak,” Mr. Seacrest said in a statement. “I can’t wait to continue the tradition of spinning the wheel and working alongside the great Vanna White.”In replacing Mr. Sajak, Mr. Seacrest will face a test: He’ll be replacing a host who is virtually synonymous with the show, like Bob Barker was with “The Price Is Right” or Alex Trebek with “Jeopardy!”Mr. Sajak, a former Los Angeles weatherman, as well as Ms. White, came to “Wheel of Fortune” in the early 1980s and turned the show into a major hit. Within a few years, “Wheel of Fortune” spawned board games, video games, casino slot machines and, eventually, a prime-time spinoff, “Celebrity Wheel of Fortune.”Though “Wheel of Fortune” hardly holds the same spot it once did in American culture — at its height in the 1980s, the game show had a nightly audience of more than 40 million viewers — it remains one of the most popular entertainment programs on television.At its height of popularity in the 1980s, “Wheel of Fortune” had a nightly audience of more than 40 million viewers.ABC, via Everett CollectionIn the most recent television season, “Wheel of Fortune” averaged 8.6 million viewers a night, just a shade behind the 9.1 million who watched “Jeopardy!,” according to Nielsen. Those audiences are nearly as big as anything on prime-time TV, aside from football games.Hosting a popular game show, which requires little more than a few days of work a month, is one of the most coveted jobs in all of entertainment. Landing the job adds another notch to Mr. Seacrest’s résumé, which has included stints as a daytime talk show host, competition series host, red carpet interviewer, radio host and New Year’s Eve master of ceremonies.Mr. Seacrest left “Live,” the morning show mainstay that he hosted with Kelly Ripa, this year after a successful six-year run. He continues to host ABC’s “American Idol,” which garnered an audience of more than six million this past television season, according to Nielsen.When Mr. Sajak announced on June 12 that he would be leaving the show, many in the entertainment industry thought the search for his replacement could take months. Still, succession speculation began immediately, and on social media many “Wheel of Fortune” fans called for Ms. White to take over as host. Puck reported last week that she was in negotiations for a new “Wheel of Fortune” contract.Underscoring just how much celebrity entertainers covet the position, Joy Behar remarked on “The View” two weeks ago that her co-host Whoopi Goldberg had interest in hosting “Wheel of Fortune.”“I want that job,” Ms. Goldberg replied definitively, to the cheers of the studio audience. “I think it would be lots of fun.”After Mr. Trebek died in 2020, Sony trotted out a rotating cast of potential “Jeopardy!” successors, who filled in as guest host for a week or two at a time. In 2021, Sony announced that Mike Richards, the show’s executive producer, would take over hosting duties at “Jeopardy!”But within a matter of days, reports surfaced that Mr. Richards had made a series of sexist and offensive remarks years earlier, and, amid a public uproar, he was pushed out of the job — first as host and then as executive producer of the show. It took nearly another year for Sony to announce that Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik would be the permanent hosts of “Jeopardy!”Over the last year, the drama surrounding “Jeopardy!” has settled down considerably, and the show has sustained its strong ratings.Two weeks ago, Mr. Jennings was asked on “The View” who should take replace Mr. Sajak.“That’s an interesting question,” Mr. Jennings said, adding: “Hopefully, ‘Wheel’ has got an envelope somewhere that says, ‘What to do when Pat packs it in.’” More

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      Final ‘Jeopardy!’: Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik to Split Hosting Duties

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      The popular game show, which has had trouble finding a new host since Alex Trebek died in 2020, will stick with the hosts who served temporarily this year.For more than a year, there was one question that fans of “Jeopardy!” could never seem to get a clear answer to: Who would succeed its popular longtime host Alex Trebek after his death, becoming the new face of the popular quiz show?First came a rotating cast of temporary hosts — including LeVar Burton, who had a legion of online fans boosting him as the permanent choice, and Mehmet Oz, a celebrity doctor who followed his hosting stint with a bid for U.S. Senate. Then, the show announced its succession plan — its executive producer, Mike Richards, would take over as host during the regular season, while Mayim Bialik would tape prime-time specials. That plan imploded after revelations that Richards had made offensive comments on a podcast.To fill the hosting vacuum, the program then turned to Bialik and to the former champion Ken Jennings, asking them to fill in temporarily and split hosting duties. It was a temporary arrangement that got extended, and on Wednesday, the show made it permanent, opting for the status quo rather than another major shake-up.“I write today with the exciting news that we have closed and signed deals with Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings to be the hosts of ‘Jeopardy!’ moving forward,” the show’s executive producer, Michael Davies, wrote in an announcement posted to the show’s website.The rationale for two hosts, he explained, was the show’s rapidly expanding brand, which includes a “Celebrity Jeopardy!” spinoff and a Second Chance tournament that invites standout contestants back to compete.Read More About ‘Jeopardy!’A New Legend: When Amy Schneider’s 40-game streak ended, she left as the highest-winning woman in the show’s history.Star Players: Schneider’s success is not a one-off. “Jeopardy!” has seen an unusual trend of big winners lately.A Signature Look: Mattea Roach, the show’s most high-profile Gen Zer, has a personal style that reflects her generation and helped make her a star.“The fact is, we have so much ‘Jeopardy!’ to make, and so many plans for the future, that we always knew we would need multiple hosts for the franchise,” Davies wrote.Jennings will be hosting the regular season shows through December, and Bialik will take over in January, according to the announcement.In a gesture to the show’s loyal but vocal fan base, Davies sought to give them some reassurances: “We know you value consistency, so we will not flip-flop the hosts constantly and will keep you informed about the hosting schedule.”The new arrangement makes official the stopgap solution the show hit upon after Richards departed the show last August. The program initially announced that Bialik and Jennings would share the job through the remainder of 2021. Then, in December, the show said the arrangement would continue into 2022.But while the show was struggling to find its footing behind the scenes, it continued to generate excitement — and ratings — with a series of star contestants. Within just one season, four new champions were added to the show’s all-time leaderboard, fueling plenty of theorizing among fans about what was behind the new streak of winning streaks. For a while, the growing celebrity of the winning contestants — including Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio and Mattea Roach — offered a welcome distraction from the lack of clarity around who would become the permanent face of the show.Jennings remains the champion with the highest number of consecutive wins (74) and the highest amount of money won in regular-season games ($2.5 million) in the show’s history. Bialik, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience and is best known for her role as a scientist in the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” has made clear from the beginning that she is interested in getting the job permanently, though she has had to balance it with the demands of her sitcom “Call Me Kat,” and faced criticism for endorsing a “brain health supplement” for a company that settled a lawsuit accusing it of false advertising. Jennings has also received criticism for old social media posts, apologizing for tweeting “unartful and insensitive things” after he was initially revealed as a “Jeopardy!” guest host following Trebek’s death.After Richards’s departure, Davies, a veteran game-show producer who developed the original American version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,” took over temporarily as executive producer — and that job, too, soon became permanent.Under Davies, the show has worked to expand beyond its traditional structure and to cater to its passionate fans, announcing daily statistics for each contestant and, on Wednesday, a new podcast.And there are more specials coming. Bialik will host “Celebrity Jeopardy!,” which debuts on ABC in September, while Jennings will host the first Second Chance Tournament, as well as the upcoming Tournament of Champions. In his announcement, Davies hinted that there could be more spinoffs ahead, noting that Bialik would also host a couple of new tournaments, in addition to the college championship. More

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      Adam Wade, Network Game Show Pioneer, Is Dead at 87

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      As a singer, he had three Top 10 hits in 1961. As an actor, he had a long career in film and on television. As an M.C., he broke a racial barrier.Adam Wade, a versatile, velvet-voiced crooner who scored three consecutive Billboard Top 10 hits in a single year, appeared in scores of films, plays and TV productions, and in 1975 became the first Black host of a network television game show, died on Thursday at his home in Montclair, N.J. He was 87.His wife, Jeree Wade, a singer, actress and producer, said the cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease.In May 1975, CBS announced that it would break a network television racial barrier by naming Mr. Wade the master of ceremonies of a weekly afternoon game show, “Musical Chairs.”Staged at the Ed Sullivan Theater in Manhattan and co-produced by the music impresario Don Kirshner, the program featured guest musical performances, with four contestants competing to complete the lyrics of songs and respond to questions about music. (Among the guest performers were groups like the Spinners and singers like Irene Cara.)The novelty of a Black M.C. was not universally embraced: A CBS affiliate in Alabama refused to carry the show, and hate mail poured in — including, Mr. Wade told Connecticut Public Radio in 2014, a letter from a man “saying he didn’t want his wife sitting at home watching the Black guy hand out the money and the smarts.”The show was canceled after less than five months. Still, Mr. Wade said, “It probably added 30 years to my career.”That career began while he was working as a laboratory technician for Dr. Jonas E. Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine, and a songwriter friend invited him to New York to audition for a music publisher. He first recorded for Coed Records in 1958 and two years later moved to Manhattan, where he performed with the singer Freddy Cole, the brother of his idol Nat King Cole, and, rapidly ascending the show business ladder, opened for Tony Bennett and for the comedian Joe E. Lewis at the fashionable Copacabana nightclub.“Two years ago, he was Patrick Henry Wade, a $65-a-week aide on virus research experiments in the laboratory of Dr. Jonas E. Salk at the University of Pittsburgh,” The New York Times wrote in 1961. “Today he is Adam Wade, one of the country’s rising young singers in nightclubs and on records.”That same year, he recorded three songs that soared to the upper echelons of the Billboard Hot 100 chart: “Take Good Care of Her” (which reached No. 7), “The Writing on the Wall” (No. 5) and “As if I Didn’t Know” (No. 10).Patrick Henry Wade was born on March 17, 1935, in Pittsburgh to Pauline Simpson and Henry Oliver Wade Jr. He was raised by his grandparents, Henry Wade, a janitor at the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research (now part of Carnegie Mellon University), and Helen Wade.He attended Virginia State University on a basketball scholarship, but, although he had dreamed of playing for the Harlem Globetrotters, dropped out after three years and went to work at Dr. Salk’s laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. Undecided about whether to accept the recording contract that Coed offered, Mr. Wade consulted Dr. Salk.“He told me he had this opportunity,” Dr. Salk told The Times at the time. “I told him he must search his own soul to find out what is in him that wants to come out.”He changed his first name — because his agent said there were too many Pats in show business — and had his first hit with the song “Ruby” early in 1960. His smooth vocal style was often compared to that of Johnny Mathis, but Mr. Wade said he was primarily influenced by an earlier boyhood idol, Nat King Cole.“So I guess that tells you how good my imitating skills were,” he said.He appeared on TV on soap operas including “The Guiding Light” and “Search for Tomorrow” and sitcoms including “The Jeffersons” and “Sanford & Son.” He was also seen in “Shaft” (1971), “Come Back Charleston Blue” (1972) and other films, and onstage in a 2008 touring company of “The Color Purple.”He and his wife ran Songbird, a company that produced African American historical revues, including the musical “Shades of Harlem,” which was staged Off Broadway at the Village Gate in 1983.The couple last performed at an anniversary party this year.In addition to Ms. Wade, whom he married in 1989, he is survived by their son, Jamel, a documentary filmmaker; three children, Sheldon Wade, Patrice Johnson Wade and Michael Wade, from his marriage to Kay Wade, which ended in 1973; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.For all his success in show business, Mr. Wade said he was particularly proud that 40 years after dropping out of college he earned a bachelor’s degree from Lehman College and a master’s in theater history and criticism from Brooklyn College, both constituents of the City University of New York. He taught speech and theater at Long Island University and at Bloomfield College in New Jersey.“I was the first one in my family to go to college,” he told Connecticut Public Radio. “I promised my grandmother back then that I would finish college someday. Many years later, I kept that promise.” More

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      Amy Schneider on Her Whirlwind ‘Jeopardy!’ Run

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      She seemed unstoppable, but on Wednesday, it happened. After 40 wins, Amy Schneider, the “Jeopardy!” champion whose information recall often seemed faster than a search engine, was defeated.Schneider ended with the second longest streak in the history of the game and $1.4 million in total winnings. She was beat by Rhone Talsma, a 29-year-old librarian from Chicago, who answered the Final Jeopardy clue correctly when Schneider did not. His face after his win was one of absolute shock. (He said in an interview Wednesday that he had thought defeat was inevitable because of Schneider’s record.)Schneider, 42, an engineering manager who lives in Oakland, Calif., has been through a whirlwind couple of months, fulfilling a longtime dream of being on the show and contending with becoming a public figure as she rocketed to game-show fame.As a transgender woman, she dealt with bigotry online, responding to it graciously on social media; she also received a stream of encouragement and affirmation from those thrilled to see a transgender person succeed so mightily on television.In an interview on Wednesday, she spoke about her final game and what her run on “Jeopardy!” has meant to her. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Do you have one overwhelming emotion right now, or is it a mix of them?It’s definitely a mix. A lot of it is emotions that I had at the time, but the one that’s really different is that my fans on Twitter and everything are going to be sad. And it bums me out.Take me back to the beginning of this game. Do you remember how you were feeling?You know, I had a feeling about that day, some reason. You wouldn’t really think so from looking at the scores of the last week, but once I passed Matt Amodio, there was this like motivation — I could feel it slip. You know, Ken’s record still seems so far away. And the fatigue of this taping was really starting to add up. I couldn’t explain it even to myself, but I just could feel that something was slipping a little bit, however much I tried to fight it.Read More About ‘Jeopardy!’A New Legend: Her dazzling 40-game run is over, but Amy Schneider reached historic milestones for money won and consecutive victories.On a Roll: Schneider’s long streak is not a one-off: The show has seen an unusual trend of big winners lately. But why?Hosting Duo: Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik are sharing the role this season, putting an end to the speculation around the job — for now.A Rattled TV Institution: Replacing the late Alex Trebek has been an ongoing saga for the show. Here’s how the messy succession unfolded.How many games had you played that day?This was the third. It was right after lunch. And another thing I did kind of have a feeling about was Rhone. Ken would often say how, when he was eventually defeated, it was the person who was just friendly and wanted to hang out, wasn’t intimidated by him. That was definitely true of Rhone. And he was also really a fun guy to hang out with. And I was like, well, if it had to be someone, I’m glad it was him.What was the turning point of that game?There was one clue that both of us knew the answer to, and he beat me on the buzzer and then that gave him the Daily Double. And he — I think quite correctly — made the bold move and bet everything to really go for the win and it paid off for him. And once he had gotten that Daily Double, I knew that, at the very least, it was going to come down to Final Jeopardy.Walk me through that Final Jeopardy. How are you feeling about the category (Countries of the World)?I felt great about the category. Geography has always been a strong subject of mine. And then the clue came up, and it just wasn’t coming to me. And it was very frustrating.[The clue: The only nation in the world whose name in English ends in an “H,” it’s also one of the 10 most populous.]I remember my mind, as it was hopping through the world. I was like, “India; no. Pakistan; no. Nepal; no.” And then it just moved on and I was right there by Bangladesh and I didn’t get it.A lot of times during this run you’ve been totally secure going into Final Jeopardy. So this was kind of unusual, right?Yeah, it had happened a few times before, but not anytime recently. And so I’d sort of forgotten what that fear was like and that kind of pressure.How did it feel sinking in that it was over?I mean, it was tough. Playing “Jeopardy!” has been the most fun I’ve ever had and I didn’t want it to end. I knew it would some time, but it was tough to realize that the moment was finally there. That said, there was some relief as well. One of the first thoughts I had was, well, I don’t have to come up with any more anecdotes. And it had been a lot, going out of town every week, and it was just nice to be like, OK, I can just get back to my normal life with Genevieve [Schneider’s girlfriend].I can only imagine how mentally and emotionally taxing it was. Describe how you felt after a day taping five games.Just done. I would call Genevieve and let her know what happened and then go back either to the hotel room or the airport, depending what day it was, and just like sit there, lie there and just do nothing. Not think, not read on my phone, just like nothing for like an hour every time.What did you learn from this experience, first in terms of trivia, and then in terms of your life and who you are?Well, definitely Bangladesh. I can tell you that. It’s mainly around some of the stuff I missed. Like the Field Museum the other day [the correct response to Final Jeopardy] — that was frustrating.And in terms of your life more broadly?I think the main thing that I got out of this was being OK with myself, how I look, how I present to the world. I’ve been openly trans for a little under five years now, and there’s still definitely lingering worry and dysphoria and things like that.Just to get so much positive feedback, so much support and so much acceptance, it enabled me — by the end of it — to look at myself on TV and be like, “Oh, you know, she’s pretty, she’s fun, what a likable person.” And I’ve never been able to see myself that way before.What kind of feedback have you heard from transgender “Jeopardy!” fans or just transgender people in general who have reached out to you?Just a ton of support. That’s been really great and really meaningful. I think that just as great, just as meaningful, has been hearing from parents, grandparents, loved ones of trans people and hearing either that they understand their trans loved ones better, or, a lot of times too, that I’ve eased their fears for their trans loved ones, seeing that trans people can succeed and they’re not going to be as limited as maybe they feared that they would be. More

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      ‘Jeopardy!’ Keeps Seeing Winning Streaks. Champions Ponder Why.

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      Amy Schneider isn’t the only one on a roll. Just a dozen players have won 10 or more games, half of those in the past five years, and a quarter in this season alone.When Amy Schneider became the fourth contestant in the history of “Jeopardy!” to surpass $1 million in winnings in regular-season play on Friday, she extended her winning streak to 28 games.It was a remarkable milestone for Schneider, who last month became the woman with the most consecutive wins on the program.Her victory came as long winning streaks have grown more common on “Jeopardy!” — there even seem to be streaks of streaks. Earlier this season Matt Amodio won 38 consecutive games, the second-longest run in the show’s history. The player who beat him, Jonathan Fisher, ended up winning 11 games in a row, a rare feat in itself.Since “Jeopardy!” got rid of a rule in 2003 that had limited contestants to no more than five wins in a row, only a dozen contestants have managed to win 10 or more games in a row. Half of the dozen, or six streaks, have occurred in the past five years, while half of those six have been this season.The winning streaks have provided some welcome excitement, and ratings boosts, for a show that has struggled to choose a permanent replacement for Alex Trebek, its beloved longtime host, who died in November 2020. But they have also raised new questions.Is this trend simply a result of chance? Are contestants getting better at prepping — have they learned to game the game? Is this a case of improvement over time, much in the same way that top runners and swimmers are able to best the records set by their predecessors? Could the clues possibly be getting easier?Earlier this season Jonathan Fisher won 11 games in a row.Jeopardy ProductionsHe beat Matt Amodio, who won 38 consecutive games.Jeopardy Productions“Behind the scenes we’ve spent a lot of time discussing whether this is some kind of ‘new normal’ or whether we’ve just had an unusual windfall of brilliant ‘Jeopardy!’ players,” Michael Davies, the show’s executive producer, wrote in an email.He discounted the notion that the clues could be getting easier.“I actually think the show may be getting harder,” Davies wrote, noting that the subject matter covers an ever-wider range of material. “Let’s face it, so few people read the same books anymore or watch the same TV shows. And we have massively diversified the history, cultural and pop cultural material we expect our players to compete over.”Theories abound about the show’s recent run of big winners. In interviews and emails, several recent champions and people who write about “Jeopardy!” and study it obsessively offered their thoughts.The show’s longtime host, Alex Trebek, left, posed with Ken Jennings after his earnings from his record breaking-streak surpassed $1 million in 2004.Jeopardy Productions, via Getty ImagesThe writers and producers behind the show have talked about several possible explanations, Davies wrote, including that contestants now have access to a wealth of online resources (including a fan-generated website called J! Archive, which Schneider relied on to prepare, that includes clues dating back to the 1980s).Andy Saunders, who runs the website ​​ The Jeopardy! Fan, has started to run the numbers and believes the trend may be significant beyond this particular moment. In a blog post on Friday, Saunders wrote that the average streak length started increasing in the season spanning 2010 and 2011, which he suggested could be the result of more intensive preparation on the part of contestants.Some point to the influence of one star player: James Holzhauer, a professional sports bettor who won 32 games in 2019 and continues to hold the record for the most money won in a single game.Holzhauer’s strategy — to start with the high-value clues, hunt for the Daily Doubles and make risky wagers — proved to be a winning one for him, and some contestants took note. Amodio, for example, said he copied Holzhauer’s approach of starting with the large money clues at the bottom of the board. But Schneider has done the opposite, taking a more traditional approach that she called a “reaction against James Holzhauer.”James Holzhauer, a sports bettor who won 32 games in 2019, influenced the strategy of some contestants who followed. John Locher/Associated PressHolzhauer’s take on the current trend? A product of chance.“People always assume everything is a paradigm shift,” Holzhauer wrote in an email, “when it’s actually fairly normal for results to occasionally cluster.”One theory holds that the pandemic may have played a role, causing delays that increased the lead time — and potentially the study time — contestants had after they had been invited to compete on the show.“You had a whole bunch of people who knew they were going to be on the show and could spend a whole bunch of extra time preparing,” Saunders noted.Amodio and Schneider were two of those people. Amodio, a Ph.D. student in computer science at Yale, was initially scheduled to compete in April 2020 but because of pandemic cancellations, started taping a year later than originally planned.In that time, Amodio said in an interview, he focused on boning up on pop culture, a weak area of knowledge for him. He listened to pop music he had not heard before (discovering Dua Lipa in the process) and watched samples of a broad swath of current television (including “The Good Place,” which earned him the correct response to a $1000 clue in his 13th game).Schneider was invited onto the show in fall 2020, but the taping was delayed and she didn’t compete until about a year later, giving her more time to practice with the clues from previous games and correct gaps in her knowledge (“like forgetting which Brontë sister was which,” she said).But she said in an interview that she was skeptical that the extra study time was a significant factor. She views a well-prepared contestant as someone who has long been an intellectually curious person — not someone who crams before the test. “You just have to live a life where you’re learning stuff all the time,” she said.Fisher, who beat Amodio, had little time to prepare: There was only about a week between his getting the call inviting him to appear on the show and his arrival at the studio.Still another explanation being considered is the recent increase in applicants. Shortly before the pandemic hit, the show introduced a new entrance test that would-be contestants can take at any time, rather than limiting it to particular times. In a recent article for The Ringer exploring the trend in streaks, Claire McNear reported that before the new exam was introduced, “Jeopardy!” had about 70,000 applicants each year; with the new exam, it gets an average of about 125,000 a year.The show has also replaced regional in-person follow-up rounds with virtual rounds, a change that Cory Anotado, a game-show journalist who will appear on the show as a contestant this week, views as an important factor.“When you lower the barrier of entry, a lot of times you get better results,” he said.The string of successes comes at a time of upheaval for “Jeopardy!” The search for someone to succeed Trebek devolved into controversy after McNear reported that the chosen successor, Mike Richards, had made offensive comments about women on his podcast several years earlier (Richards stepped down from the hosting role then left the show entirely). Ken Jennings — who holds the record for the longest streak since winning 74 games in 2004 — and the sitcom actress Mayim Bialik have shared hosting duties since, but the show has put off officially naming a permanent host for the regular season.McNear, the author of a 2020 history of the show called “Answers in the Form of Questions,” wrote in the article that the elimination of the five-day cap in 2003 had been “an explicit ploy by then-executive producer Harry Friedman to drum up interest in the show,” and noted that the show’s ratings have been up this season compared to last season.Asked if it was possible for the show to try to engineer streaks by, say, pitting champions against weaker opponents, Davies said, “I can assure you that that isn’t the case.”He said that a diverse pool of contestants is selected for every taping and that an outside compliance agency randomly selects which games they will play in and in which order.It is also hard to predict how well a contestant might do based on what’s on paper. One element that is critical to a “Jeopardy!” streak is not related to knowledge or information recall but skill at using the buzzer in the specific environment of the studio.As a defending champion, Schneider said she quickly learned that she had a significant advantage over newcomers because she was already comfortable and quick with the device.“Now that I’ve been on a streak of my own,” she said, “I’m almost surprised that it hasn’t happened more often.” More

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      Amy Schneider Becomes First Woman to Surpass $1 Million on ‘Jeopardy!’

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      Schneider, a software engineering manager, is the fourth contestant in the game show’s history to reach the milestone.Now that Amy Schneider has experienced what it’s like to dominate on the “Jeopardy!” stage, she wonders why streaks like hers don’t happen more often.Once you get used to the buzzer and the cadence of the clues, she explained in a recent interview, you have a significant advantage over a candidate who comes in cold.And Schneider has certainly settled into her groove.On Friday, she became the fourth contestant and the first woman in the history of “Jeopardy!” to surpass $1 million in winnings during regular-season play. She did so on her 28th game, a runaway in which she won over $42,000, continuing a streak that has captured the attention of game-show fans across the country.“It’s not a sum of money I ever anticipated would be associated with my name,” Schneider, a 42-year-old software engineering manager who lives in Oakland, Calif., said in a news release.Schneider, who grew up watching “Jeopardy!” at home with her parents and in eighth grade was voted most likely to appear on the show, has had a whirlwind of a week — for good reasons and bad. On Monday, she tweeted that she had been robbed, losing her credit cards, identification and phone. (As a result, she said she would need to pause her detailed recaps of each game on social media).The $1 million mark is a rare one to reach — Ken Jennings was the first player to do so, in 2004, 30 games into his record 74-game run. But fans have gotten increasingly used to seeing contestants achieve it. James Holzhauer became the second person to hit $1 million during his 32-game streak in 2019. Three months ago, Matt Amodio surpassed $1 million as well, amassing $1.5 million before he was beat after 38 wins.The recent pattern of streaks on the show has fueled theorizing among fans watching from their couches and among members of the show’s production team. Some have postulated that pandemic-related delays in production have benefited some contestants by giving them more time to study. Some point to the increasingly vast amount of resources online. Or, it could just be chance.“To some extent, I think it’s just got to be a statistical fluke,” Schneider said.Schneider is doubtful that the extra time she had to prepare during the pandemic helped her significantly. Ultimately, she said, it’s not something you can cram for.“To be good at ‘Jeopardy!’,” she said, “you just have to live a life where you’re learning stuff all the time.” More

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      Amy Schneider Wins the Most Consecutive ‘Jeopardy!’ Games of Any Female Contestant

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      Ms. Schneider won her 21st “Jeopardy!” game in a row, bringing her total earnings to $806,000.When Amy Schneider was an eighth grader in Dayton, Ohio, her fellow students voted her most likely to appear on “Jeopardy!”They underestimated her.On Wednesday, Ms. Schneider, 42, an engineering manager from Oakland, Calif., became the first woman in the show’s history to achieve 21 consecutive wins, surpassing Julia Collins, who had set the record of 20 wins in 2014.“I never dreamed of matching Julia’s streak,” Ms. Schneider wrote on Twitter. “It’s hard to say how I felt: proud, dazed, happy, numb, all those things.”In an interview on Thursday, Ms. Schneider said that when she was not concentrating on the answers, she was thinking about whether she might beat Ms. Collins’s record.“I could pretend that I didn’t have my eye on the various leaderboards at that point, but I was definitely aware,” she said. “I knew what was at stake.”The episodes were filmed in September and October, but Ms. Schneider did not make her television debut until Nov. 17. After each episode, she went on Twitter to write colorful play-by-play accounts of her wins or to post updates about her cat, Meep.This week, when she notched her 20th win, she described how she had nearly missed her chance to tie Ms. Collins’s record when one of her fellow contestants, Josette Curtis, began gaining on her.“Josette, a registered dietitian, went on a bit of a run in the Vitamin category, and all of a sudden my shot at a runaway was in doubt,” Ms. Schneider wrote. “And if Josette found the last Daily Double, she could potentially take the lead!”In the end, Ms. Schneider handily won that game and the following episode.Her 21st win came when she correctly identified the ship that Officer Charles Lightoller had boarded on April 15, 1912.Her answer, “What is the Carpathia?” — the ship that rescued the roughly 700 surviving crew members and passengers of the Titanic — brought her total prize money to $806,000, the fifth highest amount won by any “Jeopardy!” contestant and the highest amount won by a female contestant in the show’s history.Ms. Schneider holds the No. 4 spot overall on the list of “Jeopardy!” contestants with consecutive wins. No. 1 on that list is Ken Jennings, now a “Jeopardy!” co-host, who won 74 consecutive games in 2014. Ms. Schneider was congratulated by previous winners like Larissa Kelly, who appeared on the show in 2008 and 2009 when she was a graduate student and who once held the record for highest-earning female contestant.“Well, it was fun to hold a Jeopardy! record for a few years,” Ms. Kelly wrote on Twitter. “But it’s been even more fun to watch @Jeopardamy set new standards for excellence, on the show and off.”Ms. Schneider, a transgender woman, lives in Oakland with her girlfriend, Genevieve.As a child, she watched “Jeopardy!” with her parents, she said, and dreamed of being a contestant one day. She read voraciously and absorbed trivia. In grade school, she participated in geography bee competitions and made it to the top 10 in Ohio in 1992.“I got a National Geographic atlas for that,” Ms. Schneider said.When the opportunity to appear on “Jeopardy!” arose, she said, she felt unsure about how to discuss her gender identity.In the end, she decided to acknowledge it simply — by wearing a pin bearing the trans pride flag during an episode.The decision, Ms. Schneider said, was in part inspired by Kate Freeman, who wore a similar pin in December 2020 when she became what many believe was the first openly transgender woman to win on “Jeopardy!”“It was something that I wanted to get out there and to show my pride in while not making it the focus of what I was doing there,” Ms. Schneider said. “Because I was just there to answer trivia questions and win money.”Ms. Schneider’s record has brought positive attention to the long-running quiz show after it was rocked by drama over who would permanently succeed Alex Trebek, the host for more than 36 years.Mr. Trebek died in November 2020 of pancreatic cancer. He was 80.Over the summer, Sony Pictures Entertainment, which produces the show, announced that Mike Richards, an executive producer on the show, would be the permanent host. The decision disappointed “Jeopardy!” fans who had become invested in a series of celebrity guest hosts the show appeared to be auditioning to replace Mr. Trebek.The show then had to contend with the fallout from a report by The Ringer that revealed offensive comments Mr. Richards had made about women on a podcast in 2014. Mr. Richards resigned as host and executive producer shortly after the report was published.Sony later announced that it would keep Mr. Jennings and Mayim Bialik, a sitcom actress, as its hosts.Ms. Schneider is not allowed to say how far she got on the show. The next episode, in which she competed against Nate Levy, a script coordinator from Los Angeles, and Sarah Wrase, an accountant from Monroe, Mich., was scheduled to air on Thursday.Ms. Schneider said her advice for anyone who wanted to replicate her success was “just be curious.”She added: “The way to know a lot of stuff is to want to know a lot of stuff.”Kitty Bennett More

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      Michael Gargiulo Dies at 95; Documented the Moscow ‘Kitchen Debate’

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      Sent to the Soviet Union in 1959 to promote color television, he ended up taping what he later called a “turning point” in U.S.-Soviet relations.Michael Gargiulo, an Emmy Award-winning television director and producer who immortalized the impromptu 1959 “kitchen debate” between Vice President Richard M. Nixon and the Soviet leader, Nikita S. Khrushchev, in Moscow, died on Nov. 30 at his home in Manhattan. He was 95.His son, Michael, an anchor for “Today in New York” on NBC, said the cause was congestive heart failure.The made-for-television moment took place during a brief thaw in the Cold War, with the finger-wagging performances by Nixon, on the eve of his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, and the pugnacious Khrushchev starting in the kitchen of a model home at an American trade fair in Sokolniki Park.The two world leaders had been steered to the $14,000 “typical American house” by William Safire, who would later become a speechwriter for Nixon and an opinion columnist for The New York Times, but who at the time was handling public relations for a Long Island homebuilder. (It was Mr. Safire who gave the house the name “Splitnik,” because it was bisected by a walkway for spectators.)The largely good-natured tit-for-tat escalated as Nixon and Khrushchev wended their way through the exhibition hall. They were headed for the studio and control room that Mr. Gargiulo (pronounced gar-JOOL-oh) and his team had assembled for RCA at the invitation of the State Department to promote American technological superiority in color television.“As they were walking in, we were already recording,” Mr. Gargiulo recalled in an interview with his son in 2019. “They didn’t even know we were rolling.”Through interpreters, the U.S. vice president and the Soviet leader conducted a guns-and-butter debate on the merits of capitalism versus Communism, which Mr. Gargiulo and his team shot, ostensibly so they could immediately replay it to demonstrate the wonders of color TV.But while Nixon had been warned to be on his best behavior (so Khrushchev would accept an invitation to a subsequent summit meeting), neither official could resist a microphone and a camera.Nixon acknowledged Soviet advances in outer space; Khrushchev, sporting an incompatible Panama hat and oversize suit, conceded nothing.“In another seven years we will be on the same level as America,” he said. “In passing you by, we will wave to you.”Mr. Gargiulo said the two men had promised that the debate would be broadcast in both Russia and the United States. But a few hours after it ended, he said, Kremlin aides demanded that he turn the original tape over to them.By then, it had already been spirited out of the Soviet Union by NBC (which was part of RCA at the time) to be shared with CBS and ABC, but Mr. Gargiulo offered to share a copy with the Soviets. As a result, the debate was seen on both sides of the Iron Curtain that evening.“It was what we call a virtual draw,” Mr. Gargiulo said of the confrontation.The Moscow trip — on which he was accompanied by his wife, who was pregnant with their son — left him with warm memories as well as accolades.“I never felt more patriotic,” he said. “This was world leaders taping on the sly and slipping it out of the country.”“I can’t imagine anybody thinking that was not a turning point in both of our relationships,” he added.Things ended up better for Mr. Gargiulo than they did for the debaters, at least in the short term. Nixon lost the 1960 presidential race, and Khrushchev was deposed in 1964.Mr. Gargiulo accepted a Daytime Emmy Award from the actor John Gabriel and the model Cheryl Tiegs in 1978. He won 10 Emmys in his career, including a lifetime achievement award in 2015.Disney via Getty ImagesHe began his career by directing stage shows in the Catskills, then joined NBC in New York, where he became staff director of local programming. He directed the game shows “To Tell the Truth,” “The Price Is Right,” “Match Game,” “Password” and “The $10,000 Pyramid.” He also directed special events for CBS, including “All-American Thanksgiving Day Parade,” a pastiche of parade coverage from New York and other cities.His final directing credit was the Tournament of Roses Parade on CBS in 2003.He won 10 Daytime Emmys in his career, including a lifetime achievement award in 2015.Michael Ralph Gargiulo was born on Sept. 23, 1926, in Brooklyn to Louis and Josephine (Talamo) Gargiulo. He grew up above his father’s restaurant, a Coney Island landmark.He attended St. Augustine’s High School in Brooklyn and completed high school while serving in the Caribbean Defense Command of the Army Air Forces at the end of World War II. He graduated from the University of Missouri on the G.I. Bill.In 1958, he married Dorothy Rosato. In addition to their son, she survives him, as do their daughter, Susan, who works for Nickelodeon, and three grandchildren. More