In the Beginning

Alex Trebek’s First Show

September 10, 1984

Contestants
Greg Hopkins
Lois Feinstein
Frank Selevan

“we worked for many months to get the show to where it was on that first day,” Trebek said.

Jeopardy! was reborn on September 10, 1984. The first three contestants were Frank Selevan, an advertising copywriter from Miami, Florida; Lois Feinstein, a freelance copywriter from Plainview, New York; and Greg Hopkins, an energy demonstrator from Waverly, Ohio.

“Welcome to America’s favorite answer-and-question game—Jeopardy!,” announced Trebek. “You know how we play it. We provide the categories and the answers, and then it’s up to our contestants to give us the right questions.”

Alex Trebek introduces his first Jeopardy! board.

Hopkins selected “Animals” for one hundred dollars (values were doubled on November 26, 2001). “These rodents first got to America by stowing away on ships,” Trebek read. Hopkins entered game show history books by giving the new show’s first correct response: “What are rats?”

During the conversation break, Trebek asked Hopkins what an energy demonstrator does. Hopkins produced a balloon, intended to represent a uranium atom. He blew it up, twisted it, and then made it explode. “Greg,” said a bemused Trebek, “try and relax.”

The original set, 1984.

It was good advice. By the end of the show, Hopkins had become the first champion, winning with $8,400. Feinstein, who finished second, got a vacation at the Ingleside Inn in Palm Springs, California, and a set of luggage. Selevan brought home his-and-hers Wimbledon tennis rackets.

Office space was tight in the early days of Jeopardy!, but that wasn’t the biggest problem. Of greater concern was a meeting a couple of weeks into the season. King World executives told Trebek they thought the clues on the show were too difficult.

“We were taping weeks in advance,” Trebek recalled. “I said, ‘Okay, I’ll ease up on the material.’ Three or four weeks later, they came back to me and said, ‘Oh, you did a good job. It’s a lot better now.’ In reality, those shows already had been taped. I didn’t change anything. I didn’t agree with them. I didn’t tell them that. I just said I’d do something.”

Jeopardy! has always been a work in progress. One significant change occurred right after the first season. Initially, contestants could buzz in with a reply at any time after a clue was revealed. However, while the camera focused on the clue being read, off camera, the first player would respond by buzzing in. By the time there was a shot of all the players, a second player might have buzzed in. Viewers thought Trebek was calling on the wrong player. So, to avoid viewer confusion, and to allow the at-home players a better chance to “play along,” contestants had to wait until the entire clue was read.

The first tournament on Jeopardy! was the Tournament of Champions in 1985. Following a format invented by Trebek, the typical Jeopardy! tournament starts with fifteen players. After one week, nine are left—the individual champions from each day and the four non-champions with the highest scores.

During the second week, after three games, the number of players is reduced to three. Those three contestants play two games over the next two days. The winner has the highest combined point total for the final two games.

Over the years, Jeopardy! has introduced special competitions featuring teachers, college students, teens, celebrities, seniors, international contestants, and children.

Clues on the show have evolved as well. “The writers became more creative,” Executive Producer Harry Friedman said. “In the beginning, there weren’t as many hints embedded into the clues as there are now.”

From the onset, second- and third-place players were not allowed to keep their “accumulated” cash. That was done to discourage conservative play by contestants afraid to risk the cash they had earned and to keep the Final Jeopardy! round interesting. Instead, non-winners received vacation packages and merchandise. In 2002, the prizes were discontinued and Jeopardy! began awarding $2,000 to players who finish second and $1,000 to those who finish third.

On September 8, 2003, at the beginning of the twentieth season, a change in Jeopardy! rules ended the five-game limit on Jeopardy! champions. From then on, champions played until they were defeated. Later that same season, Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings began his seventy-four-game win streak, the longest by far in the show’s history.

Jeopardy! and sister show Wheel of Fortune made syndicated show history in 2006 when both began broadcasting in high definition.

The growth of the internet brought more changes. For years, would-be contestants sent postcards to Jeopardy! offices saying they wanted to be on the show. Since 2006, with Jeopardy!’s website in place, potential players have taken a fifty-question test online, the first step toward being selected to play.

By making it easier to access the test, Jeopardy! has been able to attract younger, more diverse contestants, as well as a larger percentage of women.

Technological advances also meant fewer challenges from viewers who insisted the show made mistakes.

“In the early days, we had a lot of people write in to correct us,” Trebek said. Time and again, he would explain that they had missed an important part of the clue. “They weren’t paying close enough attention.” With the advent of VCRs and, later, DVR playback, there were fewer complaints about what were perceived as inaccuracies.

Through 2017, Jeopardy! won sixteen Emmys for Outstanding Game/Audience Participation Show, by far the most of any game show in Emmy history.

In addition to Trebek and announcer Gilbert, perhaps the most constant element of Jeopardy! is its music, both the main theme and, more famously, the tune that won’t leave your head when you hear it played during Final Jeopardy!

Like the game itself, the music was created by Griffin. At one point, he estimated that the daily play of that melody had earned him $70 million in royalties—which may someday make a great Final Jeopardy! clue.