What is "Disappointed?"

Count me among those are disappointed that Ken Jennings isn't going to be the new host of Jeopardy.

He seemed to be the choice of many game show enthusiasts, based upon the wacky online world I navigate. 

Perhaps the most famous champion in Jeopardy history, Jennings seemed poised to make the improbable leap from contestant to host. He catapulted to a level of celebrity we seldom see by game show contestants. Plenty of people get their 15 minutes thanks to a game show, I can't recall any contestant who has become more of a household name than Jennings, thanks to a game show, in my adult life. 

But today we learned that, indeed, Mike Richards is the new host. (Who?)

Did Jennings lose out on the job because he has been less than perfect on Twitter? How much those insensitive/offensive quips/jokes years ago played into the decision, we'll never know. Or did Sony, the parent company of Jeopardy, choose another Alex Trebek simply because that's the right thing to do? 

Richards, our new host, doesn't have the name recognition of a Bob Barker. But he's not a bad choice, and not entirely surprising. 

The guy has a healthy resume, and it's primarily in game shows. He has at least one "reality" show on his resume, as well, and most of his career has been behind the camera. He has hosted a couple of traditional game shows on the Game Show Network, but he brings no familiarity to most casual game show enthusiasts. I wouldn't be surprised if most Jeopardy viewers had no idea who he was until he took a two-week turn as a guest host, immediately following six weeks of hosting by Jennings. 

While there was speculation that Sony might choose a celebrity to take over the show, I doubted it. Several news anchors/broadcasters took a turn at the podium in the past several months. Once upon a time, game shows looked to such folks as possible hosts for a show. Jeopardy certainly could have offered the gig to a broadcaster, but I didn't think any of the guest hosts they trotted out were likely to leave the gigs they have for the Jeopardy job. 

I didn't expect NFL malcontent Erin Rodgers would get the job, either. He did fine, and he would have loved the gig. He might have even been willing to retire if the job was offered to him on that condition. The guy loves swimming in the celebrity pool when he's not playing football, and having a potential long-term gig as the host of Jeopardy would have ensured his place among the Hollywood glitterati, potentially for decades. 

Rodgers would have brought a few new eyeballs to the show, I suppose, but he might have rubbed a few of the hardcore Jeopardy fans the wrong way. He did just fine as a guest host, and would have been fine as a long-term host, I suspect. But at the end of the day, it seems appropriate that Jeopardy is helmed by somebody who brings an air of authority to the proceedings. 

And Jennings would have done just that. 

Yet they went with Trebek 2.0.

Everybody raves about how effortless, precise and flawless Trebek did the job for nearly four decades. I concur. And he was pretty good at it back in the 1980s, as well. But I doubt many people looked at Trebek as an intellectual elite in 1984. The guy was a Canadian refugee, and a somewhat successful game show host when Jeopardy returned to television with him at the podium. 

I was familiar with Trebek when Jeopardy launched its current run. I was watching game shows, and I had seen him host a couple. He had about 10 years of television experience in the United States, and gigs prior to that in Canada. And his greatest success in the United States was High Rollers, a show that ran for a few years under two separate runs. It was a dice game with general knowledge and trivia questions, far from the mental exercise that Jeopardy runs its contestants through. 

Trebek had hosted a couple of cerebral games prior to Jeopardy, but he didn't bring any great intellectual cachet to the proceedings. He was a solid, well-traveled emcee who turned out to be the right host at the right time. 

Richards has a long resume in the industry, too, and he is a lot like the guy he is replacing. He's a polished, experienced emcee. History has repeated itself. 

Some of the game show experts have chimed in online today. And by experts I'm talking about people like me, who don't work in the industry. The experts think Jeopardy's announcement that Richards will host the daily game, and that actress Mayim Bialik will host previously unannounced prime time specials and a potential spinoff series, is Sony hedging its bets, as if it's concerned that Richards may tank, and the show will suffer. So perhaps Sony is prepping Bialik as a backup plan by having her host prime time specials.

Maybe there's an ounce of concern in Sony's plan, but most of us who watch Jeopardy didn't tune in to see if Trebek was going to make a funny quip during the contestant interviews. We tuned in to watch a competitive game, with substantial money on the line. We'll keep tuning in, and Richards will do just fine.

If anything, Bialik is the lesser of the two talents. She brings a well-established air of authority to the proceedings, and is a successful actress. As a host, I found her style to be slightly distracting during her guest stint. Was it enough that I couldn't watch the show? No, of course not. But she isn't an emcee by nature, and that's what I want when I watch a game show, especially Jeopardy.

And it's atypical these days, but it's not unheard of to have two separate versions of a show airing with separate hosts. Everyone associates The Price is Right with Barker. And for more than three decades he was the host of the daytime show on CBS. But there was a separate nighttime version of the game that ran in three different incarnations. And each one had a separate host. The most successful was the first one, which ran for about eight years during the 1970s. Barker did take over as host of that, but for its first five years or so, a guy named Dennis James was the host at night. 

The long running Pyramid game show had a similar set up in the 1970s. Dick Clark hosted the daytime show, a nighttime version was helmed by Bill Cullen. 

Steve Harvey is hosting both the regular and the celebrity versions of Family Feud, but prior to Harvey, NBC's Al Roker hosted a celebrity edition rather than the daytime host, John O'Hurley, in 2008. 

O'Hurley wasn't exactly an institution during his tenure as the Feud host, and neither is Mike Richards. If Sony is looking to differentiate special prime time Jeopardy episodes, a separate host makes sense to me. (Nobody seemed upset that sportscaster Dan Patrick hosted a few years of Sports Jeopardy, which Trebek probably would have enjoyed and had fun with, given its casual atmosphere.)

Jennings will do just fine without the gig, and I have no reason to believe Jeopardy will go in the tank with Trebek 2.0 at the helm.

I would have made different choices had it been my call. And so would everyone else who watches the show, based on the fan feedback I read during the first 12 hours of the announcement. But it's 1984 all over again, and Jeopardy will be just fine.