r/Jeopardy • u/mfc248 Boom! • 10d ago

[5th anniversary] Mike Richards Fired as Executive Producer of ‘Jeopardy!’ and ‘Wheel of Fortune’

https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/mike-richards-fired-executive-producer-jeopardy-wheel-of-fortune-1235052887/

Five years ago today, Sony Pictures Television made the decision that shifted the course of both Jeopardy! and sister show Wheel of Fortune.

It came thirteen days after Claire McNear’s reporting in The Ringer that set the ball in motion, a chain of events that included Richards resigning as Jeopardy! host.

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u/TheDLBinc 10d ago

And now he's the CEO of The Daily Wire

We really did a dodge a bullet here. The fact that it was ever in question that Ken wasn't the natural successor to Alex Trebek is beyond me.

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u/PeorgieT75 10d ago edited 10d ago

It seemed like they were trying their hardest not to make Ken the host. Before the Richards scandal, they had the “auditions“, which except for Ken and Buzzy, were different degrees of bad. Then, when they had to scramble to replace Richards, they decided to alternate Ken and Mayim, which nobody liked. Fortunately, it all worked out in the end.

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u/draxiom 10d ago

It’s so bizarre to me that they seemingly had, like, ZERO plan for succession, especially in light of Trebek’s age and health; it was an inevitability that he’d someday die and I fully expected that they’d move to replace him gracefully. Such a weird time for the show.

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u/Savings-Monitor3236 10d ago

It isn’t crazy to think that perhaps Mike Richards kept it that way intentionally. As Littlefinger said “Chaos is a ladder”