This Monday, along with the premiere of Wheel of Fortune's 27th season, we're getting the opener of season 26 of Jeopardy!. As with most of the other syndicated and daytime game shows this year, there will be a few changes and additions to our favorite quiz show.Before anyone becomes alarmed, the basic Jeopardy! game remains intact, and there are no changes planned to the way it's played. Everyone take a collective sigh of relief. There, that's better!
What will be different, however, is the set. We saw a preview of the new, updated Jeopardy! set during the Tournament of Champions and Celebrity Jeopardy last season, so we pretty much know what to expect here.
The other new addition to Jeopardy this season is a season-long invitational celebrity tournament. Now, before you get all "I hate celebrity games!" on me, check out the details.
From the press release:
These special episodes will be broadcast on the third Thursday of every month through May 2010, with a guaranteed cash prize of $1 million going to the winning star’s favorite charity. A total of over $2.5 million will be donated throughout the season.Basically, 27 celebrities will play in the tournament throughout the season. In each of the initial quarter-final games, each participant gets $25,000, with winners banking $50,000 and moving on to the semi-finals. (All money goes to charity, of course.) In the end, the tourney winner will earn $1,000,000 for his or her charity.
Since 1992, Jeopardy! has awarded over $4.5 million to charities during the celebrity tournaments. In this tournament alone, more than $2.5 million will be given away. That's pretty exciting stuff, even if you don't enjoy celebrity games. And with these special episodes only happening once a month, it's not going to overshadow the regular episodes.
Celebrities who have been invited to play in the tourney include many who have already appeared on the show and fared quite well. The ones that we know of for certain include:
- Wolf Blitzer
- Dana Delaney
- Andy Richter
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
- Doug Savant
- Christopher Meloni
- Elizabeth Perkins
- Pat Sajak
Jeopardy! kicks off its 26th season on Monday, September 14th.
Logo courtesy Sony Pictures/CBS
Comments
Cool! Andy Richter is awesome, I watch him with Connan on the Tonight Show. It will also be cool to see Pat Sajak on Jeopardy.
I don’t mind celebrity games so much, as long as they’re not constant. This year-long tournament is a great idea, it doesn’t over-saturate the show with it being only once per month and it should also mean they’ll get the best ones all year, which means we only have to see Regis on there once (most likely, unless they purposely pair him with much worse players).
Inquiring minds want to know — how many apple boxes are they going to make the other poor players stand on for Kareem’s game?