‘Jeopardy!’ Season 40 Return Date Revealed
In some surprising news, the Jeopardy! Season 40 return date has been announced. There was a lot of fear that the current Hollywood strikes would stall the next season of the popular game show. While the network released the premiere date, there is still a chance it could miss that release date.
Here is when Jeopardy! Season 40 is set to premiere and why it isn’t set in stone.
Jeopardy! Season 40 release date
After the 39th season ended on July 28, fans have looked forward to what comes next for Jeopardy! The network unveiled a Jeopardy! Season 40 release date. The show returns on September 11, 2023. However, that date remains fluid. If the WGA strike is still ongoing, the show might not make that return date. Mayim Bialik also won’t return until the SAG-AFTRA strike ends, and Ken Jennings might sit out too.
“Next month, we will share more news about exciting plans and enhancements to the contestant experience for this upcoming season and beyond,” a representative of the show said. This will also likely deal with the upcoming Tournament of Champions. That start date was August 14, but several former champions said they won’t compete if the show uses recycled questions.
With that said, a representative from Jeopardy! said they could move forward with questions written by WGA writers before the strike. “Just as we did, led by Alex Trebek, during the 2007–2008 strike, we will deliver first-run episodes again this fall, featuring the best of our WGA written material,” the representative said (via AV Club). This didn’t sit well with former champion Ray Lalonde, who said he would not appear on the show if they used questions from striking workers.
Jeopardy! considers recycling old questions
The biggest problem isn’t the actors like Mayim Bialik not crossing the picket lines for Jeopardy! The problem is the WGA strike and the writers who come up with the questions for the show. The game show can’t use non-union writers to come up with new questions, and the show has hinted that it could recycle old questions.
This was something that did not go over well with fans of the show. In a Reddit poll, 61% of the voters were against using recycled questions, 16% said they wouldn’t like it, and only 10% said they were fine with it.
However, this has been a hot-bed topic that has former champions rallying against the idea. Not only did Lalonde say he wouldn’t appear if the show used striking writers’ material, but he said he wouldn’t appear if they used recycled questions. Chris Pannullo, Ben Chan, and Luigi de Guzman also spoke out against this practice.
Do you think Jeopardy! Season 40 will make its release date? Do you think it should recycle old questions if the strikes have not ended? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
