Why 'Jeopardy! The Greatest Of All Time' Is So Popular

TV Jeopardy Greats — Host Alex Trebec, left, appear with contestants, James Holzhauer, center, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, right, on the set of "Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time," in Los Angeles.

Hannah Uebele is a producer for Under the Radar with Callie Crossley and previously worked as associate producer for Boston Public Radio. She graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in English and Environmental Studies. She's a proud Delawarean but has found herself saying "wicked" more and more often, so the Bostonian metamorphosis is well underway.Contact: hannah_uebele@wgbh.org

January 13, 2020

Updated August 07, 2023

Television expert Bob Thompson spoke with Boston Public Radio on Monday about why 'Jeopardy: The Greatest of All Time' is doing so well in the ratings.

"The ratings were 14.4 million on Tuesday and 14.8 million on Wednesday and up to 15.4 million on Thursday," Thompson said. "It starts again tomorrow night and will go 7 games if it has to."

Thompson said the popularity is due to a mix of nostalgia for the game itself and for host Alex Trebec.

"You could practically argue that we all grew up with 'Jeopardy!' as its 35 years under the leadership of its current host, Alex Trebec, but it also went about a dozen years before that with Art Fleming," he said. "There is all of this love going out to Alex Trebec who, of course, is terminally ill and handling that in a way that people have found very admirable and so this is in many ways his swan song."

Bob Thompson is a founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture and a trustee professor of television and popular culture at Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.