Jeopardy! Just Smashed An Incredible TV Record
Jeopardy! just smashed through a record!
This article is more than 2 years old
Jeopardy! has recently crowned a new champion by the name of Amy Schneider, who also became the first woman to go over the $1 million mark for winnings. If that wasn’t exciting enough for the show, they recently became the #1 most viewed non-sports show on television. That is huge news considering that 60 Minutes has dominated viewership for the better part of three decades. Through the week of Dec 27-Jan 2, Jeopardy finally surpassed the numbers that 60 Minutes has been putting up, according to the Nielsen ratings for TV shows.
Through this entire season, September 13, 2021-January 2, 2022, Jeopardy has averaged 9.2 million viewers. That just edges out 60 Minutes, which was put up an average of 9.1 million viewers. These numbers have been accounted for by the Nielsen Live + Same Day Numbers. ABC’s World News Tonight sits at #3 with 8.2 million viewers, and #4 is the highly popular series Yellowstone, which averages 7.9 million viewers. The fact that a quiz show has beaten out all of these news programs and Yellowstone is quite impressive and that could be due to the fact that the current champion is on a historic run.
Amy Schneider is not only a woman but a trans woman, who has taken the world by storm by her impressive abilities on Jeopardy. The overall messages of positivity and support have flooded her social media pages as she continues her historic run on the show. Although viewership for the show has gone up 7% with more than 587,000 viewers a night being added nightly, Schneider’s run has reportedly also brought in an additional 238,000 viewers or +3% per show. She is currently on a winning streak of 23 days and fans are likely strapping in for the long haul to see if and when she will be beaten. This is fantastic news for the show, considering the mess that happened following the tragic death of long-time host Alex Trebek.
Jeopardy found itself in a bit of a mess when it began to search for a new permanent host for the show following Trebek’s death. Celebrity guests were brought on to take their turn at hosting including Aaron Rodgers and LeVar Burton, but then things turned a bit strange. Mike Richards, the man who had been tasked to find the new host was instead promoted to host the show, leaving fans wondering if there had even been a true search to begin with. But the nail in the proverbial coffin were reports of Richards’ alleged behavior while working on other shows, which included allegedly sexist and racist comments. Richards resigned before he’d barely begun.
Through all of that drama, it is good to see that people have seemingly forgotten about the hosting issues for Jeopardy! and are tuning in to see Amy Schneider continue her dominating run. She is only the fourth person in the game show’s history to go over the million-dollar mark, so it is exciting to see how much further she will go. Matt Amadio is the third-highest winner in Jeopardy history with earnings of $1,518,601. Schneider currently has $1,019,600, so she has a ways to go but it will be exciting if she can keep winning.
