‘Jeopardy’ Producer Defends Mayim Bialik, Ken Jennings from Cruel Fan Backlash: “They Have My Full Support”

Jeopardy‘s executive producer Michael Davies may be relatively new to the show — he took over for producer Mike Richards, who stepped down in 2021 after allegations of harassment surfaced — but he has been producing game shows for years.

He’s the man responsible for bringing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire to the U.S., and has produced shows like Chain Reaction, Wife Swap, and The Newlywed Game in his 20+ year career. In recent interview with Vulture, Davies discussed his time at Jeopardy and all of the recent changes to the show, including the constant audience feedback surrounding the show’s hosts Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik.

While he appreciates the passionate fan base, he also wishes they’d be more gentle with their feedback.

“This show is so hard to host,” Davies explained to Vulture. “Alex [Trebek] made it his own, but it wasn’t his own the first couple of years. A lot of what happened on Jeopardy! came from him possessing this job for so long.”

He continued, “I do read everything, and look, the strongest thing we’ve got is the passion of our fans. I wish many of our fans were more patient in understanding that we’re dealing with two hosts.”

Davies added that, though he does consider audience feedback, he also looks at the show’s ratings to understand more about each host’s popularity, and found that the numbers are even across the board.

“In terms of the tiny percentage of our audience that do go on Reddit or Twitter, there are Ken fans and there are Mayim fans,” Davies said. “There are some people who love Jeopardy! and will watch both. We also have various fans who post that they don’t like either of them. That’s just part of the data we look at.

“One of the biggest things is the ratings of the show. When Ken is hosting and Mayim is hosting, there’s zero difference,” he noted. “It’s exactly the same and that’s the broadest part of the audience. I back both of them. I go to the studio every day and try to make both of them better at hosting the show and make a better program environment around them. They have my full support.”

Jeopardy! airs on weeknights at 7/6c on ABC.