‘Jeopardy! Masters' Cancels Another Taping, Prompting Fan Concern

"Jeopardy!" co-host Ken Jennings is hosting a new spin-off show called "Jeopardy! Masters" that's supposed to premiere next month.

However, fans are growing concerned that the show will not have all of the episodes completed filming by the time the premiere rolls around, as producers canceled yet another taping.

Another “Jeopardy! Masters” taping was canceled earlier this week, leading to fan concern that the show won’t be finished filming for its premiere on May 8. According to The U.S. Sun, only four out of the show’s ten episodes have been filmed so far.

The primetime special will premiere on May 8 on ABC and stream the episodes the following day on Hulu. The tournament is expected to run over three weeks and be hosted by Ken Jennings, who will not be competing in the tournament.

This tournament will feature several familiar faces from the season 38 Tournament of Champions, including Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio, Mattea Roach, and Andrew He. It will also feature Sam Buttrey, who appeared in the Tournament of Champions and won the Professor’s Tournament. Amy won the 2022 Tournament of Champions.

Also returning is previous Tournament of Champions winner James Holzhauer, who is now a “Chaser” on “The Chase” along with Brad Rutter, who will not be appearing in the tournament. James and Brad previously competed against Ken in the “Greatest of All Time” tournament hosted by the late host Alex Trebek; Ken won.

The six contestants will compete in two matches each, creating ten one-hour-long episodes that will air for three weeks. The prize is $500,000 and the honor of winning what “Jeopardy!” is calling its “biggest event ever.”

It has also been revealed that 21-day champion Cris Pannullo, who will compete in the next Tournament of Champions, was tapped as an alternate and was present on-site if any of the original six contestants had to back out of the taping for whatever reason. However, it appears that all six contestants will participate in the tournament.

According to The U.S. Sun, “a Reddit user” said that Monday’s canceled taping was actually a taping that had been rescheduled from March. This netizen claimed that they were actually in the audience and that the filming was stopped while they were already seated for the taping.

The user alleged that “Ken mentioned that it was a ‘happy’ kind of emergency,” adding, “They were supposed to film 2 hour-long episodes (essentially four 30-minute shows). After the 12:00 slot and they canceled both.”

“We were already seated in the audience when Ken came out personally to relay the news and he just did a Q&A with the audience instead,” the user continued, explaining that they were told that the “plan” is “to resume taping at the end of April.” Although they were “guaranteed tickets” to the April taping, some members of the audience, like the Reddit user, were unable to make the new date.

“And the happy emergency was … someone’s wife was in labor?” one user asked. “That was my guess, seems most likely,” another user chimed in, although it is still unclear what this “happy” emergency might have been or how it will affect future tapings.

This is not the only “Jeopardy!” tournament that might be cutting it close between filming and its premiere. The High School Reunion Tournament was reportedly filmed in late January but premiered a month later on February 23.

However, it was not without its setbacks. Executive producer Michael Davies, who will be at the helm for “Jeopardy! Masters” as well, had to apologize for a “horrible” editing error that featured the three players’ final scores at the beginning of the episode after they had to get host Mayim Bialik to re-record the introduction.

On a March episode of their Inside Jeopardy! podcast, executive producer Michael Davies began, “My apologies to the audience at the top of the show. We totally blew it."

"We made a horrible error and revealed the final scores at the end in the opening cutaway shot during Mayim’s monologue," he said, revealing that they forgot to reset the contestants’ podiums while “The Big Bang Theory” alum was filming her opening monologue for the shot.

“It’s a series of errors that it's somewhat remarkable that they all happened, starting with the decision to pick up [reshoot] the monologue,” he said. “We can't remember exactly what was wrong with the monologue but we do occasionally pick up monologues for some reason - sometimes there's a fact that’s incorrect, and sometimes there's a performance issue."

"But I gotta tell you, I'm sure if you're honest with yourselves there are mistakes made in every single one of your businesses," he continued. "We're trying to be more transparent with mistakes when we make them. Every part of the Jeopardy process! - there is some pressure, we're making more episodes and working more hours so that does lead to more mistakes. But there is no excuse."