Cal Sports Report

Aaron Rodgers Gives 'Jeopardy!' a Ratings Boost

More people watched the game show when former Cal quarterback Aaron Rodgers was the guest host

Jake Curtis

Aaron Rodgers Gives 'Jeopardy!' a Ratings Boost
Aaron Rodgers Gives 'Jeopardy!' a Ratings Boost /

Former Cal star Aaron Rodgers got some ammunition in his bid to become the permanent host of Jeopardy! from the Nielsen ratings released Monday.

In his first week as guest host from April 5-9, Rodgers pushed the Jeopardy! ratings up 14 percent from the previous week – a huge jump – to a 5.6 live-plus-same-day national Nielsen rating. It was the show’s best performance in a month, and boosted Jeopardy! back into the top slot among syndicated game shows, ahead of Family Feud, which had displaced Jeopardy last month.

TVNewsCheck put it this way:

Green Bay Packers star quarterback Aaron Rodgers scored more than a first down in his first week as Jeopardy guest host.

The ratings for Jeopardy! had been declining since the show began having guest hosts following the passing of Alex Trebek. Jeopardy! ratings reached a low point of 4.9 when Dr. Oz was the guest host for the two weeks preceding Rodgers' time on the podium.

The final week of Jeopardy! with Trebek (first week of January) received a 6.6 rating and the decline began with a 6.2 rating in Ken Jennings' first week as guest host.

A bigger indication of Rodgers’ popularity may come next week when the Nielsen ratings for his second week as guest host (April 12-16) are made public.

A number of people have chimed in on Rodgers' performance on Jeopardy!, but Monday's rating provoke two questions:

---Was the ratings boost in Rodgers’ first week merely a product of viewers being curious about how a famous athlete who was the 2020 NFL MVP would do?

---Will the remaining guest hosts have even better ratings than Rodgers?

Anderson Cooper of CNN is the guest host this week, and he will be followed by 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker, Today show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, The Big Bang Theory actress and neuroscientist Mayim Bialik, CNN chief medical correspondent and neurosurgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Buzzy Cohen, a former Jeopardy! champion scheduled to host this year's Tournament of Champions.

And there may be others.

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SYNDICATED GAME SHOWS RATINGS WEEK OF APRIL 5-9

Jeopardy (CMV) 5.6 +14%

Family Feud (Debmar-Mercury/FMNA) 5.2 +2%

Wheel of Fortune (CMV) 5.1 +4%

25 Words or Less (CMV) 0.8 +14%

Funny You Should Ask (Entertainment Studios) 0.4 NC

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Follow Jake Curtis of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jakecurtis53

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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