It's impossible to think of Jeopardy! without Alex Trebek

The Ringer

The Jeopardy! host is a national treasure, Claire McNear says in reaction to his stage 4 pancreatic cancer diagnosis. "For a generation of viewers," she says, "Trebek has been a constant of cable programming, a sometimes mustachioed, sometimes prickly, always steady presence, the keeper of a finite blue-purple world where the passage of time could be counted both in operatic ephemera and, maybe, the number of different living rooms where you found yourself watching over the years. It’s impersonal—a formulaic game played by strangers—and it’s also not: Come to enough family dinners, and soon enough you’ll be expected at them. Trebek has often insisted on being called the host of Jeopardy!, such that there would never be any confusion that he was the star: That, he says, is an honor that belongs to the contestants. Fair enough, perhaps, but he’s the one who became family."

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• Ken Jennings calls Trebek "the epitome of the old-school broadcaster to me, maybe he’s even the last man standing"
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