Jeopardy! Latest Guest Hosts: Dr. Oz, Anderson Cooper, Savannah Guthrie, Dr. Sanjay Gupta

Jeopardy! has announced four new celebrity guest hosts who will join the previously announced celebrity guest hosts: Aaron Rodgers, Mayim Bialik, Katie Couric and Bill Whitaker. The new additions are:

• “The Doctor Oz Show” Host Dr. Mehmet Oz

• “Anderson Cooper 360°” Anchor Anderson Cooper

• NBC News’ TODAY Co-Anchor Savannah Guthrie

• CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta

As with every guest host announcement so far, there has been a backlash about one or more guest host. On Twitter, Dr. Oz is getting the brunt of it this time around, with some folks even threatening to never watch the show again. One tweet even went so far as to say the person would never watch anything on ABC again. 😮

Dr. Oz was a Celebrity Jeopardy! contestant in Power Players Week in 2012. He has read many clues and categories on the show both before and after that appearance. Strangely enough, the last time he read a clue on the show was in 2018: MEDICATIONS ($800) Dr. Oz: “Medicines in olden days didn’t have government oversight; today you couldn’t buy Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup… which quieted babies because it was mostly alcohol & this opium derivative used as a painkiller since the early 1800s” That was Rob Worman’s second game and Rob got it right (morphine).

It’s not like I don’t know about Dr. Oz hawking miracle vitamins and what not. I wrote an article about it in 2014 when he appeared before the Senate. And it’s not like I particularly like Dr. Oz (see Charlie Sheen Totally Looks Like from 2011). I just don’t recall any past outrage about him and Jeopardy!

Anderson Cooper has been a popular choice to succeed Alex Trebek for quite a while. He has also read clues and categories and appeared on Celebrity Jeopardy! Sanjay Gupta has only read two clues and been in one. Savannah Guthrie has been the correct response to 3 clues.

In any event, in my personal opinion, I don’t think any of these celebrities are going to be chosen as permanent hosts. All the money that the contestants rack up during their week of hosting is going to be donated to a charity of their choice, and I think that’s pretty awesome. I can’t see any of them being offered enough to quit the already lucrative careers they have or why Sony would even want to pay them the big bucks, unless the ratings for one of them skyrockets through the roof. I wouldn’t mind if they had guest hosts every year. In fact, I would probably love it if they did that instead of Celebrity! Jeopardy. Just my two cents.

I would prefer the job to go to someone who hasn’t already made a fortune in another field or as a contestant on this show. After all, Alex Trebek was not that well known when he first got the job hosting Jeopardy! and he always said the show was about the material and the contestants, not the host. Nevertheless, Trebek’s legendary run on the show will never be equaled.