The “Jeopardy” audience doesn’t seem to know a new season has begun.
Ratings for the first week of the new season, with Ken Jennings hosting, were just 4.0 million. That’s the same as the previous week of reruns.
But in mid summer, the “Jeopardy” ratings dropped about 20% and have never recovered. Of course, August was all reruns. But something hasn’t clicked yet for Season 39.
Ironically, the announcement that Jennings is now permanent as host, alternating with Mayim Bialik, was supposed to help the ratings. Jennings has always had good numbers. Maybe it’s just a case of settling into the fall season.
Meantime, Drew Barrymore’s talk show, now reconfigured as a half hour and not airing in New York until 9:30am — a death slot — has lost 100,000 viewers a day. They were up to 500,000 average but now they’re down to 400,000 in the new format. My guess is this is the last year of the Drew Barrymore Show.
