Watch the Unaired 1964 “Jeopardy!” Pilot

On March 30th Jeopardy! celebrated the first ever “JeoparDAY”, celebrating the debut of the iconic quiz show on the same day in 1964. The show had a few ways to celebrate like donating $5.80 each (representing the 58th birthday) for the first 10,000 Jeopardy! tests taken to the Alex Trek Fund at Stand Up to Cancer. They also debuted the unaired 1964 pilot, hosted by Art Fleming. 60s episodes of Jeopardy! are rare to find so this was a fun treat. Take a look at it below plus some notes from the show!

A few interesting notes which Jeopardy! provided in the comments:

– In the pilot and for many years on the Trebek version of the show, the contestant interviews were at the top of the show. At some point, the producers wanted to “get into the action” sooner, so we moved the contestant interview segment to after the first commercial break.

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– The idea that contestants could ring in whenever they wanted to, even before the clue had been read by the host, worked fairly well with short clues such as the ones in this pilot. In 1984, when the show was brought back with Alex as the host, players were allowed to ring in whenever they wanted. What was quickly discovered was that not only did it make it hard for the viewers at home to play along against the contestants, but the “ring in” indicator and “times up countdown” would start and sometimes be off by the time the camera showed the contestants. It caused all sorts of confusion as to why Alex was calling on someone whose lights weren’t on. The rule was changed right after Season 1, and remains to this date, that now the players cannot ring in until after the host has finished reading the clue.

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Jeopardy! also provided their now-usual box scores for the pilot game.