Levar Burton fans can rejoice: the star of “Roots” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation” joins the list of interim hosts for “Jeopardy!”. The show made the announcement on Wednesday, after a long campaign for the former host “Reading Rainbow” to enter the skin of Alex Trebek, who died last year and whose iconic hosting role was played by a rotating group of celebrities and TV personalities . .
Burton, a lifelong child literacy advocate who hosted the PBS show “Reading Rainbow,” expressed his delight at the news on Twitter. The list of temporary hosts is joined by Robin Roberts, the presenter of “Good Morning America”, the presenter of “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”, George Stephanopoulos, the author and former champion Jeopardy! Celebrity ”, David Faber, and the award-winning athlete Joe Buck.
“Our goal was to present a wide range of guest hosts with different skill sets and environments on our way to finding a permanent host. Our passionate fans tell us what they like and we listen,” said executive producer Mike Richards – served and as a guest host – he said in a press release distributed by the game show.
In November 2020, a petition was launched on Change.org for Burton to be hired as Trebek’s replacement. It was approved by Burton himself at the beginning of April and now has almost 250,000 signatures. Burton thanked the person who started the petition on Twitter following the announcement of the game show.
According to the statement, Burton and this new host culture will take over the otter for periods of a week starting sometime in June. Burton will host July 26-30.
So far this season, the show has been hosted by Ken Jennings – who was the first guest of the new season – Richards, Katie Couric, Dr. Oz and Aaron Rodgers. Anderson Cooper is currently hosting and will be followed by Bill Whitaker, “Jeopardy!” All-Star Buzzy Cohen, actress Mayim Bialik, Savannah Guthrie and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.