Alex Trebek: His popularity not in jeopardy
(CBS News) WHO IS ALEX TREBEK? is the proper response to the phrase: He's the subject now of a Sunday Profile by Susan Spencer of "48 Hours":
The answer is: A quiz show.
Q. What could possibly get Washington's power elite out of bed on a Saturday at the crack of dawn?
A quiz show that's become an American institution, impressing even former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs: "Flying on Air Force One and Marine One, like, that's just an airplane painted blue and white. But this is 'Jeopardy,' for goodness sakes!"
And talkmeister Chris Matthews: "I'm terrible on food, on pop culture. I don't know who these Kardashians are."
And basketball great Kareem Abdul Jabarr: "If they're going to ask questions, like, about medieval Spain and stuff like that - I've seen those, I couldn't do that!" he laughed.
They are just a few of the so-called power players whose special shows air this week - their insecurities handled with grace by the man whose firm hand has guided "Jeopardy" for 28 years, host Alex Trebek.
"You come across thinking that [he] is easily the smartest guy on the planet because you also get the impression he doesn't actually need all those cards," Gibbs said of Trebek.
Trebek does nothing to dispel that idea . . . providing a soothing, supportive presence for nervous contestants whose answers must be in the form of a question."
"I'm on their side," Trebek said. "I want to be perceived as the best friend these contestants have, because if I'm not perceived that way, the audience out there, the television viewers, will turn against me.
"And I don't want you to turn against me!" he laughed.
Unlikely! He's got 6,000 "Jeopardy" episodes under his belt.
He says he gets so wrapped up in the game "that quite often I don't know what the score is."
No matter . . . he insists the show's not about HIM.
When asked what accounts for the show's success, "It's a good show. It satisfies one aspect of humanity that is very, very important, and that is our need at a gut level to compete. We want to know how good we are, how fast we are."
It's won Trebek and the show a slew of Emmys - quite a leap from his high school days in Ottawa and his early jobs at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
"The only reason I got into broadcasting was, I needed money to pay for my junior and senior years at college, and they hired me, those fools!" he said. "I did everything - I did newscasts, I did sports, I did dramas."
But in 1962 he found his true calling, a high school quiz show called "Reach for the Top." A dozen more less-than-memorable shows followed. Then in 1984, Trebek hit his own Daily Double.
"They called me up one day and said, 'We're going to syndicate 'Jeopardy!'; Would you like to host it?'" he recalled. "And I said, 'Are you going to pay me?' They said, 'Yeah.' I said, 'Okay. I'm your man.'"
Its success and format has made the "Answer as 'Jeopardy!' Question" a part of pop culture, in TV and the movies, from "Groundhog Day" and Seinfeld" to Taco Bell commercials.
Trebek often plays himself, as he did in "The Golden Girls" and "Cheers."
And in more than a dozen episodes, "Saturday Night Live" has had a field day. Trebek loves it: "When you make fun of someone like me, and a show such as 'Jeopardy!,' it means we've arrived. We're part of Americana, we're a part of the American cultural scene."
Indeed. Today there are websites analyzing "Jeopardy!" answers, and the show pulls in nearly 10 million viewers a night - safe to say most of them sure they'd do better than those losers on TV.
Susan Spencer admitted that she'd once tried to get on "Jeopardy!" but found the test "terribly hard."
"I barely understood the questions," she told Trebek.
"I believe the 'Jeopardy!' test is more difficult than being a contestant on the program," he replied.
"I was devastated - it took weeks to recover," she laughed.
"You flunked the 'Jeopardy!' test 15 years ago and you still can't live it down. Get over it!" he laughed.
Easy for him to take the winning and losing in stride. When he's not on the "Jeopardy!" set, he lives a quiet life with wife Jean and two kids, and would rather show off, not how smart he is, but how handy.
He's a dedicated putterer. When a local hardware store closed, he bought the inventory. "No matter what happens here that goes wrong, I probably have parts to fix it. I have a mini hardware store!"
There are things in his garage even HE doesn't know what they are - like woodruff keys.
But on the "Jeopardy!" set, Trebek is master of all he surveys.
The show keeps trying new things to stay fresh - like having Watson, an IBM computer, on the panel last year. (Watson won.)
And changing rules so contestants play as long as they win - that meant 74 times for Ken Jennings, who walked away with $2.5 million.
At 71, he's coy about retirement (vaguely saying sooner, not later), but is eager to answer a related question audiences always ask:
"Will I ever be a player on the show? No," he answered, "and I'll tell you why. Because if I were to be a contestant - say in a celebrity tournament - someone else would have to host the show. They might be younger, they might be very good!"
. . . but he won't be Alex Trebek.
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