WASHINGTON — "Jeopardy!" executive producer Michael Davies admits the hit gameshow "totally blew it" and made a "horrible error" recently.
During the March 8 episode, the contestants' final scores were accidentally shown during host Mayim Bialik's opening monologue. That meant those tuning in really had no reason to keep watching, because they already knew the result.
The episode was the first half of the "High School Reunion Tournament" final featuring contestants Justin Bolsen, Maya Wright and Jackson Jones.
This week, Davies broke his silence on the "Inside Jeopardy!" podcast and explained what went wrong and how they plan to make sure it never happens again.
"Apologies to the entire audience, we totally blew it at the top of the show. We made a horrible error where we revealed the final scores at the end in the opening cut-away shot during Mayim’s monologue. It’s a series of errors that it’s somehow remarkable they all happened," Davies said about the March 8 issue.
He explained that sometimes they have to re-tape the host's opening monologue after the game, for one reason or another, and the standard procedure is to reset the podium scores back to the original levels. But that didn't happen in this case.
The error also wasn't caught in post-production or final quality control.
Davies added the mistake should've been caught before the episode aired, but they've put in place a new series of protocols to prevent it from happening again.
“I’m sure in all of your jobs, I’m sure if you’re honest with yourselves, there are mistakes made in every single one of your businesses," he said. "My whole thing is to always focus not on what happened and why did this happen in order to punish people, it’s what happened and why did it happen so that we can build a protocol to make sure it never happens again. And so, we live and learn and we apologize for anybody whose experience of this program was ruined. We take these mistakes to heart, so hard.”
The show's executive producer also explained that he was speaking out now because they're trying to be more transparent about "Jeopardy!" mistakes and the changes they put in place.