Thank you, Don Pardo

Now that I've rustled through Chuck Woolery's Wheel of Fortune on YouTube, I went back and looked at Art Fleming's Jeopardy.

The big difference from Wheel is that Jeopardy gameplay has changed little since that ancient 1964-75 version. Old Jeopardy didn't have shopping rounds when folks could waste time spending their loot. Sure, the cash amounts were a lot lower before the Great Inflation. And they changed cards instead of TV monitors on the board. Watson was nowhere in sight, either.

But otherwise things went pretty much the same as nowadays. At the top of this 1968 episode Art even refers to the upcoming Tournament of Champions. The think music was also the same on Final Jeopardy. By the way, I had no clue where John Jacob Astor emigrated from.

Some formats are so solid that tinkering is foolish. Family Feud has also lasted a third of a century with few format changes. Though there have been some scoring switches and a couple tryouts for a bullseye round.

Jeopardy did try a few tweaks in the 1974-75 syndie and the 1978-79 revival. But the Alex Trebek version, which began in 1984 and goes on and on, went back to the tried and true original format. Why mess with timeless success?