‘Jeopardy!’ Revealed A New ‘Second Chance’ Tournament And Other Changes For Season 39

We’re in the off-season of Jeopardy! as the calendar rolls over to August, but it’s clear that there’s a lot of new syndicated trivia goodness coming for fans in the fall. The show’s forthcoming Season 39 has its two hosts locked in, and as we learned this week there’s a lot of new content coming in the months ahead.

Even the reruns are a bit different this August. As executive producer Michael Davies detailed in a blog post in late July, the show’s producers hand-picked six weeks worth of episodes that will tease a lot of the content coming in the new season. More importantly, we also learned a rough hosting schedule now that Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik are firmly locked in to co-host the show. Starting with Jennings hosting most episodes through the rest of the year, including a new tournament altogether:

Ken will kick off the season in September, host the inaugural Second Chance competition and the heavily anticipated Tournament of Champions featuring Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio, Mattea Roach, Ryan Long, and many, many more. His initial hosting run will take us through December. In the meantime, Mayim will host Celebrity Jeopardy! on ABC in primetime. When she takes over from Ken in January, the current plan is to have her host a couple of new tournaments as well as the Jeopardy! National College Championship and as many weeks as she can manage with her other primetime commitment to “Call Me Kat.” We know you value consistency, so we will not flip flop the hosts constantly and will keep you informed about the hosting schedule.

Ahead of the Tournament of Champions, the show will also put on a Second Chance Tournament featuring a group of 18 strong players who will get another shot at glory. The full list of contestants was revealed on Monday, as was the fact that the winner of that tournament gets a bid in the Tournament of Champions itself.

And as revealed on the show’s new podcast, Inside Jeopardy, the ToC will have a slightly tweaked format, likely starting with that automatic bid for the Second Chance Tourney winner. That podcast is likely to have loads of little details about the show and taping, which starts this week. No real offseason for syndicated game show trivia anymore, is there