“Danger!” executive producer Michael Davies has apologized after the show slipped up at the start of a recent episode and spilled the final results before the match started.
The gaffe, which took place in an episode that aired March 9, featured a shot of the contestants’ results after host Mayim Bialik wished them luck ahead of the first of a two-part High School Reunion Tournament finale.
The results revealed that contestant Jackson Jones won the game, although the eventual winner of the tournament was Justin Bolsen.
Davies, during Monday’s episode of “Inside Jeopardy!” podcast, said the show “totally blew it” from the start of the episode and it was the result of a “series of mistakes.”
“It’s somehow remarkable that they all happened, starting with the decision to do the monologue, which was probably the right decision,” Davies said.
He continued: “Although neither (producer) Sarah (Whitcomb Foss) nor I can remember exactly what was wrong with the monologue, why we picked it up. But we occasionally pick up monologues for whatever reason. Sometimes there’s a fact that’s wrong. Sometimes there’s just a performance issue. So we pick it up at the end of the show.”
He added that it should be – and is supposed to be – standard procedure for the show to take scores displayed on the podiums “back to the original level” in these cases.
That, he said, did not happen.
“This was so not caught in (post-production) and it was not caught in the final (quality control). There are so many elements that should check this.”
Davies assured listeners that “Jeopardy!” now has a new set of protocols to prevent slip-ups from happening in the future.
He added that when mistakes occur in the show, he hopes to uncover what happened and why it happened to ensure they don’t happen in the future.
“And so we live and learn, and we apologize to anyone whose experience of this program was ruined,” Davies said, before adding that the growth of the show’s franchise could have played a factor.
“There is a certain pressure on this production. We do more episodes, people work more hours, and so that leads to mistakes. But still no excuse for this. This was too basic. We will do everything we can to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”