Alex Trebek - Rise in Television

Rise in Television

Trebek's first hosting job was on a Canadian music program called Music Hop in 1963. In 1966, he hosted high school quiz show Reach for the Top. In 1973, he moved to the United States and worked for NBC as host of a new game show, The Wizard of Odds. A year later, Trebek hosted the popular Merrill Heatter-Bob Quigley game show, High Rollers, which had two incarnations on NBC (1974–76 and 1978–80) and an accompanying syndicated season (1975–76). In between stints as host of High Rollers, Trebek hosted the short-lived CBS game show, Double Dare (not to be confused with the 1986 Nickelodeon game show of the same name), which turned out to be both the only CBS network show Trebek hosted and the first show he hosted for what was then Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions, as well as the second season of the syndicated series The $128,000 Question, which taped in Toronto. Since the second incarnation of High Rollers premiered while The $128,000 Question was still airing and taping episodes, Trebek became one of two hosts to emcee shows in both the United States and Canada, joining Jim Perry, who was hosting Definition and Headline Hunters in Canada and Card Sharks, which coincidentally premiered the same day as High Rollers in 1978, in the United States. Trebek's Francophone side was put on display in 1978, in a special bilingual edition of Reach for the Top and its Radio-Canada equivalent Génies en herbe. In this show Trebek alternated smoothly between French and English throughout.

Like other hosts of the day, Trebek made several guest appearances as panelist or player on other shows; one of his guest appearances was on a special week of NBC's Card Sharks, in 1980, where he and several other game show hosts (including Allen Ludden, Bill Cullen, Wink Martindale, Jack Clark, Gene Rayburn, and Jim Lange) competed in a week-long round robin tournament for charity. Trebek won the tournament, defeating Bill Cullen in the finals. Trebek also appeared as a celebrity teammate on the NBC game show The Magnificent Marble Machine in 1975, as well as the Tom Kennedy-hosted NBC word game To Say the Least in 1978. Both of those shows were produced by Merrill Heatter-Bob Quigley Productions, which also produced High Rollers, the show Trebek was hosting during both of those guest appearances.

After High Rollers was canceled in 1980, Trebek moved on to Battlestars for NBC. The series debuted in October 1981 and was canceled in April 1982 after only six months on the air. In September 1981 Trebek took the helm of the syndicated Pitfall, which taped in Vancouver and forced him to commute as he had while hosting High Rollers and The $128,000 Question in 1978. Pitfall was canceled after its production company, Catalena Productions, went bankrupt, and as a result, he was never paid for that series. After both series ended, Trebek hosted a revival of Battlestars called The New Battlestars that ended after thirteen weeks, then shot a series of pilots for other series for producers Merrill Heatter (who he had worked for on High Rollers and Battlestars) and Merv Griffin. The Heatter pilots were Malcolm, an NBC-ordered pilot featuring Trebek with an animated character as his co-host, and Lucky Numbers, an attempt at a revival of High Rollers that didn't sell. For Griffin he shot two pilots for a revival of Jeopardy!, which he began hosting in 1984 and has done ever since.

In 1987, while still hosting Jeopardy!, Trebek returned to daytime television as host of NBC's Classic Concentration, his second show for Mark Goodson. He hosted both shows simultaneously until September 20, 1991, when Classic Concentration aired its final episode. In 1991 Trebek made broadcast history by becoming the first person to host three American game shows at the same time, earning this distinction on February 4, 1991, when he took over for Lynn Swann as host of NBC's To Tell the Truth, which he hosted until the end of the series' run on May 31, 1991.

In August 1995, Trebek filled in for Charles Gibson for a week on Good Morning America.

Trebek also appears in many Colonial Penn Life Insurance commercials, and reprised his role as host of To Tell the Truth in a 2010 advertisement for DirecTV.

In December 2010, Trebek guest-starred on How I Met Your Mother.