At least my news feeds were awash with breaking news yesterday about how the world of television was about to be forever changed. It was apparently significant enough that the NEW YORK TIMES’ Los Angeles-based John Koblin enthusiastically channeled his source’s sales pitch in how he chose to report it yesterday morning:
“Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!” are two of the biggest holdouts of the streaming revolution, available only on traditional broadcast television. Not for much longer. Sony Pictures Entertainment, the owner of the popular game shows, said on Thursday that it was soliciting bids from major media and tech companies for the streaming rights to new episodes of the two series for the first time.
“The world is changing around us,” said Keith Le Goy, the chairman of Sony’s television division. “Consumption on streaming is now overtaking consumption of other forms of delivery of television. Big iconic franchises, like the N.F.L, the N.B.A. and W.W.E., are moving over.”
Well when I saw a statement as bold as that from someone I once called a colleague, that certainly grabbed my attention. And Le Goy is the kind of outsized personality that revels in that ability. He rose through the global ranks of Sony’s distribution division as a wild-haired, zealotic champion of everything from niche series with financial support from foreign networks to the iconic brands of legacy series that ultimately have been the company’s profit centers. With the build of a rugby player and the enthusiasm of a Tony Robbins he’d conduct seminars and meetings tied to key global markets like the LA Screenings dressed in a Ghostbusters suit, complete with flux capacitor, with a ferocity that would leave me both enthused and reeling–exactly how he preferred his staff and colleagues would be when they’d then wine and dine their clients and buyers. As someone who’s been on both sides of that process, I had both full appreciation and justified concern of the tactics he employed on the studio’s behalf.
But he got results, often far better ones that objective outsiders would have expected. And I certainly didn’t mind when he and his team were able to make up for the missteps I saw our production division take during my final years with the company with efforts like the $500 million streaming rights deal with Netflix for SEINFELD that made our group profitable and allowed our bonuses to kick in.
So it was little surprise to me that soon after the equally impassioned Ravi Ahuja was anointed to studio chief at the beginning of 2025 that Le Goy was elevated to a position that now gives him oversight of all productions and the paths they take to profitability. And Ahuja telegraphed his own belief that WHEEL and JEOPARDY! were true studio crown jewels in the remarks he provided yesterday to Koblin:
“People are running all over town looking for intellectual property,” he said. “When I got here it was clear that ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and ‘Jeopardy!’ were the proverbial assets hiding in plain sight. There was full awareness in the country, massive viewership and a passionate fan base. All of that pointed to a big opportunity for more growth.”
Ahuja’s the exec who saw the potential for increased profits for these franchises when he bought into the concept of Mike Richards hosting JEOPARDY! as well as show-running both franchises, effectively covering three big-ticket personnel costs for the price of a little more than two. He was more than willing to overlook the skeletons in Richards’ closet that we’ve mused about on many past occasions, including toward the end of 2023 when we chronicled the persistent efforts of THE RINGER’s Claire McNear to whistleblow and ultimately derail his desired cost savings. Much as he and his predecessors chose not to address the numerous rumors and at times testimonies from our colleagues on how some of Le Goy’s revelry and personal conduct at times got out of hand enough where the company needed to step in financially and legally. But hey, in today’s world, those qualities get people cabinet positions, let alone top executive jobs. And since Ahuja will soon report into new Sony Corporation CEO Hiroki Totoki, the current COO and CFO, the landscape for financial optimization at Sony is now more than ever robust for the kind of reshaping that Le Goy and Ahuja are hoping to execute.
But unlike the iconic shows that per Koblin drop a cool $175M in ad revenue annually to the Sony bottom line, this latest marketplace maneuver leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
For one, the last time I looked, despite showrunner Michael Davies’ efforts to the contrary, these shows are not live sporting events like the ones Le Goy referenced. They’re game shows, taped weeks in advance. They do draw seven million viewers per night through old school syndication but they’re hardly the demographic profile that resembles the cord-cutters and cord-nevers: Koblin himself reported those somber realities in June 2023 when Ryan Seacrest was named as the new and substantially younger face of WHEEL:
The median “Wheel of Fortune” viewer is in the oldest age bracket that Nielsen tracks: “65+.” Among adults under 50, the demographic that most interests advertisers, the two game shows draw similar ratings: “Jeopardy!” averages 1.1 million viewers in that bracket and “Wheel of Fortune” one million.
And Sony doesn’t fully control their fate as either buyer or seller. They’re currently embroiled in some rather contentious self-generated legal battles with CBS Media Ventures, which distrbutes the show to broadcast stations thanks to a legacy deal originally struck when Merv Griffin owned the shows and the King brothers owned the then-small distribution company at a time when WHEEL was barely surviving on NBC daytime and JEOPARDY! was trying to resurrect itself after a short-lived and unsuccessful revival on the same network. So aside from the morality rate of their audience concentration, those seven million nightly viewers are anything but a sure thing going forward.
The specific details of this current offering that Koblin shared attempt to address those realities:
The initial streaming rights to “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” would begin in September and could be for three years, Sony officials said. During that time, the company that wins the rights will be able to stream new episodes the day after they air on syndicated television. Exclusive same-day rights to new episodes are available starting in September 2028, when all pre-existing syndication deals expire. “We want to make sure that these shows are as relevant as they are now — or more — 40 years from now,” said…Ahuja.
Which to me sort of undercuts the posturing that Koblin attempted to convey that this sales effort began strictly as self-preservation:
Executives stressed that the streaming rights were unrelated to a monthslong legal fight between Sony and CBS over distribution rights for the syndicated shows. “These rights are entirely separate from the syndication rights that CBS has,” Mr. Le Goy said.
Yes they are, Keith. You absolutely have the right to take the fates of these icons into your own hands away from people you’re clearly unhappy with that you pay 35 cents on the dollar to do a job you clearly have shown you can do way better at. My one question to you is–how do you plan to keep generating seven million nightly viewers and nine-figure annual revenues?
Maybe you’ve seen evidence that supports how your colleague Suzanne Prete suggests that the road to streaming has been started with the launch of the POP CULTURE JEOPARDY! spin-off on Prime Video late last year that is now reaching its championship episodes. Prime has been really quiet (unlike how they’ve been with the NFL) and what’s publicly available through the likes of Just Watch–which per its website measures user activity from the last 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days… includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as ‘seen’–is a little underwhelming. Yesterday PCJ ranked 187th out more than 11,000 measured series, just behind Prime Video’s recently renewed JURY DUTY but well below the non-exclusive streaming audience for CBS’ recently launched daytime soap opera BEYOND THE GATES (#98).
Equally as meh as how another spin-off version currently fares on ABC’s prime-time lineup. Per USTVDB:
Celebrity Jeopardy is currently the 16th most popular show on ABC and 90th overall on TV, watched by a total number of 1,491,000 people (0.47% rating, down -26% from last week) as of the daily audience measurement on .
So maybe there’s some evidence that supports your contention that, again per Koblin, there are organic elements to the volume of content and the needs of streamers that might negate some of these mediocre numbers?. Here’s what you convinced Koblin to posture:
(B)oth shows produce a staggering volume of new syndicated episodes: 425 a year, combined. That could be appealing to streaming companies. Consumers are canceling their streaming subscriptions at higher rates, and every company, from Netflix to Max to Peacock, is trying to find ways to deter that behavior. The game shows could provide a daily habit that makes a subscriber less inclined to jump around.
I guess if there were evidence that there was the kind of demand and dedication that would suggest that there’s a passion base willing to be so dedicated to subscribe that theory might be validatable. What’s out there publicly again isn’t exactly supporting it. Here’s the high level learnings from a 2022 study authored by one Noah Brody:
A CivicScience survey of 4,200 U.S. adults in late February and early March… showed that about 15% of American adults consider themselves to be regular Jeopardy! watchers, while another 20% watch the show occasionally.
At first blush, that’s hardly compelling. The additional detail in those figures show that 28% are former viewers who stopped watching, and 37% have never watched.
But the study–which certainly should have had some sort of sign-off from Sony–does have some positive signs which some streamer might find intriguing:
(C)ommon perceptions about who exactly is watching Jeopardy! don’t always line up with reality…today’s Jeopardy! viewers are a lot younger and more diverse than one might expect. Among those who watch on a regular basis, nearly 4 in 10 are under the age of 35. Only one-quarter are 65 or older.
