The Music of Jeopardy! From a Lullaby to $100,000,000

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You're listening

to 20,000 Hertz.

The stories behind the world's most iconic and fascinating sounds.

I'm Dallas Taylor.

New York City, 1963.

Mervy Griffin Jr.

is at his home with his three-year-old son, Tony.

Merv is 39 years old and already has decades of experience in the entertainment industry.

In his 20s, he started singing with a big band, and in 1949, they had a hit with a quirky song called I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.

Down at an English fair, one evening I was there,

when I heard a showman shouting underneath the flare,

I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts.

There they are standing in the red.

In the 1950s, Merv acted in several films and then became the host of a TV game show called Play Your Hunch.

If you want to know what these folks are doing, you'll have a chance to figure it out for yourself on Play Your Hunch,

starring Merv Griffin.

In 1962, he got his own talk show called The Merv Griffin Show.

That same year, he and his wife Julanne flew to Duluth, Minnesota, where Merv recorded the official song for their annual Christmas parade.

Christmas City, wonderful city, all dressed up in snow and mistletoe.

Christmas City, wonderful city.

On their flight back to New York, Merv and Julane discussed ideas for a new question-and-answer style game show.

Then Julane said, why not switch it around?

Make a show where the contestants are given the answer first, and then have to come up with the question.

For instance, 5,280, with the answer being, how many feet are in a mile?

Merv loved this idea.

He took it to NBC, who bought it without even seeing a pilot.

But right now, back at the house, Merv's not thinking about show business.

He's thinking about his young son Tony, who's having trouble going to sleep.

So Merv sits down at his piano, hoping to come up with some kind of lullaby.

In less than a minute, he settles on this pleasant looping melody.

Merv endearingly calls this piece, A Time for Tony.

What you're hearing is a version of the song that he recorded in 1970.

You can hear in A Time for Tony that he was writing a lullaby for a baby.

That's Lisa Brofman, who first started working with Merv in the mid-70s.

It has a very slow tempo.

It's a lovely piece.

Soon after, Merv is back at work, developing that new game show for NBC.

He and the producers decide the show will have a final round where the contestants can wager their winnings on a single guess.

And they want some kind of music to play while they write down their answers, something pleasant that also builds anticipation.

Then, Merv thinks back to his lullaby, A Time for Tony.

It could almost work, but the melody's not quite right.

Then suddenly, he gets it.

And the world of television will never be the same.

He changed the melody and obviously sped up the tempo.

You can feel the similarity, but you can hear in the Jeopardy theme that he was writing something completely different.

Something that had a very tick-tock sound, counting down the time for a game show.

Jeopardy first aired in 1964 with Art Fleming as host.

In the final Jeopardy round, they used Merv's tune, which they called the Think music.

It warms my heart to hear that still to this day.

The thing that I loved about that original Tink music was the Metre Mom.

That TikTok sound was probably so important to him because it was counting down the seconds that you had to finish your Final Jeopardy response.

In the original Run of Jeopardy, that melody was only used in the Final Jeopardy round.

As the contestants took the stage at the top of the show, they played this energetic bongo-driven piece.

Jeopardy presents today's three contestants.

This is Mrs.

Norma Dancis from Roslyn, Pennsylvania.

Then, when Art Fleming came out, they played a jazzy piece written by Merv's wife Julianne called Take 10.

It was also used during the credits.

There were also differences in the sound effects.

There was actually a sound effect when you rang in.

And on the pilot, it sounded like a goose honking.

as soon as you saw the clue you could ring in so as art fleming is reading the answer someone right in the middle of his read could honk changing the category for thirty dollars the answer is

she financed columbus's first voyage jesse what did queen isabella do that went away for the series it became more of a ding book beat the dealer suggests card counting as a way to win at this gambling game norma uh what is blackjack that is right yes blackjack sell away.

The original Run of Jeopardy was pretty popular, though it wasn't as iconic as the later iterations.

And despite running for 11 years, all you can find these days are a couple of very low-quality episodes.

The original 1964 to 1975 show

doesn't exist.

In those days, in the 60s, all shows were recorded on two-inch videotape and it was extremely expensive.

So it was a a common practice to reuse reels.

In other words, after the episode aired, they'd tape over that recording for a different show.

We have found five copies of the show and the pilot.

So unfortunately, those 2,200 shows don't exist anymore except for the few that we have found.

In 1975, during some network restructuring, NBC decided to cancel Jeopardy.

But the show still had a year left in its contract.

So to make up for this, NBC Greenlit another game show that Merv Griffin had been developing, a little show called Wheel of Fortune.

Just look at this studio filled with beautiful and imaginific gifts, which can be purchased today on Wheel of Fortune.

That's around the time that Lisa started working for Merv Griffin Enterprises as a production manager.

I started with Merv in 1976.

I was 24 years old.

Shortly after, NBC rebooted Jeopardy, calling it the all-new Jeopardy.

And I remember because everyone that worked at Merv Griffin Productions had a choice of working on either Jeopardy or Dance Fever, which was another production of Merv's.

So all the really established people on the staff, their first choice was, of course, Jeopardy.

All the rest of us worked on Dance Fever.

For the all-new Jeopardy, Art Fleming returned as host.

But other parts of the show were less familiar.

In the intro, they used a new Merv Griffin composition called January, February, March.

They also changed some of the rules, and crucially, it did not have the think music because there was was no final Jeopardy.

They changed the format and it didn't do well.

It didn't last very long.

It was only one season.

By the spring of 1979, the all-new Jeopardy had fizzled out.

But the story of Jeopardy was far from over.

Five years later, Jeopardy would be back on the air with a new host and a synthy new soundscape.

And from there, it would blast off into the pop culture stratosphere.

That's coming up, after the break.

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Like almost all of their speakers, when you first start it up, you can use a feature called TruePlay to calibrate the device to the acoustics of the room it's placed in.

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These devices are intuitive, they're convenient, and most importantly, they sound fantastic.

Visit sonos.com to hear the difference.

There's also a link in the show notes.

Again, that's sonos.com.

Congratulations to Elizabeth Manderly for getting last episode's mystery sound right.

That's the production logo of Focus Features, a subsidiary of NBCUniversal.

The audio features a calm, two-beat theme crafted by Michael A.

Reagan and Gregory Heiner.

Reagan has composed music for things like Powerpuff Girls and The God of War Games, while Heiner worked in the sound department on films like Blackhawk Down and The Siege.

And here's this episode's mystery sound:

And again.

If you know that sound, tell us at the web address mystery.20k.org.

Anyone who guesses it right will be entered to win a super soft 20,000Hz t-shirt.

After the cancellation of the all-new Jeopardy, many people thought the show was done for good.

But in 1984, Merv Griffin Enterprises revived this game show again.

This time, it included the voice of Johnny Gilbert as the show announcer.

Now entering the studio are today's contestants and the legendary Alex Trebek as the new host.

Welcome to America's favorite answer and question game, Jeopardy.

You know how we play it?

This time, they brought back Final Jeopardy, including the classic think music.

And for the intro, Merv worked with orchestrator Mort Lindsay and a large group of musicians to craft a hyped-up, synthesized theme song built around the Think melody.

This iteration of Jeopardy exploded in popularity.

Within a few years, it was reaching around 11 million households per month.

And ever since, it's been on the air continually with over 9,000 episodes and counting.

Along with the new theme song, the 80s reboot of Jeopardy included a batch of new sound effects, some of which are still used to this day.

There's the lasery daily double sound,

and the phone-like time's up sound.

Then there was the board fill sound, which they simply called the beep boops.

That one was eventually replaced.

We don't know what mechanism Merv had to record that, but we used that forever and we miss it.

It was in the late 80s that Lisa started working on Jeopardy.

The producer of Jeopardy called me and said, I need you to come over here.

And there was one thing that I knew that I never wanted to work on a game show.

It just wasn't where I wanted my career to go.

But when Jeopardy called, Jeopardy is something completely different.

And the level of respectability of that show was something that I thought that I would be very proud to be a part of.

So in 1989, it was toward the end of season five, I joined the team.

And it's been absolutely wonderful.

The next big change for Jeopardy Sound came in 1997 when executive producer Harry Friedman decided it was time for a musical refresh.

So they brought in composer Steve Kaplan for some new piano-heavy arrangements.

Here's Steve's update on the theme song.

He also revamped the think music around a jazzy piano, replacing Merv's 60s version after decades of use.

Around this time, they also ramped up various Jeopardy specials and spin-offs, which often involved unique music.

When we did the college championship, we actually had a marching band arrangement done.

Rock and Roll Jeopardy, we had a very rock and roll sound for the opening theme.

Sports Jeopardy, we had a very athletic sounding theme.

Then in 2008, they worked with a company called Chris Bell Music to create some more fleshed-out orchestral arrangements, including a new theme song.

We used a full orchestra and we only had an hour with them.

There were two minutes left in our session, and we hadn't yet recorded the think music.

And the musicians started getting up and leaving.

And we said, wait, wait, wait, we need the think music.

So they went through it twice.

And we got it, and they got up and left.

This is the version that still plays on the regular show today.

It's beautiful think music, but it doesn't have the metronome, and that always bothered me.

Soon after, they replaced this sound

with something more modern and airy, almost like a gentle notification.

That one only lasted about six years.

When they updated it, they kept the basic melody, but made it more rhythmic and pulsing.

In the late 2010s, the Jeopardy team commissioned a new music package from a company called Bleeding Fingers Music, which was co-founded by Hans Zimmer.

It actually happened in 2019 when we were producing Goat, the greatest of all time short series.

Here's the think music that Bleeding Fingers produced for the Goat series.

And here's their title theme, which debuted on the main series in 2021.

It was a wonderful thing because

they were so in tune to what we wanted and what we hoped for and so creative and so professional.

So we've used Bleeding Fingers ever since.

The arrangement of Jeopardy's latest theme song happened right around the time that the pandemic was taking off.

And after shutting down for several months, Lisa and the crew worked hard to rebuild the set and revamp their workflows.

So when we came back in July, I went into the ladies' room and some clever staff member wrote lyrics, but it was just do, do, do, do, do, do, do,

do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

And it was the spacing of those lyrics where you looked at it and you immediately figured out it was the think music.

The protocol was to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds.

So if you hummed the think music, you knew you hit that 20 seconds.

But it was so charming because every once in a while I would pass by a restroom and I could hear the person inside singing the think music.

Of course, it's not just the Jeopardy crew that knows this music front to back.

Basically, everyone does.

A 2021 survey revealed that the Jeopardy music is the most recognizable TV theme song in America, and there are references to it all over the place.

It must have been in the late 90s, early 2000s, when one of the NFL games started playing the think music during instant replay when the referees were judging a particular play.

And I remember thinking, wow, this has really become part of American culture because everyone knew what that meant.

There are only a few pieces of branded music that even come close to this level, like the McDonald's, I'm Lovin' It,

and maybe the Simpsons theme song.

Anything that well known is worth a lot of money, and the Jeopardy theme is no exception.

In 2005, Merv Griffin told the New York Times that this 30-second jingle had made him between $70 and $80 million.

That was 20 years ago, so it's safe to assume that this is now over 100 million.

Merv passed away in 2007 at the age of 82, but the royalties for this theme still go to his family, including his only child, Tony, Merv's original inspiration, all those years ago.

By this point, Jeopardy has been a cultural touchstone for decades.

Many people like me started watching it as a kid and then kept watching it their whole lives.

If that includes you, then chances are your favorite versions of the theme song and the think music are the ones that you heard when you first fell in love with the show.

And that just proves how malleable and timeless this melody really is.

We've produced over 9,000 episodes and how many times we have heard that theme and that think music and every single time it's pleasing.

There's something about it that just feels good.

The crew behind Jeopardy know just how powerful this music is.

And that's why, more than 60 years after Jeopardy started, this melody is still going strong.

You know, through different producers that have come and gone on the show, they've all been extremely careful to keep the integrity and the historic elements of the show intact.

Any changes that have been made have been just slight modifications as the show evolved.

You know, it's not just what you see, but it's what you hear.

Alex's voice over all those years became so recognizable.

Thank you.

We'll see you next time, ladies and gentlemen.

New champion gets to defend his title right here on Jeopardy.

So long.

And now we don't have Alex anymore, but we have wonderful Ken Jennings.

Thank you, folks.

Thank you, Johnny Gilbert.

Welcome to Jeopardy and happy May Day.

To hear that same music and to hear Johnny Gilbert's voice from the very beginning, still through the the shows today.

From the Alex Trebek stage at Sony Picture Studios, this is Jeopardy.

It brings you back.

It makes you feel like you're part of this history.

So I think it's really important.

It is what it's always been.

And that's not going to change.

After 36 years on the show, Lisa herself is a big part of that history.

and she's still thrilled to be working as Jeopardy's consulting co-executive producer.

It's like getting to stay in college for your whole life.

61 pieces of information for every single show that is fascinating.

It's about the world, music and cultures and politics and history and wars and brilliant minds.

There's so much in life to know, and it's so fascinating the more you know.

So it's been so rewarding for me.

I've been very proud of my career at Jeopardy.

Jeopardy has been in my life ever since I can remember.

And every time I watch it, I'm reminded of how intentional everything feels.

Every shot, every audio cue, every interjection from Ken Jennings.

It's this well-oiled machine that feels familiar and comfortable while consistently surprising me with new bits of knowledge.

Now, I've always wanted to see how that machine operates from the inside, but for how famous this show is, there's been very little behind-the-scenes footage.

Until now.

I'm excited to announce that today marks the expansion of 20,000Hz into video.

And on my YouTube channel, I go behind the scenes on the set of Jeopardy to learn the sonic secrets of this iconic show.

I interview all four people on the show's audio crew and go into areas that the public, as far as I know, has never seen before.

To watch it right now, just tap the link in the show notes or search for dallastaylor.mp3 on YouTube.

Once you're there, make sure you subscribe to see more of the incredible journey I've been on.

I can't wait for you to see this.

20,000 Hertz is produced out of my sound agency, DeFacto Sound.

To hear more, follow DeFacto Sound on Instagram or visit de facto sound.com.

This episode was written and produced by Casey Emmerling.

With help from Grace East.

It was sound designed and mixed by Brandon Pratt.

And Joel Boyd.

Thanks to our guest, Lisa Broffman.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel, dallastaylor.mp3, to see our new, exclusive video series.

I've been traveling across the country, getting behind-the-scenes access to all kinds of amazing people and places.

It's all crafted with video in mind.

So what you see over there there will be different from what you hear on this podcast.

But it's the nine years of respect and enthusiasm for 20,000 Hertz that has opened these doors for me.

And I'm so grateful for you, our listeners, for making this possible.

So thank you for listening.

Please continue to do so.

And also, come join me on YouTube for even more incredible sound stories.

Again, that link is in the show notes.

Finally, you can also find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok, where you'll get a more behind-the-scenes look at my process, along with short videos pulled from these experiences.

I'm Dallas Taylor.

Thanks for listening.