LeVar Burton moving on from Jeopardy! race, plots own game show
In a new interview last night on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, the Reading Rainbow host made it clear that he was moving on from the exhausting hosting search that has gone on for most of the year. We don’t honestly blame him, largely because the producers rarely made him feel that wanted. He was brought on to guest-host following a worldwide fan campaign, but was only handed a week during the Summer Olympics. His ratings were low, but the show was also preempted in some markets. The cards were stacked against him from the start.
Burton tells Noah in the interview that in doing the show (and potentially in the aftermath of it), he’s come to realize that there may be something else he wants:
“They say be careful of what you wish for, because what I found out is that it wasn’t the thing that I wanted after all … What I wanted was to compete. I mean, I wanted the job, right, but then, when I didn’t get it, it was, like ‘Well, okay, what’s next?’”
So what is next for Burton now? He claims that he is working to develop his own game show and is working on precisely what that could look like. We do think there’s room for LeVar in the trivia space, and he may be able to come up with something that celebrates his love of knowledge with other characteristics that make him unique. He just needs the right partners around him and to have a broadcaster/streaming service that can reach the necessary audience. He’s a generational talent and we’ve seen how popular both Reading Rainbow and Star Trek: The Next Generation were for so many years. It does feel like high time for Burton to be able to reach another generation with his work.
Related – Here is who is guest-hosting Jeopardy! through the rest of the year
Would you watch a different game show hosted by LeVar Burton?
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