Posted in: TV | Tagged: bleeding cool, cable, LeVar Burton, preview, Reading Rainbow, Sony Television, star trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, streaming, teaser, television, trailer, tv

Jeopardy! LeVar Burton Joins Final Season 37 Guest Host Line-Up

Sony announced the final batch of guest hosts of Jeopardy! season 37 and among them is the host of Reading Rainbow LeVar Burton. Fans petitioned for the beloved star of Star Trek: The Next Generation online to join guest hosts and among the near 250k signatures on Change.org include venerable Hollywood icon star Dick Van Dyke and Star Trek alumnae Kate Mulgrew, who plays Captain Kathryn Janeway on Voyager and will reprise the role in the animated Prodigy. Burton thanked fans in a retweet of the Jeopardy! announcement writing, "THANK YOU… to all y'all for your passionate support! I am overjoyed, excited, and eager to be guest-hosting Jeopardy!, and will do my utmost best to live up to your faith you in me. YOU MADE A DIFFERENCE! Go ahead and take my word for it, this time."

"Our goal has been to present a wide variety of guest hosts with different skill sets and backgrounds on our path to finding a permanent host," Mike Richards, Jeopardy! executive producer said on replacing the late Alex Trebek, who died in November. "Our passionate fans are telling us what they like, and we are listening. All of the guest hosts have brought individualism, energy and an authentic love of our show to each of their episodes. We look forward to sharing the rest of the season with our viewers."

The 13-time Emmy winner played chief engineer Lt. Cmdr Geordi La Forge on TNG for all seven seasons and four feature films. The last appearance of his character was in the alternate reality Voyager episode "Timeless". TNG co-star Jonathan Frakes teased the actor's future involvement in the Star Trek franchise tweeting a photo of himself, Burton, and Q actor John de Lancie, who was confirmed to make his return on the second season of Picard on First Contact Day. The Roots star is currently hosting a podcast called "LeVar Burton Reads". Joining Burton on Jeopardy! guest hosting duties to close the season are ABCs hosts on Good Morning America in George Stephanopoulos and Robin Roberts, host of CNBC's Squawk on the Street David Faber, and three-time sportscaster of the year and Fox Sports' Joe Buck. Previous and already scheduled guests hosts featured a variety of television personalities like grand champions Ken Jennings and Buzzy Cohen; Katie Couric, Bill Whitaker, Mayim Bialik, Dr. Oz, Savannah Gutherie, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Even Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers got in on the action. As a side note, actor Ryan Reynolds agrees with me Burton hosting needs to be permanent.

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