Ken Jennings wrote a touching essay on what makes Alex Trebek so special

Jennings has now touched on what Trebek means to him—and to generations of TV viewers—for The New York Times, writing that he’s the closest thing the modern entertainment world has to an iconic broadcaster like Walter Cronkite or Johnny Carson. Jennings says in his piece that he doesn’t want to write an elegy for Trebek, as he hopes he’ll still be hosting the show “for a long time to come” (something he’s maintained for a while, even as some websites suggest that he’s the natural choice to follow Trebek), but he just wanted to make sure that we don’t all take him for granted and that we “appreciate the man as long as we have him.”

It’s an interesting essay, if only for the window it opens into just how much a Jeopardy! contestant gets to interact with the Jeopardy! host, but Jennings does succinctly hit on what makes Trebek such an iconic host, explaining that Trebek’s whole persona is built on the simple fact that “Jeopardy! itself, not he, is the star of the show.” Trebek is crucial to the entertainment value of Jeopardy!, but he allows the clues and the categories and the players to take more of the emphasis than him, retaining the sense of prestige that Jeopardy! has over some of its game show contemporaries. In the end, though, the most important point that Jennings makes is that Trebek “knows how much he means to people,” and Jennings hopes that it comforts him to know “that so many people are pulling for him now.”