LeVar Burton Will Guest Host ‘Jeopardy!’, as One of TV’s Most Divisive Hiring Searches Nears an End

Among his most potent cheerleaders is the actress

Yvette Nicole Brown.

A friend of Mr. Burton’s since their stint together on the TV comedy “Community,” she has rallied her 488,000 Twitter followers to support his on-air tryout. She used that platform to criticize “Jeopardy!” producers for not giving him a shot among a first wave of guest hosts. And she was among those questioning the character of hosts in that initial round, including “Jeopardy!” champion

Ken Jennings,

who issued a public apology (shortly before his own tryout) for insensitive jokes he posted in the past.

“There’s a few with ego problems who do not have the spirit of Mr. Trebek,” Ms. Brown says. “I feel like if there’s anyone worthy to stand in that man’s shoes, it’s LeVar Burton.”

Since the death last November of the game show’s host of 36 years, the search for his successor has turned into a competition unto itself. This game within the game has pitted former “Jeopardy!” champs (

Buzzy Cohen

) against newscasters (

Anderson Cooper

), actors (

Mayim Bialik

) and one NFL quarterback (

Aaron Rodgers

).

In play is the identity of one of TV’s most valuable properties. This season, 38% of “Jeopardy!” viewers have watched at least three times a week, making it the most loyal audience among all syndicated TV series, according to distributor CBS Media Ventures. But it has been a bumpy transition for a trivia game that chugged along relatively unchanged under the steady hand of Mr. Trebek, who followed original host Art Fleming when the show was revived in 1984. Post-Trebek viewership is down by 10%, to an average 8.8 million total viewers this season.

The public tryout process has kept the spotlight on a show as familiar as the local news, but by game-ifying the host search, the show also has made backlash virtually inevitable. “‘Jeopardy!’ is in a tricky place,” says

Claire McNear,

author of a book about the game show titled “Answers in the Form of Questions.”

“It was always going to be just impossibly difficult to replace Alex Trebek. But now they’ve really primed people to say, ‘Well, I’m a LeVar Burton fan, so choosing Ken Jennings is a disaster,’ or ‘I love Aaron Rodgers, so Robin Roberts is a betrayal,’” she says.

Mr. Jennings, an early fan favorite to become the new full-time host, declined to comment on criticisms from supporters of others in the running. “The virtue of the hosting round-robin is that it shows the audience that ‘Jeopardy!’ still feels like ‘Jeopardy!’ no matter who’s hosting. And that’s been great!,” he said in an email. “But it’s come at a price. The down side is that, no matter who the permanent host is, the majority of viewers will have a different choice that they liked better. They’ll be aggrieved, and they won’t be wrong.”

The dissensions already include a protest by former “Jeopardy!” contestants against Dr.

Mehmet Oz’s

hosting stint. In an open letter to executive producer—and recent guest host—

Mike Richards,

they said Dr. Oz “has used his authority as a doctor to push harmful ideas onto the American public,” and represented “a slap in the face” to a game show devoted to facts. Representatives for Dr. Oz didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Some of the stand-ins only hosted the show as a lark or for charity; more than $2 million has been donated so far, according to Sony Pictures Television, the studio that produces “Jeopardy!”

Of its procedure in choosing a permanent host,

Sony

said, “This will be a very audience-centric and data-driven decision, including feedback from viewers, episodic tests for each host and multiple focus groups, and we are giving it the utmost thought and consideration.”

A full-time host will be announced by the end of the season next month.

“It’s been divisive in some ways with the regulars here,” says Howard McPherson, a veteran among the 4 p.m. “Jeopardy!” watchers at Donn’s Depot, a bar in Austin, Texas. During Covid-19 lockdowns, this trivia crew reconvened in the parking lot for “Jeopardy!” on a TV set plugged into an extension cord. In rating the guest hosts, they’ve disagreed on the merits of news-anchor smoothness, and how much fun a host (namely Ms. Bialik) should inject into the game. One thing they agree on at Donn’s Depot: “None of us like the ones who waste too much time and try to interject their own personal experiences,” says Mr. McPherson, a middle-school P.E. teacher and coach.

Hosts tape a week’s worth of half-hour games in one day. They need to steer three players smoothly through 61 clues while tracking player earnings and deficits, and driving the game’s momentum through commercial breaks and interstitial patter.

“It’s shown that Alex Trebek really was Fred Astaire in the role. He had all the moves down and made it look easy,” says Christopher Stratton, a Connecticut real-estate lawyer training to be a contestant. He helps moderate a “Jeopardy!” community on Reddit, where the host rotation is being debated among its 70,000 members.

More surprising is how it riveted the world of professional football. During Mr. Rodgers’s hosting run, “the people in Green Bay were ‘Jeopardy!’ watchers for those two weeks because of him,” says ESPN Packers reporter

Rob Demovsky,

noting that interviewing the future Hall of Famer about his “Jeopardy!” strategy was “like talking to him about a playoff game.”

Mr. Rodgers has said that he wants to do the “Jeopardy!” job during his offseasons—adding suspense to a continuing NFL cliffhanger over whether he will return to the Packers.

CNBC anchor

David Faber

and sportscaster

Joe Buck

will follow Mr. Burton as guest hosts.

Mr. Burton’s supporters have deep-seated TV memories of him, thanks especially to the culture-shifting miniseries “Roots,” his 21 seasons hosting the PBS program “Reading Rainbow,” and his role as the brainy chief engineer in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Many of his fans also champion the notion of diversifying the pool of major game show hosts and the potential symbolism of a Black man leading a show synonymous with knowledge, something Mr. Burton has echoed in interviews where he has lobbied for the job.

Some “Jeopardy!” fans have bristled at the way Mr. Burton’s social-media backers have anointed the 64-year-old before anyone has seen how he does at the podium.

To that, Ms. Brown says, “He’s a good, loving, informative and educational part of our lives. He just, to me, has the DNA of Mr. Trebek.”

Write to John Jurgensen at john.jurgensen@wsj.com