Ex-'Jeopardy!' host Mike Richards is TV's dead man walking

Mike Richards accepts the award for outstanding game show for “Jeopardy!” at the Daytime Emmy Awards in June. In the time between his being named the new host of “Jeopardy!” and being named the ex-new-host of “Jeopardy!” Mike Richards taped a week’s worth of programs. “Here is the host of ‘Jeopardy!’,” announcer Johnny Gilbert declared at the show’s opening, “Mike Richards.” Controversy aside, one looked at him closely, as one would any new leader of an established institution. Taking Trebek as a model, one would say that a “Jeopardy!” host should be respectable and respectful; care about the show more than oneself; sound as if one knows the answers, not just because they are written on a card, but because one has made a study of the subject, in the quiet of one’s enormous library, and of every subject; communicate power in stillness — be more Obi-Wan Kenobi than Han Solo; and sound sympathetic when a contestant gets an answer wrong. Of course, in the end it may be just an Alex Trebek hologram — they have the technology — or a giant AI brain, like former contestant Watson, the machine that beat Jennings and Brad Rutter, as if in some modern update of “John Henry.” Something without old tweets to embarrass it, programmed to avoid making racist or sexist or remotely political remarks, something you already speak to in questions: Siri, what is ornithology?