‘I’ll take Scripps for $1000’
Scripps Institution of Oceanography to be featured on TV game show ‘Jeopardy!’

Robert Monroe | July 21, 2008

Scripps Institution of Oceanography will become a category on the popular TV show "Jeopardy!".

There are all sorts of ways to cement a reputation and this Thursday Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego will receive an unusual kind of immortality.

On Thursday, the popular game show “Jeopardy!,” will feature Scripps’s history of cutting-edge ocean and earth science by awarding the institution its own category. Host Alex Trebek will present contestants with a variety of questions related to the research and people that have made Scripps Oceanography and Birch Aquarium at Scripps famous. Scripps staff members served as tour guides and prop procurers for Jeopardy’s field producers and “Clue Crew” members who filmed answers and promos at several locations on campus and at the aquarium on March 26.

In San Diego, the show airs at 7:30 p.m. Thursday on NBC affiliate KNSD/channel 7.

“Jeopardy!” representatives said the Scripps category will appear in the first round and that a Scripps-led research project will be the subject of a “Spotlight” segment typically shown just after commercial breaks.

The quiz show will let friends of Scripps test their knowledge of the institution as well. Scripps representatives involved in the creation of clues and the March filming can’t give any hints before the airing, having been sworn to secrecy (in the legal contractual sense). After the airing, viewers can also visit the show’s web site at http://www.jeopardy.com where a legion of devoted followers posts comments about each episode on the site’s message board.

In receiving its own category, Scripps joins a host of other “institutions” that have been so recognized. “Jeopardy” recently featured categories devoted to NASA, the United Nations, “Star Wars,” famed New York restaurant Sardi’s, and Dr. Seuss on the 50th anniversary of “The Cat in the Hat.”