Season 41 Preemptions
And broadcast changes… so to speak
This is one of the two posts that I said I’d be bringing out this week at the end of my deep dive on geography. But the research has led me to take it in a different direction.
Here’s the list of broadcast changes for the new season
(None.)
That’s right. Every single United States media market airing Jeopardy! will do so at the same usual time, and on the same usual station, next week as on July 26.
This past weekend, I checked the schedules in all 210 Nielsen Designated Market Areas, just as I do before each new season begins (and at the middle and end of last season). I did so on Saturday, and found no changes. This led me to strongly believe that I had missed something, so I added some formatting to my spreadsheet to guard against errors (like looking at the wrong line), and checked them all again on Sunday. I hadn’t missed anything. Nobody is moving the show when new episodes return at the start of next week.
So, instead of leaving this post there, I’m taking a chunk out of my season preview post and bringing it into this one. I’m going to go through some of the events that preempt Jeopardy! in places so you can be forewarned, and thus forearmed. I’ll split them along a seemingly obvious line — sports, and non-sports.
(Unless otherwise stated, all times listed below are Eastern.)
Sports
National Football League
Monday Night Football
Fortunately, since there’s no possibility of a writers’ strike in 2024-25, Disney and the NFL won’t expand Monday Night Football coverage on ABC to the entire season. It should remain as presently scheduled — which is to say, seven Monday nights, including the season premiere. They are:
September 9 (Jets at 49ers)
September 23 (Commanders at Bengals)
September 30 (Seahawks at Lions)
October 28 (Giants at Steelers)
December 9 (Bengals at Cowboys)
December 16 (Bears at Vikings)
December 30 (Lions at 49ers)
Kickoff for all games is 8:15 p.m., except December 16, which starts at 8:00. For the season opener of both MNF and Jeopardy! on September 9, pregame coverage starts at 7:30 p.m. This results in preemptions of Jeopardy! in 28 markets where the show airs at that time or later. (I’m waiting for a few more days before I publish my Google Sheet with the impacts, to see if some stations update schedules with later airing times, as opposed to not showing Jeopardy! at all.) I’d expect this to be the standard for all seven of these games.
It’s also likely that a Wild Card round playoff game will be broadcast on the evening of January 13.
Thanksgiving Day
It features the customary three NFL games:
Bears at Lions (12:30 p.m., CBS)
Giants at Cowboys (4:30 p.m., FOX)
Dolphins at Packers (8:20 p.m., NBC)
Expect pregame coverage for these games to begin at noon, 4:00 p.m., and 8:00 p.m. respectively. FOX aired college basketball after the early football game last year; we’ll have to keep an eye out to see if CBS will do likewise.
College football
Black Friday
Generally, the most preempted day of the Jeopardy! season is the day after Thanksgiving — this year, Friday, November 29. This is primarily due to college football (and to a lesser extent, college basketball) across all four major networks. Here is what’s on tap for that day; expect studio coverage in the period between games, so Jeopardy! won’t be “sneaking in” between them.
ABC
Oklahoma State at Colorado, noon
Mississippi State at Ole Miss, 3:30 p.m.
Georgia Tech at Georgia, 7:30 p.m.
CBS
Minnesota at Wisconsin, noon
Stanford at San Jose State, 4:00 p.m.
FOX
Oregon State at Boise State, noon
Utah at UCF, 8:00 p.m.
(Likely to be college basketball in the 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. window, as there was last year)
NBC
Nebraska at Iowa, 7:30 p.m. (pregame coverage began at 7:00 last year)
Bowl games
Most of them are on ESPN, but three are on weekdays and airing on network television.
Friday, December 20, 8:00 p.m. — CFP1 First Round, ABC
Tuesday, December 31, 2:00 p.m. — Sun Bowl, CBS
Tuesday, December 31, 3:00 p.m. — Citrus Bowl, ABC
Others
The American Athletic Conference championship game is on ABC on Friday, December 6, at 8:00 p.m.
FOX is showing nine Big Ten games on Friday nights throughout the autumn. Five of them begin at 8:00 p.m., which overlaps with Jeopardy! in Denver. Usually, when this happens, they move it over to The CW (KGWN). These games are on September 20 & 27, October 11 & 18, and November 22.
Major League Baseball playoffs
Schedules are yet to be released, but we have a general idea of impacts.
The Wild Card round is October 1-3, on ESPN and ABC. This could hit places across the country — including Central Time markets like Chicago with daytime airings.
Fox and FS1 split coverage of the National League Division Series and Championship Series, scheduled for October 5-11 and 13-21 respectively. (The American League playoffs are on TBS this year.)
The World Series airs entirely on Fox; the relevant dates are October 25, 28, 29, & 30, and November 1.2 (Games 2 and 7, if necessary, fall on Saturdays.)
National Basketball Association
The marquee day of the NBA regular season is Christmas Day, with three of the five games on ESPN being simulcast on ABC — in the 2:30 p.m., 5:00 p.m., and 8:00 p.m. slots.
ABC will also air the entire 2025 NBA Finals in June. This year, the Stanley Cup Final is on TNT; it alternates between that channel and ABC.
March Madness
The first and second rounds of the 2025 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship are on Thursday and Friday, March 20 & 21; nearly all CBS stations will preempt Jeopardy! to air the hoops. (There’s a brief window between the early and late doubleheaders that doesn’t get hit; last year, it was 4:00, 4:30, and 5:00 p.m. Central airings, including most notably San Antonio.)
A week later, on March 27 & 28, the Sweet Sixteen will preempt CBS Jeopardy! airings from 7:00 p.m. onward (a few Central Time markets, and all Eastern, most Mountain, and all Pacific and Hawaii airings).
Finally, CBS has the National Championship Game on April 7; customarily, pregame coverage begins at 8:00 p.m.
Miscellaneous others
UEFA Champions League
After the New Year, it’s customary for four CBS affiliates — WIAT (Birmingham, AL); WREG (Memphis, TN); KZTV (Corpus Christi, TX); and KIMT (Rochester, MN), all 3:30 Central Time for Jeopardy! — to see preemptions on several Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the knockout stages of the UEFA Champions League. That competition expands this year, adding an additional knockout round. Here are the relevant dates:
Playoff round (seeds 9-24): February 11, 12, 18, 19
Round of 16: March 4, 5, 11, 12
Quarterfinals: April 8, 9, 15, 16
Semifinals: April 29, 30; May 6, 7
(The final is on Saturday, May 31.)
Golf
A couple of tournaments have impacts on Fridays. Usually there’s one in late January on CBS, and also the U.S. Open in mid-June on NBC (Friday, June 13).
Non-sports
The second Presidential debate
This is Tuesday of next week, September 10. All four networks are airing their own one-hour pre-debate coverage, while simulcasting ABC for the debate itself. Most Mountain Time, and all Pacific, Alaska, and Hawaii Time markets will see Jeopardy! preempted.
Election Day
This being a Presidential election year, political coverage on Tuesday, November 5 is likely to begin at 7:00 p.m. at the earliest and run late into the night; there almost certainly won’t be any moves of Jeopardy! to the overnight period on affected stations. That night’s episode will be a regular game, so I wouldn’t expect the show itself to deploy any compensatory measures.
Other Thanksgiving Day coverage
NBC aired the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade twice last year; live in the morning, and an encore presentation in the afternoon. It also aired the National Dog Show between the two.
Miscellany
There are other things that bump Jeopardy! from time to time. When I checked the markets and looked at next week’s programming, I saw one in West Virginia that’s preempting the show for a high school football game. But the one I feel compelled to mention here is the one that gets a lot of play on r/Jeopardy, given the size of the market — WBZ (CBS Boston) airs Patriots All Access in the 7:00 p.m. hour throughout the NFL regular season (and playoffs, as long as the Patriots remain alive). This causes Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! to be bumped over to WSBK (channel 38).
A concluding note
Wilford Brimley’s message about blood sugar is also mine about your local listings: check them, and check them often. You can do that through the “guide” function however you get your television, of course.
Here’s another way: a direct link to Jeopardy! on zap2it. Enter your ZIP Code and your cable provider — or any major cable provider, if you’re cord cutting3 — and it’ll give you all the upcoming airings for the first-run syndicated program, usually out about two weeks.
If episodes are bumped and not aired in a different time slot where you are: “Complain, complain, complain,” as one Redditor put it recently. But importantly, don’t complain to the show itself. The staff of Jeopardy! and Sony Pictures in Culver City have no control over these decisions. Find your local station’s site, navigate to the “Contact Us” (or similar) link, and vent your frustrations.
I hope you’re not totally bummed out after reading all of this. A bit later this week, we’ll look ahead to the new season — you know, the Jeopardy! that we actually will be seeing as opposed to all the instances when it won’t be seen as usual.
College Football Playoff.
If both League Championship Series end in four or five games, the World Series start will be pulled up by three days; in this case, the affected dates are October 22, 23, 25, 29, and 30. (Games 4 and 5 would fall on Saturday and Sunday.)
When I check all the media markets, I look for a big one like Xfinity or Charter Spectrum, but I don’t limit myself to those two. In the event of pre-emptions, it can be worthwhile to look at more than one; a station where the show has been moved might be carried by one, but not by another.