The former Jeopardy! executive producer who lost his short-lived job as host Alex Trebek’s replacement over sexist comments has become the president of Ben Shapiro’s conservative Daily Wire.
Mike Richards joined the Daily Wire in December, and his promotion to president and chief content officer follows CEO Jeremy Boreing’s decision to step down from the role in March to focus on the company’s creative ambitions.
The announcement comes nearly four years after Richards left his dual roles as Jeopardy!‘s host and executive producer after sexist comments he made on a podcast he hosted in 2013 and 2014—including calling one model a “booth sl-t” for working at a tech conference and another expressing his preference for white hosts—resurfaced.
“We knew the answer was, ‘Who is Mike Richards?’ And now we can say ‘he’s an integral part of The Daily Wire’ was the question,” spokesperson Gloria Taylor said in a statement. “He’s won 5 Emmy’s, produced over 4,000 hours of network programming, and run some of the most iconic shows the world has ever known. Thank you to the purple hairs. Please ‘cancel’ more creative geniuses.”
The Daily Wire did not respond to a further request for comment on Richards’ past remarks.
Since Richards joined the company, he has overseen the launch of “Ben After Dark,” a late-night show hosted by Shapiro for the company’s streaming service Daily Wire+, and a “Parenting” series hosted by right-wing psychologist Jordan Peterson. The company is also trying to lure conservative media figures to the company.
Semafor reported that said Shapiro was seeking new investors—or buyers—for the company, which had previously raised money at a valuation north of $1 billion in 2023. Daily Wire laid off multiple staffers from his children’s programming arm Bentkey less than two months ago.
The company has said that it would “regularly pivot our strategy to lean into top-performing content, and eliminate under-performing series,” and it planned to continue producing content for Bentkey in 2025.
Richards’ producing tenure included stints at The Price is Right and Let’s Make a Deal before joining Jeopardy! as executive producer in 2020. After Trebek died, he helped lead a search for his replacement—that ultimately led to his short-lived tenure as host before revelations over his past angered staffers. He left the show entirely in August 2021.
His Price is Right stint was marred by allegations of discrimination and harassment, the Daily Beast reported in 2021. A former model sued CBS and the show’s production company Fremantle Media in 2008, claiming producers fired her over her pregnancy.
Richards also made multiple disparaging comments about women on The Randumb Show, a podcast he hosted between 2013 and 2014, that were revealed by The Ringer. After an iCloud hack exposed the nude images of various female celebrities, he pressed his co-host to allow him to go through her phone and asked her whether she had ever taken “booby pictures” after she said she had taken photos where she felt she looked cute.
He also said in another episode he felt one-piece swimsuits made women look “frumpy and overweight.” Richards apologized for the comments, telling The Ringer it was “humbling” to reckon with his “misjudgment, thoughtlessness, and insensitivity.”
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