But were the questions easier or just on a more modern topic?

Arguably the hardest quiz on TV (Only Connect) sometimes has stuff from kid's TV shows (e.g. the surnames of Scooby's human companions) but it's still stupidly hard. There's a difference between needing to know which Disney resort is in Florida and needing to be able to know the first four animated feature films Disney made in order.

It was broadcast on ABC nation wide instead of the typical contracted station for any given local market, right? Normally the tournaments are broadcast during normal time slots on the usual market station. Definitely makes sense that the mouse would have insisted on a bit of extra coverage for something I bet they paid a lot for, but I would be hesitant to give that much weight for determining the direction of the standard show.

Do you have a source for that? I watched all the GOAT episodes and would both say that they were MUCH harder than typical Jeopardy games where I can typically answer 60-80% of questions and did not notice such a high percentage of questions being contextually about Disney.

Questions about Disney products sound more like efforts to promote Disney products than attempts at a trendy style.

There were a couple answers about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory during GOAT Jeopardy, which made me hopeful that they were going to offer the host job to the winner, as Wonka did.

There was a whole discussion about this on reddit. It would harm them significantly to hire Ken. Due to game show laws, anyone he's ever played trivia with would be ineligible for the show. Since he's big on the trivia circuit, that would be about 1/2 of their contestants.