It's self-explanatory, really. We've seen the bad; I want to see what good stuff is out there. Everyone here should go to the website and watch an episode of "QuizBusters," it is that good. You'll be smarter just for watching.

Bowling For Dollars.
What's your average?
56.
Who's up in the stands rooting for you?
The boys from the lodge.
Pick a Pin Pal and good luck.

It seems that you can't go wrong with a high school quiz bowl. We currently have one entitled <i>Battle of the Brains</i> that appears to be pretty slick. I don't remember the exact rules, but they do have one round that really strikes me as pretty intriguing. If I can catch an ep., I'll post the rules.

"It's Academic" has always been a good basic quiz format and remains so in Washington, as I saw a couple of years ago--although the library backgroup behind Mac MacGarry sure jars with the rest of the flashing-light game show set they have now. But considering that the same backdrop was used for a spelling bee show where he was the pronouncer (produced by WRC, but I saw it on an access channel), maybe it's in his contract that they have to use the backdrop.

And MacGarry's a true pro. I liked his work on the show.

Are you in Virginia? I actually have some first-hand knowledge of this show. (I directed it for a couple of years...)

They've changed the format a bit since I worked on it, but they have a category round, a current events round, and a toss-up (buzz-in) round. It's sponsored by the state lottery and currently airs on the CBS station in Richmond. It's been on for almost 30 years now.

Anyone who's watched one with a moderator who couldn't pronounce half of the words in this sentence might disagree.

Atlanta's High-Q isn't the best ever, but I'm always impressed by the level of question writing, considering it all seems to be done locally.

I am, but I'm actually in the Norfolk area. This BotB debuted last fall, but I think it IS sponsored by Virginia Lottery, and even features a pre-recorded message from Gov. Warner.

There are companies that write questions for academic competitions. I don't know about Atlanta's show, but the questions on our show were bought from one of these companies.

There are many quiz bowl question-writing companies, but there are few good ones. Thanks to the continued growth of "quiz bowl" as a high school (and college) activity independent of TV programs, there's a near-insatiable need for material. Unfortunately, few companies have the right mix of smart people AND game-show minded people to write colorful, interesting material in an academic setting.

As I've told anyone who'll listen, NAQT is the best. We've been doing QuizBusters for sixteen years and in that time we've used about half a dozen different companies (not counting a couple of excrutiating years where I pretty much wrote the whole thing myself), but we have no intention of changing away from NAQT. They provide the "meat and potatoes" of our game (tossup-bonus sets and our Quick Ten) and we generate the rest (Pop Quizzes, audio and video bonuses and our Lightning Round) internally. A valued member of our forum (mmb5) is on their staff, as are the two biggest money winners in game show history.

www.naqt.com

We also do Battle of the Brains for Central/Southern Virginia and Penn State's version of Scholastic Scrimmage.

Plus, another member of NAQT will be on Jeopardy! on Wednesday the 30th.


--Mike

Here on LI, we've got The Long Island Challenge...produced by Cablevision's regional news channel, News 12 LI (and hosted by Scott Feldman, one of their anchors), it pits two 4-member HS teams against one another in answering school-level questions on subjects like math, science, etc, as well as pop-culture categories like TV theme songs...in fact, I shot a behind-the-scenes piece on the show as a final project for a college broadcasting course.

Chuck Donegan (The Illustrious "Chuckie Baby")

I am aware. I don't recall ever seeing a credit for a question-writing company on High-Q, though, and "judge and academic advisor" Lloyd Busch seems to know enough about the questions (to the point of getting mocked for the bad puns in the Speed Round category titles) that I'm willing to believe it's all in-house.