Science, Health & Tech
Preperations underway for 90 FM's Trivia Weekend
The Pointer
rlaro831@uwsp.edu
Friday April 11 at 6 p.m. the first question of Trivia 39 will be asked live from the 90 FM office. The contest will span just three days for the participants but the event really started back in January.
“We generally come back from break and kick off spring semester by getting ready (for trivia),” said Program Director James Priniski. “I’m excited about it. This year should be better than some of the past years.”
The staff first has to go through the process of acquiring funds, sponsors, advertisers, making t-shirts and posters, organizing questions and scheduling the event. “We spend most of our time early on taking care of those things,” said Priniski.
On top of all the prep work, the studio needs to be completely transformed. The main office area is made into a call center. Extra desks and up to 30 phones are arranged in a room no bigger than a dorm room in order handle to volume of calls.
“We have 10 executive staff members and around 200 volunteers and assistants doing everything from announcing questions, answering phones and keeping track of scores,” said Priniski.
After an answer is phoned in it is recorded and brought to another room where 4-5 computers are up and running with a special database for scoring. The system that keeps track of the scores was designed specifically for the contest several years ago.
The station also does hourly features called “Trivia Focus,” that highlight different teams partaking in the contest. “We call up a team every hour and ask them if they have any gimmicks, what they eat, who is on their team, how many years they have done trivia… things like that. Then those calls get edited down and played the next hour,” said Priniski.
While registration is running all through the week there are already almost 300 teams signed up. In past years there have been around 500 teams.
“Some people sign up for trivia to win, others just want to get a feel for the whole thing and some just do it to party with their friends for a weekend,” said Priniski. “All sorts of people enter. Every year we have a ton of first timers and then we have teams like ‘Network,’ who have played 20 years straight and won 16 of them.”
Registration for trivia continues through this week from 3-7 p.m. and noon-6 p.m. on Friday. Registration is $30.00 per team, and teams can be of any size. If a team purchases $125.00 worth of merchandise at the time of registration, registration is $15.00. If a team purchases $250.00 worth of merchandise at the time of registration, registration is free.