I was thinking that PasTimes would make a good one-hour game as well. Certainly there is no need for two Six games a week. I strongly disagree with moving Brainbuster away from Tuesdays, though. It definitely goes better with Showdown than with any of the other major games, and helps make it worthwhile for those who like them to come out every Tuesday. Glory Daze, however, does nothing to attract most of the Showdown fans, because of its heavy entertainment content (9 of 15 questions last week). In my experience and in surveys I have seen, only 10-20% of players like that kind of question, and most actively dislike them. Yet in the two Countdown games preceding Glory Daze last week, 9 of 15 and 10 of 15 questions were pop culture (or pop garbage as I often hear it called). This tends to drive away all but the most dedicated Showdown players. I think that part of the problem is that the company is based in southern California, where the interest in entertainment is perhaps greater than anywhere else. Certainly a look at the trivia questions posted on Facebook suggest that it is almost the exclusive interest of the current Trivia Guru.

What Carls bad management does not seem to get is that they need to focus on themes for each night to attract new customers to the locations who will come back regularly. They seem to think that all evenings have to appeal to all patrons, and that most of them want entertainment/pop culture questions. Those topics may be of interest to many bar patrons who already come out to drink, eat, etc., and a few of these may even play occasionally, but they are rarely going to add to the clientele of the location by coming back to play regularly or suggesting to others to come play these Buzztime games (unless the bar provides prizes/incentives). As Bo and others have pointed out many times, they are not interested, and one only needs to do a search for almost any handle to see that the vast majority of these have played only once or twice, if at all.

On the other hand, there are many people out there who would normally not go near a bar or rarely to the kind of restaurant with Buzztime, who would happily come out once a week if they knew that there was a chance to test their knowledge against others with similar interests across the continent. Most of us are limited by time, money, or other obligations to coming out regularly only once or twice a week, and theme nights make this attractive to many more people. This has been done to some extent and is part of the reason why numbers are highest on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday, although I suspect the weekend numbers have a higher proportion of casuals, who just happened to be in the bars anyway.
I would suggest having themes such as: Sundays - Sciences / Natural Environment; Mondays - Sports; Tuesdays -general knowledge, Showdown - about reality (science, history, geograohy) or art - including music, literature, etc. - of enduring value; Wednesdays - History and geography (both political and physical); Thursdays - either general with Six, or a classical knowledge/arts theme (philosophy, mythology, religions, literature, classical art and music, etc.); Fridays - entertainment/pop culture (movies, tv, theatre, etc.); and Saturdays - pop music (say from the past 100 years).

I fear that I have deviated from the suject somewhat, but I had to get these ideas out somewhere in hopes (probably futile) that some present or future NTN manager might see and think about them.

Cheers,

I definitely miss Pastimes being a 30 minute game. I started a thread on the buzztime forums a long time ago and surprisingly nothing was ever done.

If they did have a nightly themed 30 minute game and have Wednesdays be like Passport I might actually go on Wednesdays again.

i'd like a half hour Pastimes type game as well..however it is gone and not likely to come back at any time. fwiw, I like the current Wed schedule better than other other night than Tuesday

I don't see why there can't be a 15 question, 30 minute history game instead of Countdown prior to Brainbuster. In fact, I don't see why there aren't more of these speciality games. How about one on Art, or Literature, or, even, gasp, Science?