New Scaratings

2 of the 1250s:

What year did G. Gervin win his first NBA scoring title? 1978
What was Red Barber's signature radio call? "Oh, Doctor"

One we missed was What year did the New Orleans Saints have their
first winning record? 1987

Which pitcher threw the first of his 231 complete games in 1967?

The New Orleans Saints had their first winning season in which year?

Wally Szczerbiak was a top performer in 1999 for which conference?

Which announcer was originally the trainer for Emile Griffiths?

Who holds the Oakland Raiders record for field goals in a season?

What is three under par also known as?

Wade Stinson was the first person to gain 1000 yards for ____?

Kevin Mawae was named the head of the _____ players union in 2008.

Jamie Macoun made the 1984 NHL all-rookie team for which franchise?

George Gervin won the first of his scoring titles in which year?

What school did Jimmy Connors attend?

Red Barber was known for his famous call "Oh, ____".

Back at you with the nice recap, in order no less....

I only missed the Raiders question (a "who cares" question if you ask me) in the round, a few of our folks ran the table. Definitely guessed on the Wade Stinson and Gil Glancy questions, but we're nice folks we deserve a break now and then

I'm not sure it's in exact order, but it's the best I got.
You think that's fun, I recapped the whole game from memory when I had a spat with CASBAH about content from a STC game a couple of years ago on the old BT site.
You show offs run the table on me next week and I'll give you a break all right...

On July 8th, 9251 boxes played Spotlight. This past Friday the count was 6390.

On July 9th, 7293 boxes played Playback. This past Saturday the count was 4388.

And one of the reasons BT pulled STC was because game play had fallen off!

Now they don't seem to be counting 0 scores in the HOF whereas I thought they used to. If that's true, naturally it would account for some of that difference.

May not be the best example with it being Halloween weekend and all. I know our bar was much, much emptier than it normally is.

And the Northeast got hit with an October snowstorm on Friday & Saturday. We got 5.5 inches of snow here

It wasn't just the snow. Many trees were down from this storm, and the road conditions were extremely trecherous due to ice and slush, not to mention trees and branches. We were urged to stay off the highways on Saturday.

I got my power back yesterday after 66 hours without. Most of Connecticut remains out, and many will likely be out for a week or more. In terms of power outages and fallen trees, this storm was worse than the hurricane we had this past August.

As for NTN play, perhaps the prior weekend data (10/21 and 10/22) would have provided more meaningful data about seasonal changes in the amount of play.

-- RWM

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

Admittedly had forgotten about the storm, personally don't think Halloween on Monday had anything to do with it.

But regardless, player count has dropped tremendously. It is cause for concern.

Counts for the week before are 9251 to 7065 for SL and 7293 to 5466 for PB. Nasty.

If the zero boxes were excluded at some unspecified time in the past that may explain some of it. I doubt playership is down by 25% or more across the board in 3 mos.

In any event using these data to express surprise at the STC move is a bit disingenuous. The sports games have long been the lowest player counts amongst the premiums, and have shown a similar pattern to the others in this period - just from a lower level to begin with. I make no claim that player count is the only criterion in STC's demise, but if it were, which other premium should go first?

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

Even if #'s are a bit down, why should the game have to go away at all? Its not like those numbers will be made up playing CD or the amazingly popular BT.

I dont know at all about the production costs for a premium game, but I suppose that has to factor in

Compared the last three weeks premium game count to three weeks from six months ago. I did not use this week's SL and PB counts due to the snowstorm. For the Sunday and Monday sports games I used the last three weeks before QB1 season so as to compare the same time slots.

Format is game, previous three weeks, three weeks from six months ago, percentage change.

SIQ 4383 4236 +3%
STC 3324 3457 -4%
SD 7365 8384 -13%
W Six 5050 5613 -10%
R Six 4981 6037 -17%
SL 6981 8348 -16%
PB 5121 7143 -28%

Pretty obvious the PB numbers are hurting, IMO due to ass game design and announcing potential headliners. At lot more people will not play due to bad choices than show up because of good choices. If you don't announce the choices, players have to show up to see what they get, good or bad. It's not rocket science.

Oh, SIQ shows an increase while STC shows much less decline than every other game! Tuesday through Friday games are down similarly.

You are probably right about the costs, but I suspect not so about the makeup. The drop off for the game after SIQ was 33 players. The drop off for the last premium game I continued on after (Wed SIX) was 2500. Sure the time slot makes a difference, but since SIQ only gained about 140 boxes on its lead in game and lost essentially none to its follower, it's a pretty good sign people at that time/day will just play whatever is put up there in roughly equal numbers. The other premium games cause much larger jumps from lead in and drops from follow on games.

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

Interesting stuff. Other than Thursday QB1 on channel A I wonder what is causing the fall off in most of the recently unchanged games lately? World Series/ postseason maybe? I am relatively close to St. Louis so my anecdotal example is skewed but certainly competed with trivia locally. Not as precipitous as the first set implied, but worrying. As far as premium game cancellations go though, we still have to ask ourselves whether the real key is player change or player count, and I still see less shift between premium game and surrounding offerings with the sports games.

Incidentally I am still not a fan of killing the sports games per se. Two on successive days is a bit much, but there are plenty of sports fans and it's less well served in general trivia than other mass entertainments so there certainly is a place for them, especially as like other special interest games they can be programmed out where not wanted. But their success has been limited of late it's undeniable.

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

On a Sunday night those folks that are remaining to play trivia after SIQ may be hanging around to watch Sunday night football. I guess the question that remains to be answered is if there is no SIQ to draw them out will these potential trivia players even come out at all to play CD and BT while watching football, or will they just stay home and watch football from their own living room? I know in my case I will likley stay home and watch football rather than venture out and watch FB in a bar for a few games of general trivia (translate 50-60% pop culture)

I looked in the HOF for STC about two weeks ago (maybe three) and I saw there were 1400 players for the game that week. That might've been before late reporters, I don't know. But when I first looked at it, it was at 1400.

I remember when buzztime did the split coast games for the half hour speciality games. For the East/Central time zones, one game was drawing 3000+ players. That same game was drawing < 1000 players when it ran in the Mountain/West time zones. And for whatever reason, eventually the only scores that posted to the HOF for that game were the Mountain/West scores.

After several weeks of that (of seeing < 1000 players for the Mountain/West game), the game was eventually dropped. And that was even several months before the switch to the 15-minute format.

If it was pulled simply because TPTB were looking at the < 1000 participation rate (completely forgetting about the East/Central players) then that was a dumb reason to pull it. Likewise, if TPTB just saw a few weeks of 1400 on STC and decided to pull it for that reason, then that seems like a similar knee-jerk reaction.

But who knows, maybe it just merely had something to do with losing the Fox Sports sponsorship. Buzztime pulled Trivial Pursuit after they lost the sponorship -- and just launched a Six clone instead. I don't know why buzztime would have to pull STC if they lost the Fox Sports sponsorship since it was actually buzztime's game long before Fox Sports decided to sponsor it...but maybe Fox Sports was given some ownership rights to the game with their sponsorship.

But, of course, this is just all speculation.

Are you sure you weren't looking at SIQ scores? During QB1 season, a lot of sites air QB1 instead of SIQ and 1400 is an average player count during those times. STC has been over 3k players every game for the last six months.

WHat game was that? I remember no such game.

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Buzztime is a company full of dumbshits.

I can see where they'd go with that if they thought the games were actively driving players away, as was clearly the case with Assport, and a few other games in the past.

Believe it or not, at my bar, CD/BT is more popular. I left the sports game on for a couple months after it debuted (re-debuted?). Everyone playing BT/CD would log out and often go home. Same happens now if I forget to change it. It's odd; we frequently have a few players for the Monday sports game. The regular Sunday BT/CD are mostly sports fans watching football. They just don't like the Sunday sports game.

We used to do the same, when we played those nights. I stopped playing any night that had sports premium games, even though Sun/Mon are the nights I'm really most free, compared to the rest of the week.

When QB1 would come on back in the TGI Fridays days, almost the entire bar would leave, and most of us would go play pool somewhere.

I know there are a lot of Sports Fanatics out there, but I also know there are a lot of people who will tolerate other games, but have no interest in sitting through even thirty minutes of Sports. Dunno why that is.

I think SIQ at least drew out some of the fans looking for a truly hard Sports game, though.

Is it because you suck at fantasy football???
Looking forward to this Sunday. Go CJ0K!!!

It's hard to do well in Fantasy Football when you average 1 season ending injury a week, and 1 - 2 multi-game injuries a week

Just thought I'd post in an actual trivia thread instead of having 7 worthless free for all threads cluttering the top of a trivia forum. Hell, just for kicks perhaps I'll just bump real threads and force the trash threads completely off the first page.