Chicago, start your trivia engines!
Three Chicago teams are among the 16 who begin competing Monday night in VH1’s “The World Series of Pop Culture.” The quiz show airs at 9 p.m. through Friday, and at 9 p.m. Thursdays starting July 20.
Cheetara battles Team Smarty Pants on Tuesday. And Men of Vision compete Wednesday.
The three-player teams vie for a $250,000 jackpot in the quiz show, a partnership between VH1 and Entertainment Weekly. Pat Kiernan and Lisa Guerrero are the hosts.
Instead of politics or current events, the topics will cover the pop culture gamut of music, TV and film. Hence, the knowledge of Agent Dale Cooper’s favorite dessert on “Twin Peaks,” or the college attended by “The Notebook’s” Allie Calhoun is more likely to propel a trivia hound toward TV riches than the ability to locate an obscure West African colony.
Our nation’s morphing interest in softer-side news is what planted the seed for a new quiz show for the Gen-X set. That, and the pop-cultural infiltration of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”
“One day, we asked a question about a specific funny moment on a specific episode of ‘Friends,’ ” recalled Michael Davies, an executive producer of both “Millionaire” and “The World Series of Pop Culture.” “There was quite a lot of money at stake, and we realized with the tension and the lights and [host] Meredith [Vieira] and that poor raw contestant making the decision, it was kind of made funny by the fact that we were asking about a light, almost farcical element of a TV sitcom.
“And we thought wouldn’t it be great if we played a game with all the tension and trappings that was all about pop culture, which is what most people know about now.”
The public were equally intrigued. More than 20,000 people auditioned for “The World Series” in Chicago and other U.S. cities in March and early April. Entrants were asked to take a rigorous online pop culture IQ test that, in some ways, mimics the SAT exam.
Trivia nerd to pop goddess
Chicago competitor Amber Tillett tells RedEye how she earned a spot on VH1’s “The World Series of Pop Culture.” Read Amber’s diary, watch a video chat and take another quiz, this one written by Amber. At redeyechicago.com.