Announcing “The 8pm Quiz”

The decision has been made! Yes, I’m doing a pilot series of a livestreamed pub-style quiz. The 8pm Quiz starts this Thursday 14 January 2021 at 8pm AEDT and runs for three weeks. It’ll be streamed via YouTube. Read on for the details.

It’s simple, really.

  1. Pour yourself a drink. Obviously.
  2. Head over to my YouTube channel at the appointed time of 2000 AEDT on Thursdays. You’ll need to be logged in to join the live chat.
  3. I’ll ask the questions. You and the rest of your team will write down the answers and we’ll score them at half time and at the end. Don’t put the answers in the live chat.
  4. Yes, you can play as a team. You’ll have to sort your own private back channel for that. A Zoom meeting or similar would work well, or a private group in whatever chat app you prefer.
  5. Enjoy yourselves.
  6. When it’s finished, follow the links to throw a few dollars into the tip jar, tell me how you think it went, and offer suggestions for future episodes.
  7. If you miss the livestream, you can catch up later on YouTube.

Overall it’ll be much like Nick’s Pub Quiz in the UK, which is what I plagiarised what served as an inspiration for this project. He’s the guy who did the Life Commentary videos that kinda went viral last year.

I know that pub quiz questions can range widely. I’m likely to drift to geeky topics more than, say, sport But it’s certainly going to be a mix, and I’ll refine that as we go along.

Some of these issues were also discussed on Twitter. Feel free to add your thoughts to that thread.

The Data

My gut feeling and “professional” experience had suggested that 8pm Thursdays would be the best time to start, given the balance between the needs of a potential audience spread from New Zealand to Western Australia, and I was right.

Survey results Q1: What evenings would work for you? (Choose as many as you like.)

As the survey data showed, Wednesday and Thursday were almost equally popular. Since Thursday was the easy leader, and it was my preferred option anyway, that’s when I’ll run these first three episodes.

Survey results Q2: Optional: What start time(s) would work for you? (This would be in Sydney time. Choose as many as you like. The livestream would probably last from 60 to 90 minutes.)