Peter Sinclair: Game shows on the web

By PETER SINCLAIR

Older readers may recall a television series I hosted for many years involving New Zealand's major universities, University Challenge.

The original British show, hosted from 1962-87 by Bamber Gascoigne (whose name yields the appropriate anagram Organise BBC Game) is still remembered on the web.

Winning television formats never die, however, and it looks as though Challenge is now being given a new cyber-life — Wired magazine reports that a show called Web Challenge is heading for American TV screens and the internet.

The concept combines two on- and off-line passions — game-shows and surfing the web. Three pairs of teams, supplied with logged-on laptops, must race each other and the clock to answer trivia questions.

And these answers must be found on the web — there are scrutineers to make sure of that, plus the watchful presence of the TV audience. Just knowing lots of stray facts won't win any points.

Web-searching being rather a hobby of mine, I'm not going to miss it. Contestants may use any search-engines they like, or if they're web-savvy enough, can go straight to relevant sites to find their answers — if it was a movie question, for example, I'd be off to the internet movie database; if rugby, rugbyheaven.

Interestingly, there will be no limit on the number of windows a contestant may have open — just how grunty will those laptops be? — so that one of the browser-search add-ons which open multiple windows might come in handy.

Like me, Danny Sullivan, editor of Search-Engine Watch will certainly be glued to the series: "I think watching everyone search as fast as they can is like giving people race-cars and [seeing them] trying to own the race ... it could be very exciting."

Any surfer can search, just as most people can drive, but there's a world of difference between you, me and Bruce McLaren. Skill, experience and technique will count for everything in Web Challenge.

As searchmeister Julian Sher of www.journalism.net notes, not everyone has mastered the easiest and best ways of web-searching, for some search-engines have a mind of their own.

"If you're looking for the GNP of Britain," she goes on, "using a search-engine isn't the best way to get the answer but going to a specialty site may be."

She's right. I tried the query on the two mainstays of my own searches, Google and AltaVista, and was fumbling round for ages.

The Web Challenge pilot was masterminded (if you'll forgive the expression) by Stewart Cheifet, something of a guru on net-related TV shows in the US.

His Net CafÈ rates well on public service channels, and he's the organiser of Computer Bowl as well.

Based on the format of College Bowl, America's University Challenge, Computer Bowl is an annual charity which pits teams from the East and West Coasts of America against each other — the sons of the pilgrims versus Silicon Valley.

It attracts major internet names (Netscape's Marc Andreessen captained the West in 1998) and a big audience — there's a video-stream of this year's June clash at www.presenter.com.

There's been much talk of "convergence" between the computer and the television set. Web Challenge will certainly see them inching a little closer.

Who knows, maybe they'll ring the cyber-changes on Mastermind too ...

Links:

University Challenge

Wired

Internet Movie Database

RugbyHeaven

Search-Engine Watch

Journalism.net

Google

AltaVista

Net CafÈ

Computer Bowl

www.presenter.com

E-mail: petersinclair@email.com