At 30 years old, KVSC’s Trivia Weekend is finally ready to move out of the basement and get married.
The 50-hour marathon, which starts at 5 p.m. Friday, is moving its phone banks from the basement of Stewart Hall at St. Cloud State University to the computer labs on the main floor to handle its new paperless scoring technology.
The St. Cloud-based event also will be simulcast, for the first time, on other college radio stations at 89.7 FM KMSU in Mankato and 91.3 FM KMSK in Austin with translators in Albert Lea and Fairmont.
“Really, for me, we’re sharing a Central Minnesota tradition with southern Minnesota,” said station manager Jo McMullen-Boyer. “We’re reaching out to another part of the state hoping to make a love connection.”
The southern Minnesota stations are members of the Association of Minnesota Public Educational Radio Stations network of independent radio stations, along with KVSC, and are operated by Minnesota State University — Mankato.
“This has the potential to get some feet and grow,” said Jim Gray, operations director at KVSC.
Until now, if players wanted to get in on the Trivia Weekend action from outside of Central Minnesota they had to listen online. The radio signal still will be streamed online to teams all over the world (2008’s Trivia Weekend had 30 teams playing from out of the area), but the new partnership has the potential to turn Trivia Weekend into a statewide event, Gray said.
“Quite frankly, if we get one or two teams from that area, I’ll call it a success,” Gray said.
All of Trivia Weekend — from pregame to the awards ceremony — will be broadcast on the sister stations, and the KMSU morning show will do a broadcast from KVSC during the weekend.
KMSU will be fed the radio signal digitally with only a 50 millisecond lag that is unnoticeable, Gray said.
“The timing couldn’t be more perfect to celebrate a benchmark year in the contest with growth,” McMullen-Boyer said. “This is one of two major ways we are changing the contest this year.”
Scores will be entered into a custom-made program designed by Jason Rausch at St. Cloud Community and Technical College. There will be no paper scoring and scores will be updated online instantly.
KVSC used to go through about 1,500 pieces of paper during Trivia Weekend for scorekeeping, McMullen-Boyer said. The new system will make the event more “green” and eliminate errors, she said.
“We’re striving for accuracy,” Gray said. “This is going to strip the mistakes from the system.”
To keep up with the growth of Trivia Weekend, there are 24 phone lines in the new phone bank, with a potential for about 100 lines.
“If this does explode and we need more lines, they’re there,” Gray said.
Even though the competition is making a shift to a more modern and digital way of doing things, the old-fashioned phone bank isn’t going anywhere.
“We’re a radio station, and I think what makes our contest very distinguishable compared to the others is that interaction with the phone bank. The phone bank becomes another tool to finesse,” McMullen-Boyer said. “These relationships forge, and it’s really interactive.”
For more St. Cloud Times news, go to http://www.sctimes.com/.
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