Quiz shows

Untitled document Before the trivia subculture became widespread, via radio and TV quiz shows and books, the term commonly referred to bits of information to which most adults in the culture had at one time been exposed, via standard education or via popular culture. In time the term came also to comprise more obscure and arcane bits of knowledge. The first book treating trivia of this universal sort was Trivia (Dell, 1966) by Goodgold and Carlinsky, which achieved a ranking on the New York Times best seller list; the book was an extension of the pair's Columbia University trivia contests and was followed by other Goodgold and Carlinsky trivia titles. In 1974, a former Sacramento air traffic controller named Fred L. Worth published The Trivia Encyclopedia, which he followed in 1977 with The Complete Unabridged Super Trivia Encyclopedia, and in 1981 with Super Trivia, vol. II. The popularity of all these books laid the groundwork for the first edition of Trivial Pursuit in the early 1980s.
The enormous success of this game led, in the United States, to the re-launch of Jeopardy!, reviving a quiz show genre that had been dormant since the quiz show scandals of the 1950s. The American TV broadcaster ABC had a surprise hit with Who Wants to be a Millionaire, an import of a successful British quiz format which launched another wave of interest in trivia. In both the UK and Canada, the quiz format has enjoyed continuous success since the 1950s, untouched by the scandals that dogged the American format.
In addition to the mass media trivia, there have also been two entrenched trivia subcultures. One is the pub quiz phenomenon, which is especially prevalent in Great Britain and in select U.S. cities, particularly in pubs that serve a large Irish-American community. (The U.S. pub quiz scene is crimped by the popularity of Buzztime, a satellite-based game.)