College Bowl
College Bowl is a radio, television, and student quiz show. College Bowl first aired on the NBC Radio Network in 1953 as College Quiz Bowl. It then moved to American television broadcast networks, airing from 1959 to 1963 on CBS and from 1963 to 1970 on NBC. In 1977, the president of College Bowl, Richard Reid, developed it into a non-televised national championship competition on campuses across America through an affiliation with the Association of College Unions International, which lasted for 31 years. In 1989, College Bowl introduced a version of College Bowl for historically black colleges and universities called Honda Campus All-Star Challenge which is ongoing. In 2007, College Bowl produced a new version and format of the game as an international championship in Africa, called Africa Challenge. The College Bowl Campus Program and National Championship ran until 2008.
In November 2020, NBC announced a revival of the show, developed from the format of Honda Campus All-Star Challenge and Africa Challenge, with Peyton Manning as host and a ten-episode run ordered. The revival, Capital One College Bowl, aired from June 22, 2021 to October 28, 2022.
History
College Bowl originated as a USO activity created by Canadian Don Reid for soldiers serving in World War II. Reid and John Moses then developed the game into a radio show. Grant Tinker, later President of NBC and MTM Enterprises, got his start as an assistant on the show.Richard Reid has led the College Bowl since 1975. He has created, produced, and supervised all versions of College Bowl innovated since then.
Two four-member teams representing various colleges and universities competed; one member of each team was its captain. The game began with a "toss-up" question for ten points. The first player to buzz in got the right to answer, but if the contestant was wrong, the other team could try to answer. Answering a "toss-up" correctly earned the team the right to answer a multi-part "bonus" question worth up to thirty points; the team members could collaborate, but only the captain was allowed to answer. The game continued in this manner and was played in halves. During halftime, the players were allowed to show a short promotional film of their school or they might talk about career plans or the like.
The first College Quiz Bowl match was played on NBC radio on October 10, 1953, when Northwestern University defeated Columbia University, 135–60. Twenty-six episodes ran in that first season, with winning teams receiving $500 grants for their school. Good Housekeeping magazine became the sponsor for the 1954–55 season, and a short third season in the autumn of 1955 finished the run. The most dominant team was the University of Minnesota, which had teams appear in 23 of the 68 broadcast matches. The 1953–55 series had a powerful appeal because it used remote broadcasts; each team was located at their college where they were cheered on by their wildly enthusiastic classmates. The effect was akin to listening to a football game.
Television
Though a pilot was shot in the spring of 1955, the game did not move to television until 1959. As G.E. College Bowl with General Electric as the primary sponsor, the show ran on CBS from 1959 to 1963, and moved back to NBC from 1963 to 1970. Allen Ludden was the original host, but left to do Password full-time in 1962. Robert Earle was the moderator for the rest of the run. The norm developed in the Ludden-Earle era of undefeated teams retiring after winning five games. Each winning team earned $1,500 in scholarship grants from General Electric with runner-up teams receiving $500. A team's fifth victory awarded $3,000 from General Electric plus $1,500 from Gimbels department stores for a grand total of $10,500. On April 16, 1967, Seventeen magazine matched GE's payouts so that each victory won $3,000 and runners-up earned $1,000. The payouts from Gimbel's department stores remained the same so that five-time champions retired with a grand total of $19,500.Colgate University was the first team to win five consecutive contests and become "retired undefeated champions," defeating New York University in Colgate's first appearance in April 1960 when NYU was going for its fifth win. Rutgers was the second college to win five contests and be retired. Colgate later defeated Rutgers in a special one-time playoff contest to become the only six-time winner in a "five-win-limit" competition. An upset occurred in 1961, when the small liberal arts colleges of Hobart and William Smith in Geneva, New York, defeated Baylor University to become the third college to retire undefeated. Pomona College began its five-game G.E. College Bowl winning streak on October 15, 1961, by first defeating Texas Christian University followed by the University of Washington, Hood College, Amherst College, and Washington and Lee University. In another surprise, Lafayette College retired undefeated in fall 1962 after beating the University of California, Berkeley for its fifth victory, a David and Goliath event. Ohio Wesleyan University retired undefeated easily beating Bard, Marymount, UCLA, Michigan Tech, and Alfred. Lawrence University went undefeated in 1964-1965, Another upset occurred in 1966 when the all-female Agnes Scott College from Georgia defeated an all-male team from Princeton University.
The show licensed and spun off three other academic competitions in the U.S.:
- Alumni Fun, which appeared on ABC and CBS TV networks in the 1960s and featured former college students
- Bible Bowl, which has evolved into at least three separate national competitions and used the Bible as a source
- High School Bowl, which was broadcast in some local TV markets and featured high school students
Honda Campus All-Star Challenge
In 2011, HCASC adopted the Africa Challenge format of the game created by Richard Reid: the highlights of the format were three rounds of Face-Off and Bonus questions played in categories followed by a catch-up round called the Ultimate Challenge.
International versions
''University Challenge''
A British version of the televised College Bowl competition was launched as University Challenge in 1962. The program, presented by Bamber Gascoigne, produced by Granada Television and broadcast across the ITV network, was very popular and ran until it was taken off the air in 1987. In 1994, the show was resurrected by the BBC with Jeremy Paxman as the new quizmaster. In 2022, it was announced that Amol Rajan would be taking over as host, after Paxman announced that he was stepping down, owing to Parkinson's disease. Since 2011, a Christmas-time edition has also existed, titled Christmas University Challenge, featuring often well-known university alumni.''University Challenge New Zealand''
University Challenge ran in New Zealand for 14 seasons, from 1976 until 1989, with international series held between the previous years' British and New Zealand champions in both 1986 and 1987. It originally aired on TVNZ 1 and was hosted by Peter Sinclair from 1976 to 1977 and again from 1980 to 1989. From 1978 to 1979, Sinclair was briefly dropped from the show and was replaced by University of Otago lecturer Charles Higham, Sinclair returned in 1980 and from 1981 to 1982, the show briefly moved to TVNZ 2, it moved back to TV1 in 1983 and remained on the network until the series original conclusion in 1989. The series was revived in 2014 by Cue TV and aired on Prime with Cue TV owner Tom Conroy as host and ran until its second conclusion in 2017.''University Challenge Australia''
University Challenge, hosted by Magnus Clarke, ran in Australia on the ABC from 1987 until 1989. In the 1988 series, the University of New South Wales defeated the University of Melbourne in the final by 245 points to 175.''Africa Challenge''
Launched in 2007, Africa Challenge was an international championship version of College Bowl featuring schools from across the continent that finished at the top of nationwide, non-televised championship tournaments. The format for Africa Challenge was created by Richard Reid. It featured three players playing three rounds of Face-Off and Bonus questions, and it culminated in a catch-up round called the Ultimate Challenge.The program was sponsored by the mobile phone company Celtel, its headquarters in The Netherlands. In the first year, schools from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda competed. In the second year schools from Malawi and Zambia were added. In the third year, schools from Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone were added. After the second year, Celtel was sold to the mobile phone company Zain, headquartered in Bahrain. The name of the game changed to Zain Africa Challenge. Season five, which was set to be telecast in 2011, failed to make it past pre-production after Zain sold its African network operations to Bharti Airtel.