Teletrivia starts again—free

Press, 19 July 1989, Page 29

Teletrivia starts again—free

By

TOM METCALFE

Teletrivia, a dial-up trivia game which sparked complaints earlier this year when some children rang up hundreds of dollars in fees playing the game behind their parents’ backs, started again in Christchurch last week — this time for free. The game was taken off the hook in March after a trial by Telecom and Adcall Services. Although a petition opposing the game as an unsolicited service was presented to Telecom, the coporation said the decision not to continue with the trial had nothing to do with parent complaints. Last week the game’s designer, Mr Bill Sutherland of Adcall Services, relaunched the game in Christchurch. This time, however,

callers are not charged to play the game. Instead, they had to listen to a 20-second commercial before getting to hear and answer any questions. The money to run the game would come instead from advertisers, he said. When the game was on trial, callers were charged a fee for each game they played.

There were 1000 trivia questions stored on computer, and callers were always asked one of 200 “moderately hard” questions to begin with. Advertisers could buy the advertising space on any of the 200 starter questions for $l5 a question a week, he said. Callers need a pushbutton phone to play Teletrivia. Questions can be selected from four categories, and getting

three questions right gets the caller in a draw for prizes.

The service was available only to Christchurch people, unless callers from other cities were willing to make a toll call to play the game. However, Mr Sutherland hoped to set up in other New Zealand centres, starting with Auckland.

He started the game running last Monday, with four telephone lines, and had to add four more lines two days later.

The lines were “absolutely chocka,” he said, and the game was now receiving 3000 calls a day.

The volume of calls was not a drain on the Telecom network, and the corporation had no objection to the game being run iri its present form, he said. :