This morning, our local radio host was ranting about people “cheating” on the Tuesday trivia question. She complained that they’re a small radio station and can’t afford to give prizes every week and, of course, now with Google, people always get the questions right. The radio host said the questions should be something that stump you or cause you to yell the answer at the radio and/or grab your phone. She raises an interesting point: Google has changed our culture from one of guessing to one of finding.

When I lived in the Los Angeles area, our radio station, KROQ had a similar quiz, but instead of asking questions like “who won the Super Bowl in 1984?” or “what year was Willie Mays born?” they asked esoteric questions that only devout fans of a particular band, with deep background knowledge, could answer. Now, of course, Google allows us all, to some extent, to have that deep knowledge with a quick keyword search.

There are still trivia-type questions that can’t be Googled, though. The radio station could play 2 seconds of a song and have people call in and guess the song/band/whatever. Or, they could ask which other songs have a similar chord or something. Surfer magazine used to have a picture of a surf spot and challenge readers to guess where it was, then publish the answer in the next issue.

I guess our local radio station needs to figure out what kinds of things experts/fans uniquely know and direct the Tuesday trivia questions to them.