The long-running New Zealand television quiz show. The format was based on the British show of the same name, which was itself based on the American College Bowl. It was produced by Television New Zealand.
At its inception in 1976 it was hosted by University of Otago lecturer Richard Higham, but after the first series it gained Peter Sinclair as regular host; he continued in this capacity until the show's demise in 1989.
Behind the scene
Listener, 3 October, 1981
New Zealand universities face their appearance on the University Challenge quiz show with widely differing attitudes. Some teams arrive in Dunedin, where the series has always been made, with the anticipation of a hugely entertaining joust ahead of them, and blithely step in front of the cameras for the first time in their lives. Others treat the whole project as if it were a prestige sport, and have training sessions for months beforehand.
Skill in judging just when to push a buzzer, or how to gauge the most effective way of extracting marks from various alternatives, is rigidly taught them by previous participants who have been through the mill in an earlier year. One university's team took over their campus's audio-visual unit and staged their own mock-up.
The thousand-plus questions used in the series cover a range from world history and mythology (both European and local), classic and modern arts, including rock music, current affairs, mathematics and semantics, to natural and applied sciences, physics, poetry and space.
The University Challenge format is owned by Granada Television, from whom Television New Zealand buys the rights to make their own, version. Quiz-master Peter Sinclair and producer Max Cryer visited Granada earlier this year and sat in on taping of the English show which has been hosted by Bamber Gascoigne for nearly 20 years. Peter Sinclair, with six years of hosting quizzes behind him, confessed to being completely humbled. Bamber Gascoigne has to be one of the world's most truly erudite men, and one of the most pleasant as well. Radiating an easy authority, and possessed of a memory which misses nothing, he is the doyen of all quiz hosts, anywhere, any time, and my admiration for his work is total
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Producer Max Cryer made comparison between the logistics of the two "Challenge" series. They have an enormous number of students to draw on. New Zealand has only seven universities, and the English series, which lasts 40 weeks, covers about 200 universities each year. And to bring university supporters for the audience. they lay on buses which come from all over England. We simply can't afford that, But we seem to be able to arrange our technical facilities just as well as they do. The Dunedin television unit is extremely efficient. and, for instance, takes it for granted that Peter Sinclair will read out the scores from a miniature digital display installed on his desk Bamber Gascoigne reads his scores from two car mirrors stuck in a lump of Plasticine, and wiggled around to reflect the same score the viewers see, so that he doesn't have to peer over his shoulder He's had the same lump of Plasticine for 18 years
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