New Scaratings

Like I've said, it's not going to make that big a difference to me. I'm just another schmoe for the premium games, as y'all at Getaway can attest to. If there is the random punk/reggae/blues question on Saturday night, I can somtimes save a round, but I know nothing of the current music scene.

That said, I love playing with a group of folks at games they are good at, if only to hear comments like, "I hope (insert bar name ) bled on that question" in hopes of a NATIONAL gold finish against ALL teams EVERYWHERE.

The one sports game I played with ULF, I heard him muttering about some goofballs in Texas, Colorado, and Indiana and thought, "Who are those guys?" I know there was a postgame phone call made to someone out west...in a different time zone.

The premium games should bring BT Nation together, rather than splitting them apart.

I can only hope you're teamie is correct, POMAN.

Here's how much influence all the posts on here have had: the compay's stock has risen 40 percent at the time I write (11:12 EST), and seven times as many shares have already been traded as on an average day. Will all the geniuses who understand the stock market please explain this to me? Many thanks.
XT

I'm guessing the old "buy on rumor, sell on news" trick. People buy stocks whenever there is rumor that a company might be doing something to earn money, then when the news comes out on what they are doing, they sell the stocks.

There is no way this board and it's posts have anything to do with today's trading rally in the stock price.

There was a lot of tax loss selling in late Dec that took the price from .40 to .20. This is just a trading rally after the 30 days has passed to avoid a wash sale.

Also I hear Trinad is buying heavily again at these low prices. Still not sure what their endgame is. Takeover? a seat on the board?

At 12:24 .30 +36% today. It will probably get back to the .40 range within a few weeks, though I do expect it to sell off around 3:30 when the traders take their profits for the day. Myself included.

_________________
BUD - Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring MD
OC BUD - Grotto Pizza DE near Ocean City MD

LET'S GO ....Orioles and the 9 and 5!!

Good old Jesse.

Sneaky non shared his mom on the last question on 4 separate boxes when she was going to win her first game ever. She went from first to fifth. He said "I wasn't sure".

My first thought was I feel really badly for the west coasters.

I can still play Six on Wed or Thur night; and at least get rankings that have meaning, though limited to East and Central time zones. So, I can still at least have the BT experience I enjoy, just reduced. Better than nothing I suppose.

May even be a little more convenient as "late night" keeps getting earlier for the aged one I am becoming.

But for the "west coast network", I wouldn't even play, unless they were to introduce a totally separate game. I don't see them applying the resources to do that, even if the debacle we all envisage comes to fruition.

So for now, I guess I am thankful that geography puts me in at least a real competition, sans HOF and medals baubles.

Good point George. It's not our watering holes faults.

I had some frequent player ideas, but I think more of it was oriented towards XBox type achievements that Dante suggested, which I had never heard of:

AchievementFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Achievement (video gaming) - A system of meta-goals defined outside of a video or computer game's narrative or direct challenge structure

"How many players really want to go head-to-head with the whole nation?

I'd suggest that fewer than 100 teams nationwide really care. Candidly, that's only around a thousand people...great people and great players joined by community, but only a thousand players. The other players, whether it be the 5,000 to 10,000 other players for any given Premium Game or the 200,000+ other registered players or the hundreds of thousands who play without accounts, are either happier with a smaller group giving them a chance to win a medal or ignorant of the larger competition outside the bar where they sit. I think that most of the paying customers don't care about national competition.

Changing the time slots for Premium Games makes it easier for players in every Continental US time zone to purchase a meal with their Premium Game. I'd expect that to be a huge factor in this decision. Showdown players in the East often eat before hitting the bar. Showdown players in the West go home after a couple of beers. Now both of those time zones' players will be more likely to eat at the bar...that'll be big bucks for Buzztime sites. Big bucks for Buzztime sites means more sites and greater financial security for Buzztime. I like both outcomes.

I understand that the elite teams will be upset. I'm not lucky enough to live near an elite team. I like these changes."

Implicit in this statement is that Premium Games are good for BT and their bars, and further having them maximized for locale times zones is as well.

I can't argue with that; and have oft considered the time zone quandry BT is faced with.

If I ran the company, I would try to have Monday through Friday from 6:30 Eastern to 11:30 (start of a 30 minute game) Eastern,synchronized fresh content of half hour specialty games, with nights themed, such as a sports night, pop culture night, more classic trivia content night, etc.

Wouldn't have to be all new, they have a large database of categorized questions and answers, but they could sprinkle topicalisms throughout each such as this weeks superbowl, the Screen Actors Guilds awards, or whatever, while adding some new questions to be retained to the ongoing databases.

We could have real contests at the same time all week, with a "sweetspot" in the center where most of the network is represented.

Whether "elite" players like it or not, the time zone stuff is a real issue, and WB Tanaka has a perspective that I have heard from others.

BT will do what it will do, but if they are going to mess with the Premium Concepts and schedule, I'd rather have a string of fresh, challenging games of a half hour where folks would more easily able to come and go as they please, than to hold on to our hour games (that I love) and have them ruined.

In other words, 5 1/2 hours a night of mini premium games; with games construction modified so that they could afford to do it; while never having a repeat games.

Not perfect I know, but it is what i would do over what they are proposing to do.

Well I thought I saw on Facebook maybe it is not so much the number of players now it is the number of sites. If they get more or less sites this is if this is a go or no go. So you may have to hurt the sites or get them involed if that means to take the cash flow out of the sites to get them on BT case. I am sure they are montier both. But if you play as a non member they are still going to count those as being more players (and new ones which they are after) in BT mind.

Bud,

The sell off in Buzztime came on both announcements of their special offering at lower prices than their then current stock prices.

Sure the special offering had some to do with it but it had already been announced and the offering should be below the current price or no one would take them up on it.

The 1st offering was .31 I think, then the 2nd is .25, so with the price at .28 it looks attractive to some shareholders.

_________________
BUD - Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring MD
OC BUD - Grotto Pizza DE near Ocean City MD

LET'S GO ....Orioles and the 9 and 5!!

The special offering was placed at over a 50% discount, originally. It literally began plummeting the moment it was announced.

When they changed the second offering to be 30% below their then share price, it plummeted again.

If you want to give a special offering, you don't value your stock so lowly unless you're trying to collapse its value.

For those wondering why the wild swings, you have to remember this is a thinly traded penny stock. I've personally moved the stock price by myself before. Anyone doing much of anything will move it.

It's also worth pointing out that there a lot of people (myself included), who are more than happy to pick up stocks that have depreciated 50% quickly that still have cash on hand and aren't obviously about to file bankruptcy. In Buzztime's case, I won't do it, but it pops up on an automated screen I run, which means there's plenty of other people who see it, too.

Also, Trinad is evil.

Given the e-mail we just recently got about The Season (Houston's title), it now makes me wonder...

If buzztime sticks with this plan to launch the East/West thing (likely ) and if The Season returns next season (probably likely, as long as the company is still around ), how in the world is The Season going to work under a split schedule next season?

I can just see the end of the game announcements now:

"Well, Carolina, you might've just beat Seattle, but we have to wait a couple hours until the Seahawks and Panthers fans on the West coast play, then we'll determine whether you've actually won or not"

That's a good point, and more bad news for all of us. This split signifies the end of any possible skill based tournaments or prizes whatsoever.

What are your thoughts on the Ready Set New Schedule blog on BT's site, just posted today.

Personally, I'm inclined to give it a thumbs up (the end of Buzztime Trivia, less pop culture on Countdown), but I still don't like their split schedule idea.

-- RWM

_________________
"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

Ok, the new schedule is up. I do like the idea of playing premium games at 700 central. That is good for me. I also am rejoicing over the demise of 10-Q BT game.

Still not happy about only playing against half the nation at one time. Will have to see how that plays out. ALso as a certified "non-techie", I still dont see how they are going to stop Left-Coasters from cheating. Any ideas on that one??

They have a plan!

_________________
Malort. It's not just for breakfast anymore.

to me this change is much worse for the west that it is the east. between the central and eastern time zone you have just about a little more that 3/4 of the population. that still leaves a decent competition for the east feed. not as complete a competition as there should be, but still enough good teams for a real leaderboard. the west is left to compete against 25% of the trivia teams. and add to that the cheating that is sure to occur, this is worse for the teams in the west.

i really hate to see this change.

Evil knows evil.

It seems to me that anyone who wants to cheat would simply not use his P+ handle. This way, there's no account the Buzzies could choose to delete...

Of course, they haven't said HOW they're going to detect cheaters... With Qb1, they apparently would just kill any score they felt was "too good"... Guesswork. How scientific... I'm surprised they didn't get sued for defamation-of-character by the first legit player they unfairly penalized...

They're running a much bigger risk of this happening here, IMHO. They'd better have a better plan than guesswork... I don't think they could even afford to hire lawyers for the fight...

They haven't deleted a QB1 score for years. It was funny on Facebook some guy was complaining about the synch for QB1, he was having trouble with not being able to enter the play after the snap. I called him on it and he hasn't said shit since, I found that really funny. Yall may remember the guy from the old BT Forums, CHMWLF/IU SUX.

_________________
Buzztime is a company full of dumbshits.

Well, I think they have the right to delete anyone they want for any reason, and IIRC, they still have about 3.5 mil in cash on hand.

Good grief. Sorry to be late to this thread but I just read about this today.

We've all been lived through and survived a lot of dumb decisions by NTN over the years, but this one takes the cake. Just when you think Duh! was the dumbest idea ever, management trumps it.

Is there going to be a west coast and east coast gold medalist? How the hell do you measure up? What is the point?

Like many of you, I've cut back from an every day player to a occasional player, with spurts of mostly solo activity here and there and getting my old team together once in a blue moon for old time's sake. But there's no fun in the game if I can't compete nationally. Oh what the heck, take away the last vestige of fun I have had playing BT. Even with the 30 minute games back, any high rankings I receive -- if any -- will be worthless.

Bo, many thanks to you for fighting the good fight.