The 30th annual High School Scholars' Bowl will begin broadcasting in January. The last day of taping the academic trivia competition was Wednesday November 6.
A lot goes on behind the scenes.
Eash round of the competition features two high school teams with four players each. They are all top students.
"We have kids who make perfect scores on ACT, got one here today," Executive Producer Frank Miller said. "We try to hit all areas of the curriculum, you know, social studies, math, science, music, every area. And that is one of my responsibilities, to come up with the questions."
He's come up with questions for each of the past 30 years since East Tennessee Public Television started hosting and broadcasting the timed academic question and answer competition. He's Executive Producer Frank Miller.
"I'm a former teacher and principal and supervisor of instruction in the Hamblen County school system then I came to television in 1966, spent 46 years here at PBS and still here," he said.
Carson Newman University and Pellissippi State are sponsors and Sanda Allyson is the moderator. About 50 schools in our viewing area match wits in Scholars' Bowl. The games are taped in the studio over a few weeks then broadcast later.
Tellico Plains took on Knox Catholic in an early preliminary round. The winner of the match moves on to the next round in a bracket format until two teams are left. The top two teams both earn a trip to the national competition.
"Last year Whitley County Kentucky won and and they went to Atlanta and they won three games there. And we have had a lot of participants on Scholars' Bowl to be on Jeopardy," Frank Miller said.
The production crew is critical in putting together the Scholars' Bowl and volunteers are essential.
"We have a professional score keeper. They do it upstairs in the control room and we also have one down here to make sure everything is correct. We have two judges who make sure the questions are ok, a time keeper, and most of those people are volunteers," he said.
Volunteers even help Frank Miller with one of his key responsibilities.
"We have to come up with new questions and I have retired teachers who help me do that. They donate their time and send their questions to me and we go from there," he said.
There's no question about Frank Miller's commitment to high school scholars.
"These gifted and talented students, we're proud of them," he said.
You can see the Scholars' Bowl competition on East Tennessee Public Television starting in January.
