An Interview with Hooked on Trivia's Mike Cook
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"Hooked on Trivia"

A couple of years ago, Rebekah and I were facing another late-night drive home from Disneyland. We turned on the radio and - for a change - skipped the presets and just started flipping the dial. We came upon a show where the host was asking callers questions and giving them points when the got the answer right. As we continued to listen we learned the name of the show was "Hooked on Trivia" - the only radio game show. We also found that many of the questions were Disney related, and that really kept our attention (and kept us awake while driving!)

Since then, "Hooked on Trivia" has been a regular part of our late-night rides home from the Disneyland Resort. When we decided to do a special Trivia Week in celebration of our 100th Trivia Contest Rebekah suggested we contact Mike Cook, the host of "Hooked on Trivia", for an interview so he could spread the word a bit about his show and talk about (what appeared to be) his love for Disney. We did, he very kindly responded, and the interview is below.

So the next time you're leaving Disneyland, or driving late in the San Diego or Orange Counties, may I suggest you flip to 760 AM and give "Hooked on Trivia" a try. The show can be heard Monday - Friday, 11:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. or Saturday 9:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m.

LaughingPlace.com: How did "Hooked on Trivia" get started?

Mike Cook: Well, it basically began as a show on a religious station that was called KMJC which stood for King and Master Jesus Christ. Actually, it originally stood for KMagic, Magic 91. But when it sold to a religious concern they changed the call letters to mean that. Basically I was an independent producer. I was in another business entirely and mainly was a buyer and writer of ad copy and buyer of ads for various firms and so forth. But I always wanted to do my own show and so I had a chance here to do buy a slot which I did. It was on from 10:30 p.m. to 1 o'clock. November 5, 1983 on Magic 91 AM, and we kept expanding the show and we were on as much as six nights a week there. But mainly Saturday nights. We've always been on Saturday nights. When we went off the air at KMJC it was the end of March 1990, but we were there 5 1/2 or 6 years. Then we moved to other stations - kept moving up until we arrived where we are at now which is KFMB. We went on the air there October 7th 1995.

LP: For our readers who haven't heard the show, can you briefly describe how it is played?

MC: Well in as few words as I can put it, it's a call in, audience participation game show. The object of the show is to win the weekly drawing which is for $500 worth of prizes. We found that is a good amount - if you get much more than that you attract the element we don't like. Most people who are playing don't even care about the prizes. To get in the drawing for the weekly prize of $500 of prizes, a person calls in and on the air they try to accumulate a thousand points. If they do they're put in an hourly drawing and one of those people is picked for the weekly drawing which is also done randomly on Friday nights for the $500 of prizes. We're on 21 hours a week, so we would normally have at least 21 people in the drawing - generally speaking - because we usually have about one person per hour.

There are three different ways to get points. One of them is by answering regular straight trivia questions and that might be from any realm - automobiles, sports, movies, television - as you know. And if they don't - they're usually allowed three misses on those - and if they don't have a thousand points they get a true/false question. These are usually much tougher which is why they are true/false, such as astronomy or sciences - that type of thing. If they still don't have enough points then they play a game made for radio and we have a lot of them - similar to the games you have seen on the television over the decades. But adapted and made for radio - word guessing games, music guessing games, car guessing games and so on and so on and so on. In fact, at the website at 760KFMB.COM is a full description. Just click on shows, then my show and the FAQ section delineates the games we play. On the show we have about 70 different games that I've created over the years for the show. And that's about as succinctly as I've ever been able to put it.

LP: You tend to have a lot of Disney questions in your contests.

MC: I try to because I'm a native of San Diego and therefore I grew up in Southern California. I remember the ads, the full page ads for Disneyland when it was new. And we went there in either 1955 or 1956 - I don't' remember which. I was born in '47 and so I was very young so it was really quite a thrill. I mean, I'd never even been - there was no such thing as an amusement park like that anywhere. I mean I'd never seen or heard of it. I couldn't even as a kid conceptualize what it would be like and it was just awesome.

We take my family there and our grandkids there and so on. I've just always had a place in my heart for Disney like I think anyone has, and therefore I'm pretty good at it myself so I try to sprinkle it in. I have a couple of games as you know - word guessing games regarding Disney, famous Disney firsts where people guess which Disney thing came first and they compare maybe two different rides at Disneyland or something like that. And other interspersed trivia questions - usually a show won't go by without at least something about Disney mentioned in the show, as you know.

It's really a family thing. And I'm a real family kind of guy. I have a large family. We try to appeal to and cater to all ages. It is a very user friendly, family safe, family oriented kind of show. Anybody in the family can and will listen to it. We get 'em all ages. Ages 7 into the 90s.