Monday, October 14, 2013

My first (I think) blog post about NTN Buzztime was written nearly a decade ago

Today I am celebrating my ten-year anniversary of blogging. In doing so, I'm going back into the archives and pulling up some old posts that I wrote about various topics.

I ran across a July 2, 2005 Ontario Empoblog post about NTN Buzztime that quoted from the buzztime.com website - from a page that no longer exists (or perhaps was moved). It tells a bit of the history of NTN Buzztime, including the company's first game - and no, it wasn't Countdown. Here's what I grabbed from NTN Buzztime's own website:

NTN Communications is the brainchild of two executives from the Houston Oilers football team. The spark that lit the fire in the two men - Don Klosterman, executive vice president and general manager of the Oilers, and Dan Downs, ticket and stadium manager -- came in 1967. They conceived of an interactive strategy game that fans could play during a live football game.

They obtained a copyright, but for the most part the idea stayed in their heads for the following 15 years. Technology finally caught up with them in the early 1980s. The pair decided to create their own interactive broadcasting company and offer QB1 -- their interactive football strategy game -- as its first product.

Klosterman and Downs, along with several new partners, incorporated NTN Communications in April 1983. The NFL granted NTN a license a year later. By January 1986, players in 12 locations played QB1 during the Super Bowl.

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