Quiz Kids (San Francisco)

Quiz Kids (San Francisco)

Quiz Kids is an academic quiz Public-access television show for San Francisco Bay Area high schools. From its beginnings in 1999 it has been hosted by Brad Friedman, the Drama Director at San Mateo High School.

32 teams competed in the 2010-2011 season with the members of the winning team receiving an all-expense paid trip to Europe courtesy of ACIS. In 2011-12 the competition saw 24 teams. The runners-up receive a $1000 scholarship per student provided by Golden Gate Commandry No. 16, Knights Templar Knights Templar and Burlingame Bodies Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.

In the 2011-2012 season 24 teams competed in round one after a screening process at non-televised tournaments. Several teams were inadvertently created a grandfather clause to play without screening, but the grandfather clause has since expired. Some concerns arose because some of the losing teams have scored 200+ more points than low-scoring winners. As a result, an intermediary round was devised whereby the bottom four teams were dropped outright, and the remaining eight teams who had lost in round one played again, with the four winners advancing to the second round with the 12 original winners to make a total of 16. Round two featured 16 teams who played in eight single elimination matches. The eight survivors were then staggered in a ladder tournament whereby the lower six teams contended for a shot to take on the number two seed (Harker School). The winner of that match would play the number one seed, Bellarmine Prep for the championship. Bellarmine Prep defeated the Menlo School (#3 seed) to win the 2011-2012 season.

Plans for the 2012-2013 season have not been finalized, but the current plan (May 2012) is to audition all teams in three non-televised competitions in September and October to select 16 teams to play on the show. Each team will appear three times if they maintain a score above 300 points in their matches. The top seven or eight teams will then play in the championship series.

Originally developed as Peninsula Quiz Kids by Bob Marks and Liz La Porte of Peninsula TV Cable 26 (Pen-TV) in 1999, the show began airing on KRON-4 in San Francisco as Bay Area Quiz Kids. The show is now a production of, headed by Executive Producer Marc Balcer.

Throughout its run, the show has been sponsored by the San Mateo Credit Union. Other sponsors have included Kaiser Permanente, SamTrans, the San Francisco Chronicle, AT&T, Oracle, Fisher Investments, and Wells Fargo Bank.